Notations On Our World (Weekly Edition): As #COVID19 continues to rage on.....

 

On this Martin Luther King Day, our team chose a bit of a different tact on our weekly analysis here in our Visions Corner.  COVID continues to be the dominant challenge of our times.      Our team chose a sampling of one business response to the continuing pandemic as we also present a predicament of the challenges faced by businesses who continue to deal with staff challenges, supply chain issues in the midst of grappling with the Omicron Crisis as we urge all who have not been vaccinated to be vaccinated and for those who are to get boosted.

Dear customers, Over the past two years, you’ve shown us the meaning of resilience. Through this pandemic, we’ve adapted together, shown up for one another, and found joy and community over coffee. With the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, we’ve all been forced to adapt again. Your Starbucks Experience may look different as we navigate this dynamic situation in each of our communities. You may notice some stores will have shortened hours, that some products may be unavailable, or that mobile order and pay is temporarily turned off at your store. Our commitment to you is that we will always make proactive decisions that prioritize the health and well–being of our customers and our partners (employees). We continue to observe elevated cleaning and sanitizing protocols that meet or exceed public health guidelines and can help reduce the spread of COVID–19, while prioritizing support for our store partners by offering comprehensive care including vaccine pay, catastrophe pay, mental health and sick pay benefits, childcare support and more. We are working quickly to resolve all customer disruptions and you have our commitment to make the situation right. To that end, we are postponing Starbucks Rewards® members’ Star expirations through April 1, 2022, to thank you for your continued loyalty, and for the patience and care you’ve shown our store partners in these trying times. As always, the Starbucks® app is still the best place to find the latest product availability and view the most current store hours. Through a sip, a bite or a smile — we will continue to work every day to bring you moments of joy. Thank you. Get an at–a–glance look at what you need to know about our continued response to COVID–19:

January 10, 2022

Good morning. David Meyer here in Berlin, filling in for Alan.

Six weeks ago, Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting (now installed) Olaf Scholz signaled the introduction of a vaccine mandate, to begin around February or March.

Austria had already announced its looming mandate, which will come into force on Feb. 1. But the German timetable looks decidedly shaky today, with lawmakers now looking at May or June instead. That’s due to a mix of factors, including legislative timetables and technical considerations such as the development and implementation of a nationwide vaccine register. There’s also disagreement within the ruling coalition about the concept of a vaccine mandate, with opposition coming from some members of the liberal (in the center-right European sense) Free Democrats.

Either way, as the outspoken Health Minister Karl Lauterbach pointed out on the weekend, the mandate won’t come in time to do much against Omicron: “With compulsory vaccinations we won’t really be able to aggressively stop the Omicron wave we’re going through right now. What we will be able to do with compulsory vaccination—that’s why I remain a clear advocate of a vaccine mandate—is avoid facing the same problem in the fall with a variant that might be much more dangerous.”

Indeed, as World Health Organization COVID technical lead Maria Van Kerkhove noted in a Friday press conference, “it is very unlikely that Omicron will be the last variant you’ll hear us speaking about.” And that is why governments everywhere need to keep up the pressure on people to get vaccinated.

I personally think the time has come for vaccine mandates, due to the sheer obstinacy of holdouts and the need to do everything we can to bring this pandemic to an end. As a longstanding civil liberties advocate, I certainly understand many of the arguments against compulsory vaccination. However, I’m more than skeptical about some of the arguments being put out there right now, such as this anti-mandate Wall Street Journal op-ed, which argues that “the best policy might be to let Omicron run its course while protecting the most vulnerable, naturally immunizing the vast majority against COVID through infection by a relatively benign strain.”

The op-ed asserts that there is no evidence that vaccines prevent serious infection by Omicron, despite extremely clear evidence from the Omicron-swamped U.K. that patients in critical care are overwhelmingly unvaccinated, and early evidence from New York City that suggests something similar. (Worth noting: the piece was co-authored by Luc Montagnier, who won a 2008 Nobel Prize for his discovery of HIV, but who has since become a highly controversial figure for, among other things, appearing at a vaccines-cause-autism conference and claiming that DNA fragments can teleport between test tubes. He has also asserted that SARS-CoV-2 is man-made, a theory for which there is no evidence.)

Lauterbach, himself an epidemiologist, certainly has no time for what he calls “dirty vaccination”. Even though Omicron appears milder than previous COVID variants, he said, “many people would become seriously ill with often permanent damage.” Not so easy to brush that off, nor can we ignore the immense pressure that Omicron is putting on hospitals.

This is a complicated debate and, frankly, it should be. Where a conflict between fundamental rights is concerned—bodily integrity versus protection from harm—beware anyone who says there’s an easy answer. More news below.

David Meyer
@superglaze
david.meyer@fortune.com