Covid in Austria: 4th Jabs to be 'Recommended', Head of Immunisation Consortium Declares, With Legacy Media Following, Again, Like a Lapdog

Nothing new under the sun, although the tone is getting increasingly shrill while neither 'the experts' nor journos are pretending to say or write coherent and logical things anymore

Readers of these pages may well remember my post from 31 May, in which I brought to your attention the latest abomination of a ministerial decree, which mandated, in no uncertain terms, that every resident in Covidistan had to be triple-injected by 23 Aug. 2022. Or Else.

Introducing my piece, I directed you to the head of the ‘National Immunisation Consortium’, one Ursula Wiedermann-Schmidt who explained to Die Presse on 23 May that,

if nothing unexpected happens, there will be no general recommendation to get a fourth vaccination in autumn

I also had a bunch of other questions in last week’s post, but none of them were answered.

What we got, though, exactly two weeks after Ms. Wiedermann-Schmidt said the above (I wonder at this point, thought, what it is with this time-period: you know, it takes a fortnight to ‘flatten the curve’), is another media barrage about the fourth injection.

This, of course, was entirely predictable, and, while I’m convinced that it doesn’t take a genius to do so, here’s what I wrote about these issues in early February:

[while] there is a secular trend to abolish many, if not most of them, over the course of the coming months…the powers-that-be are talking about the temporary nature of the abrogation of these mandates, conditional on the possible (re-) emergence of yet one or more ‘variants of concern’ come autumn

The rest, as the saying goes, is history (I’d add, though, that compared to Ms. Wiedermann-Schmidt’s words, mine aged quite well.) You may find the rest of that 6 Feb. piece here:

More Bad News from the Upside Down: 'Flurona' Jabs, mandated via Covid-derived decrees, are in the Work

National Immunisation Consortium Expected to Recommend 4th Injection for 65+

So far, as we know, ‘only Vienna recommends a fourth Covid injection’, although certain ‘experts expect an increase in the number of infections as early as summer’, Der Standard wrote just yesterday.

What is this notion about Vienna being different, by the way? Well, according to a local news item that appeared—I’m almost tempted to write ‘predictively programmed’—on 6 June 2022, ‘the number of new infections with Sars-Cov-2 show a slightly rising tendency, but they remain comparatively low’. 922 new infections were recorded in the preceding 24 hours, there were 127 hospitalised with/for Covid-19, 11 of whom required transfer to the ICU. ‘The last time there were so few Covid patients was in August 2020’, ORF Vienna introduced its piece.

Yet, ‘according to experts’, wrote Der Standard (same piece as above), this would be a rather short experience, for ‘the next Covid wave is poised to arrive in summer already, and not only in autumn’. With references (but no links) to ‘data from Israel’, Ms. Wiedermann-Schmidt, a professor of infectious diseases at the Medical University of Vienna, is cited as follows speaking about a fourth injection:

‘I think it would be very sensible to do this’, says Wiedermann-Schmidt.

The interval between the last vaccination or infection should therefore be four to six months. The infectious disease expert advises against waiting until autumn or waiting in general.

I’m bringing this to your attention as it becomes increasingly problematic for the vaccinators to hide their ignorance, data illiteracy, and inconsistencies. As discussed in last week’s post, the usual Covid’n’Mandate Hawks are trotted out again to buttress these absurd ‘considerations’. From the same Standard piece, here’s Mr. Elling (Academy of Sciences) again (my emphases):

Earlier, molecular biologist Ulrich Elling…predicted a new Covid wave for the summer…mainly due to the BA.4 and BA.5 variants. Because these belong to the Omicron clade, it can be assumed that the course of the disease will be rather mild, said Elling. The question now is how much of an impact BA.4 and BA.5 can have and what level to assume. In South Africa, though, hospitals were not under a lot of pressure.

Elling, however, assumes that the number of infections could rise massively, ‘i.e., into the tens of thousands again, and then continue at this very high level towards autumn’. Yet, how high the wave will be, depends on how much is measured, i.e., tested.

See, all it takes for you to get some attention like this low-life character Elling is to ‘assume’ stuff while, in the next instance, ‘qualify’ the fear-mongering by admitting to the relative incidence of the disease burden as being a function of the number of tests.

Needless to say, no-one over at Der Standard thought even once about putting out this BS masquerading as ‘reporting’.

2/3 of Covidistan’s Inmates Expect New and/or Renewed Mandates Later This Yar

As always, the people are a bit wiser than the experts anticipate. Also writing for Der Standard, Conrad Seidl informs us—incidentally on the very same 7 June—that the ‘Covid Pandemic isn’t over yet for the majority’.

A polling firm (Market) did a representative poll (n = 1,000), asking: ‘Lately you hear less and less about Covid-10. Do you think the pandemic is now essentially over or do you expect a new wave with new restrictions later this year?’

Of course, Mr. Seidl couldn’t just report fact, no, he felt it necessary to peddle agit-prop, too (my emphasis):

Only 19% said they thought the pandemic was over, 68% expected new restrictions, and 13% felt they were out of their depth. The expectation of restrictions increases with the age of the respondents. High proportions of people who think the pandemic is over are only found among supporters of the Freedom Party [FPÖ] and MFG, as well as in the roughly 20% of respondents who describe themselves as not fully vaccinated.

Do click on that above link, which also provides a visualisation of the results (it’s too big and embedded in the text to reproduce it here, hence the below quotes from the piece):

The approval of pandemic mandates has dropped significantly...only 46% agree that the state as responsible. 43% are of the opinion that pandemic management is a private matter, again with particularly clear majorities in favour of this view among FPÖ and MFG supporters as well as among the unvaccinated, who also make up considerable parts of the electorates of these parties...

Unchanged compared to the previous year is the wish that more benefits (or fewer restrictions) should apply to vaccinated persons. 45% are definitely in favour, 30% are rather in favour rather, while 9% are rather against it and 16% are completely against this policy.

Here’s what David Pfarrhofer, head of the polling firm, added (my emphases):

One has to keep in mind that people adhere to the protective measures very differently. A large majority of 61% say they comply with all the regulations currently in force and another 21% say they are even stricter, for example when wearing masks even if they are not mandated. Vienna, where the rules are always a bit stricter, is above average. On the other hand, 14% admit that they do not take the protective measures seriously and do not fully comply with them. That is one in seven respondents, and this concerns especially people from rural regions. And the political preference for MFG or the FPÖ, which fish in the same reservoir of voters, cannot be overlooked among these people.

You can see the condescension of Mr. Pfarrhofer and his ilk dripping from these results, can’t you? It’s a very crude way of saying that ‘these people’ who hail ‘from rural regions’ are notorious.

I think it’s hardly surprising that there’s a higher incidence of people who prefer freedom and liberty among those who do not live in cities. As far as I’m concerned, this is a function of the requirements of more thinking and planning in ‘rural regions’, for there are fewer options for mind-numbing consumerism to keep the population distracted.

Hence, the only really interesting nugget in this survey is—that there are some 20-25% of the population who are notorious over-performers (you know, like these despicable people back in school…) who will not merely comply with whatever mandate, but who will actively move beyond that.

It’s not merely pathetic, because—as many a Bird Poop Pile indicates—these are also the same people (like my brothers, by the way) who will also (over-) enforce these mandates on everybody else.

Don’t pretend you don’t know such people, like…

Translation: ‘Is it time for a fourth injection? The autumn wave will arrive earlier this year, experts say. Who should protect themselves by getting a fourth jab, however, depends on a variety of factors’

‘It is a wise thing in itself, but it comes too late, some experts think and mean the decision of the National Immunisation Consortium’ on the recommendation of a fourth injection, wrote notorious Covid mandate hawk Magdalena Pötsch (my emphases):

Data from Israel show that people over 60 who have received the fourth injection four months after the booster are about half as likely to fall ill and are up to three times as well protected against severe disease. Markus Zeitlinger, head of the Department of Clinical Pharmacology at Vienna General Hospital, accordingly considers the fourth vaccination to be sensible: ‘There is almost no more severe illnesses, but we still have a certain incidence of infection.’

So, four injections don’t prevent infection or transmission, and after three injections, there’s almost no serious cases left. Pray tell, Mr. Zeitlinger, why take a fourth jab?

Also, and perhaps more worryingly, note that ‘data from Israel’ is cited again, but it is not linked. This renders the above statement—the basis for Ms. Pötsch’s offer to ‘help you decide’ (Entscheidungshilfe) all the more problematic for we don’t know—and Mr. Zeitlinger disingenuously doesn’t say—‘compared to’…well, who? People who took two injections or three? What about absolute vs. relative risk reduction, which is similarly left out?

Sure, implicitly, we’re talking about ‘boosted’ people who number close to 5m (out of a total population of just above 9m). Do note that, in general, injection uptake continues to trend downwards, according to official data.

Here’s the rest from Ms. Pötsch’s piece to wrap this up (emphases mine):

Q: For whom does a fourth injection make sense now?

A: You cannot draw a clear line, says Dorothee von Laer, a virologist at the Medical University of Innsbruck. What is clear, she says, is that ‘the older you are, the higher the risk of dying from Covid’. Risk increases from age 60, albeit only in the single-digit range; at 85 or older, the risk of dying from Covid is between 20-30%.

In any case, seniors would have the greatest advantage from the fourth injection, Zeitlinger explains: ‘You can't work miracles with it, but you can bring the immune response back to where it was right after the third jab, and perhaps even above that. You turn back the wheel of time, so to speak.’

Q: Does this also apply to younger people without risk factors?

A: Yes. According to Zeitlinger, there is nothing that should prevent young people from getting a fourth injection.

Nevertheless, it is important to wait a little, says virologist von Laer: ‘A booster effect is better the longer you wait. Vaccinating too early is not ideal because the protection against infection doesn’t last forever, but it should last through the next wave and the winter.’

Especially younger people who have been vaccinated three times and recovered from Omicron could face the next wave calmly.

Q: What does that mean exactly? How long should one wait?

A: It’s individual: teachers and salespeople who deal with a lot of people are at a different risk than, say, office workers. In any case, according to von Laer, most could wait until the numbers are clear again—to about an incidence of ‘over 500 or 600. Immunity is back after the fourth injection in a few days, it doesn’t need a run-up.’

With the first vaccination, it took time for the body to develop an immune response. After the fourth jab, the protection is built up again by the memory cells after a few days.

Q: Many are waiting for an adapted variant vaccine. When will that come?

A: Zeitlinger still believes that an adapted vaccine is possible by autumn, and that many things are in the pipeline, ‘but nothing conclusive’. As long as there is no delivery date for the adapted vaccine, one should not make one’s personal vaccination decision dependent on it, says the clinical pharmacologist: ‘Maybe we'll be lucky and there will be an adapted vaccine in autumn, then one can get the fifth injection anyway.’

There will, however, be a relative vaccine shortage again, Zeitlinger points out: ‘Not as severe as at the beginning of the pandemic, but there will be prioritisation.’ Young, healthy people who are already getting their fourth vaccination will therefore not get top priority with an adapted vaccine and ‘probably won’t get their fifth shot until Christmas, by which time it will have been six months since the last vaccination anyway.’

Q: What about Long Covid? Does the vaccination protect against long-term effects?

A: To a certain extent, yes, but our knowledge about Long Covid is still rudimentary. What is known is that vaccination also protects against infection to some extent, especially in the beginning, and thus indirectly reduces the risk of getting Long Covid. ‘If you get infected despite vaccination, the risk is halved’, says von Laer, although the exact figures vary, depending on which form of Long Covid you are talking about.

Q: I am still unsure whether or when I should go for a fourth vaccination. What can I do?

A: In that case, measuring the antibodies can be useful, says virologist von Laer: ‘If the value [of antibody titers] is over 1,000, you have good protection. If you have built up a poor immune response and only have 100 or 200, you should get a fourth injection.’

Three words left: insanity marches on.