5 Years of Covid: 'What if the Covidiots Will be Right in the End?'
Th final part of a three-part mini-series on commemorative legacy media pieces showing off how far gone, mentally and from reality, most politicos™, journos™, and experts™ are these days
These days, it’s become quite fashionable to commemorate™ the fifth anniversary of the first-ever country-wide ‘lockdown’ (a prison term) in peacetime, which also gives away what doing so was: the imposition of martial law absent any such state of affairs. I’ve written about this before, and I’ll continue to do so, if only these pieces must be preserved for posterity:
As another towering and enduring testament to the utter depravity of those who ‘acted’ to ‘keep everyone safe’, I shall offer a three-part series this week.
First, the Austrian parliament and legacy media were the scene of the sustained efforts to gaslight everyone, which you may read up on here.
Second, while we’re somewhat on the topic of Norway and Covid, I’ll post a translation of the insane amount of navel-gazing going on among my peer group, academia. One word about the messenger, Norway’s equivalent of The Chronicle of Higher Education, an online rag by the name of Khrono, is well known by its sensational click-bait, if often rather poorly done reporting™. Note, in particular, their staff writers appear to enjoy quite well connections to politicos™ and other journos™ in legacy media, which means that most of my colleagues’ fear and loathing of Khrono at the same time. While their reporting™ on Norwegian academia is sometimes quite o.k.-ish, their ‘foreign’ reporting is as bad as can be expected in legacy media (by which is meant translated and slightly rewritten second-hand reporting found in, say, Politico or The Atlantic, which shows the staff writers’ true colours.
And, third, to round off this mini-series, I’ll post a timely rebuttal from autumn 2020 by Milosz Matuschek—he writes mainly in German over at Freischwebende Intelligenz—who, on 1 Sept. of that memorable year, asked the pertinent question, ‘what if the Covidiots are right?’ in his regular column at the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Needless to say, he was ‘cancelled’ for simply asking about Covid policies…
With that introduction said, please follow me down a few particular rabbit-holes in this second part, peppered with personal experiences from, well, moving to Norway in summer 2020 and working in Norwegian academia ever since.
Translation, emphases, [snark] and swear words mine.
Collapsed Communication: What if "the Covidiots" are right in the end?
Statistics can also be used to lie effectively. It is dishonest to infer such a major health threat from the increase in new infections, as politicians and the media are currently doing.
An op-ed by Milosz Matuschek, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 1 Sept. 2020 [source; archived]
It was mid-April 2020, with Covid-19 deaths at a peak in Europe, when a French shepherd, owner of thousands of sheep, posted a video online. In it, he explained how he goes about shearing, vaccinating, or leading the sheep to the slaughterhouse. The most effective tool: the imaginary wolf. At his signal that a wolf is approaching, the sheep run frantically into the barn. Once there, they are so happy to have escaped the wolf that they put up with anything. Whether the wolf actually existed or not is irrelevant. They are happy to be safe.
Where is the wolf?
In April of this year, people died of Covid-19; curfews, lockdowns, and protective measures were imposed to avoid overloading the healthcare system, which could have led to even more deaths. The threat posed by the pandemic consisted of severe illnesses, hospitalisations, and the spectre of death. Today, we must acknowledge: the healthcare system did not collapse, perhaps thanks in part to these measures. In Germany, doctors and hospitals announced short-time work [orig. Kurzarbeit, furlough] for 400,000 people. Incidentally, no-one is talking about the danger of the healthcare system becoming overwhelmed anymore [that has changed: legacy media is quite filled with the spectre of the imminent bankruptcy of Germany’s socialised health insurance providers, or Krankenkassen].
But one thing has collapsed since then: communication about the virus. The virus is developing an unexpected side effect: It affects the ability to think [I think what Mr. Matuschek wanted to say is—the agip-prop is clouding our judgement, and what would I give to learn about early drafts of this column]. Now the new danger is: ‘The second wave is coming.’ Mass demonstrations against coronavirus policies, like the one in Berlin last weekend, are particularly wrong in this regard. The risk of infection is too high. At first, attempts were made to ban the demonstration outright. When that didn't work, people were called to stay away, saying it was just a gathering of ‘Covidiots’, right-wing extremists, and Reichsbürger [people who question the legitimacy of the Federal Republic, deny its existence, and insist that Imperial Germany still exists)] anyway. It’s outrageous: politicians and some journalists are engaged in wholesale denigration of people who demonstrate against current policies. Once again, people are calling for the wolf, but fewer and fewer people apparently believe it’s coming. Does the wolf really exist? [do note the middle parts of the paragraph: thus spake the gov’t—‘don’t protest, you’re gonna die of Covid’, which quickly morphed into gov’t seeking to ban the protest, and when that didn’t work, politicos™ and journos™ called the protesters names—guess what effect this has had? Many of these names have lost considerable amounts of their opprobrium].
There is currently no second wave. Not an increase in deaths, not an increase in hospitalisations, not an increase in severe cases. But these are the relevant numbers if one wants to honestly assess the danger of an epidemic and base state coercive measures on them. The number being bandied about as a bogeyman, however, is the number of new infections, i.e., registered cases [no definition given ever], even if these are completely mild [or ‘asymptomatic’]. This mathematic sleight of hand renders the virus more present and dangerous than it actually is. However, one cannot restrict civil liberties with an abstract risk forecast based on a broad subjunctive [as we’ve seen, gov’t, aided by experts™ and abetted by journos™ did just that: and as long as the perpetrators of these shenanigans receive orders of merit instead of social ostracism, a proper trial, and—as should happen—jailtime, they’ll do it again next time they think they can get away with it]. Otherwise, one would have to ban road traffic, high-fat diets, and life itself [of course, because that’s the logical conclusion here].
Hardly any Deaths
The statistics prove the ‘COVidiots’ right: both the number of hospitalisations and deaths have been declining in all European countries for weeks. Compared to the peaks in April, the daily death rate in all European countries has fallen by around 99%. Since mid-June, the number of deaths in Switzerland has been in the single digits at most, and on most days since then, no one has died from (or with [sic]) COVID. Lockdown-defying Sweden reported a peak of 115 Covid-19 deaths on 15 April. This number has been in the single digits since 20 July, and at zero since 23 August. Anyone who now discusses mandatory vaccination or possible further lockdowns based on these figures is, pardon me, not entirely sane.
Bottom Lines
Within these few paragraphs, Milosz Matuschek did what all the decorated experts™ failed to do: he presented a coherent argument based on facts (Covid deaths in Sweden), used logic (deductive reasoning), and came to the inevitable conclusion: imposing whatever kind of madness based on these considerations is tantamount to mental illness.
Needless to say, he was ‘cancelled’ (well, his contract with the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and his column there was); Mr. Matuschek is German, holds a JD (U Regensburg, 2011), and from 2014 onwards worked as an independent journalist for the NZZ; his columns and pieces have appeared in many other legacy media outlets. He’s a supporter of Julian Assange, advocated early against the Covid Mania, was editor-in-chief of the Swiss magazine Schweizer Monat, and, since 2022, writes for the conservative Weltwoche (Wikipedia bio in German).
There, the following is noted about Mr. Matuschek (references omitted):
Matuschek participated in the "#allesaufdentisch" campaign at the end of September 2021.[10*] He is co-producer of the 2022 documentary film ‘Pandamned: The World in the Grip of a Pandemic’ by Dutch documentary filmmaker Marijn Poels and also appeared in the film himself. A fact check by Bayerischer Rundfunk concludes that the film collects statements from corona trivialisers [orig. Verharmloser (note that this denigrating term isn’t in scare quotes)], ‘lateral thinkers’ [Querdenker], and well-known conspiracy theorists [ah, the unholy trinity of such labels] from Germany and other countries. The film repeats already known antisemitic myths and unverifiable, unfounded, or already refuted false statements [and here’s a bit more, incl. the expectable antisemitism charge and vague-enough allegations of being, generally speaking, anti-science™].
Now, I’ve watched the film (which you can, too, if you’d venture over to Odysee); it was quite fine, and I’ll confess not to have noticed these ‘problematic’ aspects, but to be sure, I’d have to watch it again (hence I’ll reserve judgement here).
Instead, I’ll point to another crucial aspect here—the turncoats in legacy media were quite sure what happened, wrote it up, and didn’t find anything that troubled their eternally spotless mind and conscience (the below quote is from Wikipedia *reference no. 10, which leads to a hit piece by the Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk published on 1 Oct. 2021):
Let’s take the video of lawyer and journalist Milosz Matuschek, who is a very intelligent person. He says some very intelligent and correct things in the conversation, offers sophisticated arguments, aptly explains the media system, but comes to a different assessment at one point [his heresy was precisely this ‘different assessment’], and that is a very central one. A year ago, Matuschek wrote a column for the NZZ newspaper, the title of which was the question: 'What if the Covidiots Will be Right in the End?' The text was later published by Ken Jebsen, and the NZZ ended their collaboration [note that Mr. Matuschek was ‘cancelled’ because his op-ed was re-published by someone else]. Today, Matuschek writes a blog titled
[lit. Free-Floating Intelligence]. In the video, he says: ‘And you can read a lot of criticism of Corona there.’ That doesn't necessarily mean anything bad, because of course things that should actually play a role are overlooked in the debate; there are formative narratives [but everybody who said so was immediately ostracised and labelled a conspiracy-mongering loon, like Mr. Matuschek], the tendency to interpret things according to one’s own assumptions, expectations, and beliefs, and also the tendency to follow the majority opinion [this is the proximal origin of ‘follow the Science™’ and ‘97% of scientists agree’: both are bogus and fake, but that doesn’t mean MDR journo™ Ralf Heimann won’t use this line of reasoning to prove Mr. Matuschek’s point (talk about specks and beams)].The fundamental question that Matuschek comes to a different conclusion, in my opinion, is whether this system still fulfils its function—whether it works [for whom, that is the pertinent issue here].
There are several possible explanations for his own story. One is: he took a path that is somewhat off the beaten track, more difficult, offers him more freedom, and at least doesn’t lead directly to the heart of the matter [this is extra tricky to translate as the original wording is Er hat einen Weg eingeschlagen, der …nicht direkt vor die Wand führt, which I read (interpret) as a very, very implicit reference to Plato’s Cave], in his understanding. In his video, he says:
‘I can say for myself: I know the cozy campfire of the mainstream. I know the privileges that come with it. And it's also quite fun to write for a major newspaper because you get a good reach—and then you’re more interesting to publishers or then you’re passed around to the mainstream, then you get invited to talk shows, maybe even get a spot on the radio, all of which has advantages in itself. But if you don’t feel comfortable on this path or realise you have to choose a camp or are being pigeonholed because you think more critically about certain issues, like with Corona, but there were enough things that went wrong before, NSA surveillance, the wars that are waged on the basis of lies, the Iraq War, for example, then you simply have to ask yourself: what do I actually want to achieve with my job?’ [these kinds of questions are, of course, anathema to anyone working in legacy media]
Departing Toward Conspiracy
Another explanation would be: the system locked him out. And when something like this happens, the locked-out person has to find an explanation for it, which ideally is not a victim narrative [this is, needless to say, the second-hand ‘splainin’ by legacy media journo™ Ralf Heimann—and now note, specifically, that there’s no need to guess or offer ‘interpretations’ as Mr. Matuschek has explained his motivation clearly, but legacy media journo™ Heimann nevertheless does so…]
This is the crux of the matter, and Mr. Matuschek has been ‘locked out’ of the system’ because of his heretical views. Unlike in more tyrannical countries, he’s not been consigned to a mental institution or jail, but his choice led him ‘off the beaten track’, is ‘more difficult’ (as even Mr. Heimann admits), and ‘offers him more freedom’ than being boxed in by ‘the system’.
A stunning admission of the inner workings of legacy media, if there ever was one.
The rest of Mr. Matuschek’s column, as the saying goes, is history.
He was very much more right than his former colleagues in legacy media.
One last quip about legacy media: given the contortions of journos™, experts™, and politicos™ to pretend this or that current truth™ about Covid (we note, in passing, the current psy-op about the lab leak parroted by every outlet, incl., of all places, the NYT), that legacy media lives in the world (mind) of George W. Bush:
What a time to be alive, indeed.