Covid in Austria: Breaching the Sanity Frontline, Healthcare Economist Declares Masks 'Work Even Better Against RSV and the Flu'
No data or 'real-life' evidence is offered, hence you should take such utterances with a couple of salt mines
It’s been quite a ride in Covidistan in these past few days, of that you may rest assured. Here’s a brief recap what happened last week:
First, ‘Hybrid Immunity’
You wouldn’t have imagined it, but apparently ‘hybrid immunity’ is still a thing among ‘The Experts™’, as evidenced in a piece by state broadcaster ORF Online. Ludicrously appearing in the ‘Science’ section on 23 Nov. 2022, someone ‘read’, however perfunctorily, a recent study published by the Danish Serum Institut.
While the responsible editor, one Barbara Reichmann, didn’t link to the study, here’s the actual paper. Entitled, ‘Vaccine effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 reinfection during periods of Alpha, Delta, or Omicron dominance’, the study by Finderup Nielsen and colleagues evaluated ‘a nationwide cohort design including all individuals with a confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, who were alive, and residing in Denmark between 1 January 2020 and 31 January 2022’.
Nice, eh, but also utterly irrelevant as the data is now almost 10 months old, which, in the context of Sars-Cov-2 is about a lifetime. Be that as it may, here’s what Ms. Reichmann took away from the study (my emphases):
The analysis shows that previously infected and then vaccinated people had an almost 70% higher protection against reinfection during the Alpha wave than infected people who were not vaccinated; during the Delta wave, the protection against reinfection was 94% higher, and in the Omicron [that would be BA.1] period, 60%. Vaccination increases immunity and protection because it raises antibody levels, says Palle Valentiner-Branth [Head of the Infectious Disease Dept. at the Serums Institut]. However, the interval between infection and vaccination must be at least three months.
But—there are limitations
How high the probability of a new infection is, however, depends on many factors, including the social situation, the working environment, how many people one lives with in a flat, or previous illnesses. The study controlled for age, gender, country of origin and previous illnesses, hospitalisation and how often someone was tested. Family size or cramped living space were not taken into account. [still, the authors tried to methodically account for that, to their credit]
And another limitation: the vaccination’s protection against infection with the Omicron variant is the lowest—and it is only likely to last for a certain time, the researcher says. Nevertheless, the study shows that the probability of a new infection with Covid-19 can be significantly reduced by vaccination.
So, here’s a direct quote from the paper to show you how good Ms. Reichmann is at actually understanding written English (my emphases):
This study also has some limitations. Despite the high test rate, we cannot rule out undetected reinfections, especially asymptomatic infections among vaccinated individuals, which might inflate the VE.
The reason is pretty straight-forward: Denmark applied the Covid Passport quite stringently, hence ‘the unvaccinated’ were subject to many more tests than their ‘vaccinated’ peers. And while the authors actually tried to account for this problem (see their section on methods), here’s the kicker:
VE [vaccine efficacy] against hospitalisation and death were also analysed, but due to too few events, it was not possible to estimate a VE. During the Alpha period, 32 COVID-19-related hospitalisations were recorded in unvaccinated individuals (incidence rate (IR): 0.001), while 8 were recorded among those who had been vaccinated (IR: 0.002). During the Delta period, 13 COVID-19-related hospitalisations were recorded among unvaccinated individuals (IR: 0.0004) and 10 among vaccinated individuals (IR: 0.0002). For the Omicron period, these numbers were 61 (IR: 0.007) and 37 (IR: 0.004), respectively.
For COVID-19-related death, only 8 events were recorded during the three periods: 3 during the Alpha period, 3 during the Delta period, and 2 during the Omicron period. Therefore, it was not possible to report any results for this outcome.
I trust you, my dear readers, can figure out the meaning of the study (and media gaslighting as well).
Next up, when will ‘the Pandemic’ end?
Two days later, while seemingly unperturbed by the above considerations, another legacy media outlet surprisingly discussed the coming end of the ‘pandemic’ on 25 Nov. Notorious Mandate Hawks and Pharma Shills Pia Kruckenhauser and Magdalena Pötsch (just use the search function in my Substack), writing in Der Standard, resurrect the infamous Dr. Christian Drosten (all emphases mine):
Comparatively low Corona infection figures in September, then a rising wave in October, which was, however, immediately receding again, probably due to the warm weather. Now cases are on the rise again. These ups and downs of the past weeks are ‘the sign of the coming end of the pandemic’, says Christian Drosten, Director of the Virology Dept. at Berlin’s Charité Hospital, in an interview with the German weekly Die Zeit. And in this country, too, people are confident: ‘We can probably talk about a transition to endemic waves in the near future’, says virologist Dorothee von Laer of the Medical University Innsbruck...
But the experts also warn: the winter could still be difficult. How the infection incidence develops in the cold months depends above all on which variant prevails in the coming weeks...
It is a fact that cases are currently on the rise again, and more so than the daily new infection figures show, because less and less tests are carried out. You can see that in Sentinel wastewater monitoring data. But it is not yet clear how steep the coming wave will become. All that is known is that the trendlines are rising most sharply in Vienna, which is probably also due to the worsening weather in the federal capital recently. After all, persistent fog has prevailed here since the end of October, which means that people are spending more time indoors [also, less sunshine = less vitamin D]. The numbers are also increasing among children and young people, but the older ones are likely to follow soon.
None of this is unusual, according to Dr. Ulrich Elling [Molecular Biology, Austrian Academy of Sciences], who further points out: ‘We’ve always known this would happen, it’s absolutely no surprise.’ There is even one piece of good news in this context: recently it was suspected that the BQ variants would spread very strongly because cell models showed very good immune escape. ‘But now we have the first real-life data, and they show that after a BA.5 infection, one has a much better immunity to the new subtypes than was last suspected...’
Virologist von Laer takes a similar view. In Austria, we are at the beginning of a ‘somewhat higher, but not threatening’, winter wave. Nevertheless, the pandemic is slowly ending ‘in the sense that intensive care units are no longer overloaded’. In the coming winters, the question will arise: will influenza or Corona make the higher wave? ‘Corona will then be another seasonal, albeit somewhat more severe, respiratory infection’, says von Laer and advises further caution: ‘When two waves are so high, the wearing of masks should become something quite normal.’
Here, I’ll delimit myself to just a few small items:
Drosten is back, claiming he’s seeing signs of whatever. Perhaps eugyppius put it best: he’s an astrologer, not a scientist. Also, note that Drosten has been quite absent from the limelight for some time, and now he’s trotted out, almost like a fat and bloated Elvis shortly before his death; perhaps Drosten needs the attention, or whatever. Still, I maintain that this is actually either a sign of desperation among the pandemicists and vaccinators, or it’s jersey-changing in slow-motion. It’s too soon to tell, but it’s certainly noticeable.
Second, note how stupid Dr. Elling phrased this: infection (which, leaving modRNA injections aside, would induce ‘natural immunity’) is surprisingly ‘better’ than injection-induced ‘protection’, in particular because the BQ variants ‘showed very good immune escape’. Now, since natural immunity was shit-talked from the get-go by those in the pockets of Big Pharma, their willing executioners among mindless medical professionals (ahem), and their fellow travellers in legacy media (such as the two authors of this piece), let me spell this out:
So, ‘immune escape’ = BQ variants evade whatever ‘protection’ is afforded by the modRNA injections;
BQ variants may only escape ‘natural immunity’ if the disease is not really bad, such as the common cold or the like; otherwise, ‘natural immunity’ has sterilising benefits, i.e., even if one is reinfected, one would not be able to transmit the disease.
As the second aspect is related to modRNA injections, it’s perfectly obvious to anyone whose brain isn’t addled, that infection is a priori to be preferred to these modRNA injections that clearly worked very imperfectly so far, and they are poised to work even less in the future, as even Dr. Elling mentions.
The main take-away here is obvious: don’t let others do your thinking; they may be idiots or useful idiots.
Third, It would Be Funny…Masks Work ‘even better against RSV and the Flu’, a Health Economist Claims
The below piece appeared yesterday in a ‘free’ tabloid by the name Heute (but I also saw it frequently over the weekend, e.g., here); I’ll reproduce it here for your bewilderment (emphases mine):
Tens of thousands of people read the urgent words of the healthcare economist on Twitter within less than 24 hours. ‘It is very regrettable that Austria has not managed to learn anything from the pandemic and come out of it stronger’, writes Thomas Czypionka from the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS) in Vienna. He dealt with the question of how things stand with regard to mask mandates while travelling with public transport in Vienna.
As is known, the capital is the last region where such an obligation to wear an FFP2 mask still exists. In the rest of Austria, mask mandates were revoked as of 1 June. Many are therefore persistently demanding an adjustment of the regulation. A considerable part of the population apparently sees it similarly and already rides public transport ‘topless’.
Why this is not such a good idea is impressively shown by Czypionka in his Twitter thread [I typically don’t link to it, but here’s the link, because his ‘arguments’ are too stupid]. Under certain circumstances, only a single second is enough to become infected. Besides, public transport is one of the few places that vulnerable groups cannot avoid.
One Second Is Enough
The fact that masks protect oneself and others is now undisputed in science. However, it is not possible to prevent an infection with a 100% certainty. It is therefore an important aspect ‘whether the aerosol load in a room is low (high number of mask wearers) or high (few wear masks)’, explains Thomas Czypionka.
However, it has often been claimed that the contact time in public transport is too low anyway. This is wrong for four reasons, argues Czypionka. If someone lives on Erdberg and goes shopping on Mariahilfer Straße, it takes a quarter of an hour using public transport. And the higher the aerosol load, the more people in a confined space, the shorter the necessary contact time.
‘Transmission through droplets takes only a second at all, because the larger droplets easily already contain the minimum infectious dose.’ These droplets can only survive over short distances, but that is exactly the case in an underground. Furthermore, the only reason why public transport does not appear in cluster analyses is that hardly anyone will be able to remember taking the [metro line] U1 from Taubstummengasse, for example, at 7.51 a.m. several days ago.
So, now you know.
Bottom Lines
We’ve apparently reached the point where legacy media has run out of politicians, committees of medical professionals, and (or) practicing physicians to voice such inanities.
Can you hear that noise? It’s legacy media, working themselves into a frenzy while doing the government’s bidding, scraping the bottom of the barrel. They seemingly cannot find anyone else other than a Health Economist (i.e., someone who writes ‘studies’ that show the necessity of reducing hospital bed capacity via ‘reforms’ to the healthcare sector) who spouts this kind of nonsense.
So, here’s the US$ 44m question: how many people fall for that kind of gaslighting?
It does make sense to claim the ‘pandemic’ is nearly over; it appears not only that a lot of people have ‘moved on’, but so have ‘the experts’.
Next up are people with a high school diploma as ‘qualification’ to weigh in on such matters (such as former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, for instance).
What a nightmare.
Have you seen the latest Viennese vaxx propagan… ahem… advertising? Creepy as hell 🙈.
First: Please meet ‚Boosta‘:
https://exxpress.at/wien-wirbt-mit-video-fuer-impf-zwang-spritzen-maennchen-entfuehrt-jetzt-ungeimpfte/
(For the no-German speaking readers: Just watch the video embedded in the article. No words needed…)
Second: Vienna keeps on vaccinating so that no further lockdowns are needed (One minute lockdown):
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/kYz1LqB6OxA
These ‚one minute lockdowns‘ were broadcasted during some events - in this video it was placed in the middle of a movie in a big cinema…
But hey. Our Sun King will go on protecting us with mask (FFP2) mandates. Probably we will have to bring back more mandates soon 🤡. Influenza, you know.
Xiden just extended the scamdemic until the END of 2023 and they're talking about closing schools again, while simultaneously arguing in court in Texas that borders can remain open because the scamdemic is over. It's whatever enables their desired policy at the moment.
Soon, they won't bother gaslighting. We'll be asking "why?" and the government will be replying, "Because we said so."