Residents of the devout Dutch municipality allow themselves…

“I have patients who want a shot, but are afraid of society’s judgment. That’s why I will visit their home soon to secretly administer the vaccine,” says Reza Bezechki Nia of de Volkskrant.

The doctor says he heard things weren’t much different during the polio epidemic forty years ago. “By the way, an elderly patient said that during the polio epidemic, the Staphorsters had already gone to other villages to influence themselves secretly. In this respect, little has changed here in forty years.”

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He tries to convince patients who prefer not to be vaccinated with a reference to a story from the Bible about Jesus being challenged by Satan to jump from the Temple. Then Jesus objects that you should not experience God. “Some of my patients are convinced of this, but most are not. They know for sure that the vaccine was invented by the devil,” Bezechki Nya told the newspaper. “But regardless of their reaction: I respect everyone.”

Warning

Staphorst’s vaccination rate is 56 percent. The national average in the Netherlands is about 83 percent. The village has a large number of casualties.

The nearby Isala Hospital in Zwolle recently raised the alarm about the large number of Corona patients there. As a result, catch-ups must be canceled by others. A spokeswoman for de Volkskrant previously said that half of Isala’s Covid patients come from Stavhurst.