"Hello my mice"

Rauch’s call for vaccination causes head shaking

Cool or cringe? After various rhymes, Rauch says goodbye in the video with: "Ciao Kakao."(Bild: Screenshot: instagram.com/wienerzeitung)

How "young at heart" can a minister appear? When politicians want to inform the population in a target group-oriented manner, they sometimes succeed better, sometimes worse. In the current attempt, Health Minister Johannes Rauch (Greens) may have overshot the mark.

In view of the minister's new attempt at communication, it is doubtful whether it is really effective for a politician of the so-called boomer generation to use excessive youth language. "Hello my mice, it's me, the health minister of your dreams", he greets his audience in the video that the "Wiener Zeitung" published on Instagram on Wednesday. Accompanied by a mouse emoji above his face.

"Wants to warn you about goofy ticks"
 His message is quite positive - the Green Minister calls on people to get vaccinated against TBE. The fact that he primarily wants to address teenagers (whose vaccination rate is usually quite high anyway due to school vaccination campaigns) is also made clear by his choice of words: "I want to warn you about goofy ticks, we're going to check the vaccine juice now."

But that's not all: "Tick vaccination on Lock, we don't fancy TBE", he rhymes on. When asked whether he is afraid of ticks, he logically answers in the negative - after all, he has had a booster vaccination and is therefore "safe". However, the minister is not entirely sure of his words - he obviously has to read the wording from a piece of paper again and again.

TBE vaccination in Austria

In Austria, the vaccination rate against ticks is rather low at 85 percent - many people are not sufficiently informed about the dangers of tick bites. However, vaccination is important as ticks can transmit various diseases such as TBE and Lyme disease, which can have serious health consequences. A higher vaccination rate could reduce the risk of tick bites and the spread of these diseases.

Vaccination skepticism - side blow to the FPÖ
Why the campaign? The minister says in the video that the aim is to combat vaccination fatigue or vaccination skepticism in the country with educational campaigns. And he also has a culprit ready for this: "Especially after corona, we have an effect that the disinformation, which is mainly driven by the FPÖ, discourages people from vaccinating," says Rauch.

It remains to be seen how successful this attempt to get people to get vaccinated will be. In any case, a look at past vaccination campaigns against coronavirus or influenza shows that these attempts have been moderately successful. The vaccination rate for influenza has even fallen recently - Austria is lagging far behind in an international comparison.