If what emergency room doctors in Germany's coronavirus crisis areas are reporting is true, accident and heart attack victims will have to pray for beds in intensive care units. These are currently being used by COVID-19 patients, most of them unvaccinated.
Many people may not like the fact that the coronavirus situation in Germany is serious, but current figures, which can be verified by anyone, make any discussion superfluous.
Footballers aren't exceptions
It is in the midst of all this that some professional football players, celebrated week after week as role models, deem it appropriate to pursue their very public line of work unvaccinated. Following the statement that was drawn out of him on the matter, Joshua Kimmich could have visited an intensive care unit or met with his choice of prominent German virologists.
Any one of them would have been happy to tell him that his reservations about getting vaccinated are simply not supported by the science. And he could then have pondered what a disastrous effect his behavior is having on a vaccine-weary country.
Don't tell me it's none of my business whether Bayern players Niklas Süle, Serge Gnabry or Jamal Musiala, who have been forced to leave the national team camp, are vaccinated or not. As a journalist, I want to know that, just as any restaurant, employer or hospital has every right to ask me as a visitor, whether I have been vaccinated. If I can prove I haven't been, they also have every right to refuse me entry.
You can't be serious!
The fact that professional footballers who haven't been vaccinated are still allowed to play in packed stadiums while fans must prove that they have been vaccinated to enter is a joke.
Former Bayern CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge or the club's ex-coach and current national team coach Hansi Flick are acting as if this is a discussion for the politicians or, better still, for the day after tomorrow.
Has everyone forgotten that it was football that was the first public spectacle to be allowed to restart during the pandemic while concert violinists were still in lockdown? And now they want to be allowed to carry on chasing a ball unvaccinated? You can't be serious!
How about a sabbatical?
That's the reaction you might have hoped for from Bayern's top management. It's scandalous that this club, which has done so much to earn a reputation for playing a positive role in society is looking so creepy on this issue.
As far as I'm concerned, Bayern players who don't want to be vaccinated are welcome to take that decision and go off on sabbatical until the pandemic is over. If they still show up in front of the TV cameras, they are, in my view, failures. Forgive me if this sounds harsh, but this is not just about the physical integrity or privacy of professional footballers.