"It would have been different after a visit to the Wiesn": Doctor reports on vaccination - and reaps encouragement

Created: 03/10/2022 06:17

Crowds at the Oktoberfest in the "blue hour", view from the Ferris wheel to the Wiesn on September 19, 2022. © IMAGO/Wolfgang Maria Weber I

Booster instead of beer, thought a doctor and skipped this year's Oktoberfest visit in favor of a BA.5 booster vaccination.

Munich – The Wiesn wave is slowly but surely spilling over into the Munich clinics and the incidences in the state capital are also shooting up.

A doctor therefore canceled this year's Oktoberfest visit and went to boosters instead.

But even he wasn't immune to a bit of "Wiesn melancholy".

Booster instead of beer: the doctor prefers vaccinations to Oktoberfest

At “halftime” this year’s Oktoberfest counted three million visitors and thus a little fewer than at the last Wiesn in 2019. Some Oktoberfest fans probably stayed away from the world’s largest folk festival because of the wet and cold weather, but one or the other probably did too because of the risk of corona infection.

Ear, nose and throat doctor Christian Lübbers is one of this year's Oktoberfest grouches, and he opted for boosters instead of beer.

“I boosted myself with the new BA4/5 vaccine yesterday.

Except for the puncture site, I don't notice anything," said Christian Lübbers on Twitter on Thursday and added: "That would have been different after a visit to the Wiesn." He received critical comments for this, but also a lot of encouragement.

Wiesn melancholy: Doctors wistfully comment on the missed Oktoberfest

According to a recent study, the vaccines adapted to Omikron are superior to the "old" ones in terms of their effectiveness.

A painful puncture site was a common vaccination reaction in the past, and the new vaccines could possibly do better here too.

Christian Lübbers can explain scientifically why the BA.5 booster vaccination usually no longer hurts so much.

"The new bivalent vaccine has only 15 mg mRNA from the old and only 15 mg mRNA from the new BA4/5 vaccine.

I think you will notice (even) less overall," he wrote on Twitter.

The specialist did educational work for vaccination during the corona pandemic and thus became the enemy of many opponents of vaccination.

Lübbers deliberately decided against the Wiesn this year.

But apparently the doctor can't do without Oktoberfest melancholy either.

When a Twitter user confirmed his decision to cancel this year's visit to the Wiesn with a Bavarian "Better is", the doctor's response sounded somewhat wistful: "I would have loved to go to the Oktoberfest.

But I skipped this year after all," said Lübbers.