Covid in Austria: Desperation, Trickery, and Loads of Media Gaslighting: A Selection
Booster uptake craters, Covid Hawks resort to emotional blackmail, and 'experts' criticise mask mandates in Vienna, because…it's 'an isolated measure' that cannot work unless there are more mandates…
The weirding of discourse, etiquette, and, yes, reality as it objectively exists, has seemingly entered the next phase. Over the past weeks, things in Austro-Covidistan have quite gotten out of hand, but not in a good way.
First up, Covid Passports and ‘Boosting’
In recent weeks, quite a few of these abominations lost their ‘validity’ (sic). According to official data (whatever its worth may or may not be), only 56 out of 100 Austro-Covidians are ‘up-to-date’, that is, following all the current recommendations of the National Injection Corsortium (updated 28 Oct.; emphasis in the original):
Booster vaccinations can be given to people over the age of 12, and they are recommended for anyone who wants to protect themselves. For persons over age of 60 years, persons at risk of a severe COVID-19 (incl. pregnant women) and persons with an increased risk of exposure and therefore infection (healthcare workers, persons in long-term care or nursing homes, etc.) a fourth injection is particularly recommended
Be that as it may, I couldn’t fail to notice a few changes to the Health Ministry’s ‘Corona Dashboard’ since I last checked; there’s virtually no-one who’s taking any injections who hasn’t taken them before:
The trend line of the last three months (highlighted by me) is particularly telling, ain’t it? To summarise:
As of 21 November, a total of 19,713,812 vaccine doses have been administered. 1,355,251 people have received at least one booster vaccination*.
* booster vaccination = 4 vaccine doses or more
Take-away: booster uptake is an indirect indicator of ‘consent’ with the Covid tyranny. As of today, that rate stands around 56%.
Next up, Desperation among the Covid Hawks
For a de facto representative sample of Covid hawkery, we turn, again, to Der Standard, Vienna’s reliably most pro-vaxxing-until-kingdom-come paper. In what looks like a badly written op-ed, whoever wrote this piece of crap (that person, or persons, are not identifying themselves, perhaps because Elon Musk took away their ‘safe space’), the Committee of Public Safety’s loss of 817,000 people to the ‘anti-vaxxers’. All emphases below are mine.
Fewer and fewer people in Austria are following up on the recommendations of the National Injection Consortium (NIC) on Covid vaccination. This is shown by data published online by the Ministry of Health [the above-related official numbers]. According to these data, only just over half are vaccinated according to the expert recommendation. That is 817,000 fewer people than in July. The Ministry of Health now wants to discontinue the corresponding statistics and only publish the number of vaccine doses administered.
This is so hilarious: things go south, let’s just pretend they don’t exist. This will, in all likelihood, work wonders until someone discovers the next election.
Since the end of June, the Ministry of Health has published online how many people follow the expert recommendations for the Corona vaccination. At that time, 5.6 million had been vaccinated according to the NIC recommendation—this corresponds to 62% of the population. Since then, however, the number has constantly decreased: currently, only 4.8m follow the advice of the vaccination experts (53%).
This is particularly funny as the piece went live on 22 Nov.—when the Ministry of Health’s dedicated website states it’s 56%. But I suppose facts, or reality, have ceased mattering a while ago, so, why bother now?
The decline is particularly strong among the older age groups. The vaccination coverage of the over 85-year-olds has dropped from 84 to 61%, and among the 75 to 84-year-olds from 86 to 71%. Overall, the over 65-year-old seniors still mostly follow the recommendations of the National Vaccination Panel. At 72%, vaccination uptake is highest among 65- to 74-year-olds.
And this is where it gets really odd:
How many people follow the NIG recommendation in total and how many do not, however, will only be publicly available until mid-December. The Ministry of Health announced a new change in the Corona statistics on Tuesday. According to the NIC recommendation, the daily publication of the vaccination coverage rate will only continue until 15 December. In future, only the number of people who have completed the first vaccination series (1st and 2nd vaccination) and the number who have received the third vaccination (‘basic immunisation’) and a ‘booster vaccination’ (fourth or more) will be reported.
In response to a query by the Austria Press Agency, the Health Ministry justified the change in vaccination statistics by stating that the recommendations of the vaccination panel focused in great detail on the individual factors of individual population groups. Instead of showing this level of detail in vaccination uptake rate, the focus is now on the vaccination intervals. In addition, one wants to counteract a ‘dynamic adjustment of vaccination rates’ after changed vaccination recommendations, a ministry spokesperson explained.
Make of that what you will, I’m for one am able to read all these words, but I fail to understand them.
Is there anything else going on?
Well, I’m glad you’re asking. There’s now numerous legacy and alternative media pieces on the sorry and deteriorating state of hospitals and health care, in particular in Vienna. Take, say, this piece here (Der Standard, 22 Nov.), which explains, sort of, that
84% of medical doctors in Vienna’s hospitals sense massive loss of quality of care.
Furthermore, it is held that
Half of all medical doctors in Vienna’s hospitals see problems caring for patients.
With about 72% adding that the Vienna state government ‘doesn’t do enough against these problems’.
We’re at the point where, over summer and autumn, multiple official complaints have been filed by hospitals against the Dept. of Health and Human Services, run by one notorious apparatchik by the name of Peter Hacker. He’s of course adamant in his refusal to either see any problems or do anything about them; instead, he’s calling out the doctors who sound the alarm over these issues.
Here’s a piece from alternative (albeit ‘conservative’) alternative media outlet Exxpress.at (my emphasis)
Not only doctors but also nurses are dissatisfied, said Chamber of Labour President Renate Anderl in a statement on Tuesday. Almost 85% said that in the last two weeks at least one nursing task in their team was often omitted or carried out with delay. Many necessary care services would fall by the wayside because there was no time for them. As a result, dangerous situations are recognised less often and many people are discharged from hospital ill-informed. This in turn results in a large number of avoidable readmissions to hospital.
And officials are still in denial about excess mortality and high pressures on health services.
Also, do note that ‘even’ alternative media is in denial about the Covid injections and their possible role in all of this.
Here’s my take what will happen in the next few years, exemplified by Big Healthcare in Norway:
Finally, what are politicians like Mr. Hacker doing about it?
I’m glad you asked—there’s still the mandatory FFP2 mask requirement on public transport in Vienna, which will quite likely stay ‘on the books’ for some more time.
By now, however, this situation has become so patently absurd that even (former) hawks like Dr. Gartlehner (Danube University) are now calling out the Vienna state government in the yellow press. As per tabloid Heute (my emphases):
Much to the surprise of the experts, Covid numbers are in a permanent decline and the last measures—with the exception of mandatory masks in hospitals, nursing homes and pharmacies—were lifted a long time ago. Except in Vienna. In the federal capital, the FFP2 mask requirement continues to apply in public transport. An executive order to that effect was only recently extended again.
According to Peter Hacker, Secretary of State for Health, this is necessary and makes sense. However, Covid expert Gerald Gartlehner, head of the Department of Evidence-Based Medicine and Evaluation at Danube University Krems, takes a completely different view.
‘Masks are basically a good way to protect oneself. However, a mask requirement in public transport currently has relatively little effect on the incidence of infection because the mask requirement is simply too isolated’, the epidemiologist explains in response to a question from Heute. The currently circulating Omicron variants are highly infectious, so if people don’t catch the disease in public transport, they will catch it somewhere else.
Besides, public transport is not a typical place for the virus to spread. ‘Most people only spend a short time on public transport. According to cluster analyses, most infections happen at home in the private sphere, at events or during leisure time’, says Gartlehner.
If, at this point in time, you lost your mind over these inane statements, welcome to the club.
Note, though, that Dr. Gartlehner’s ‘objection’ (ahem) stems not from masks being useless; his objection is that as a singular measure, it’s basically pointless to wear them in public transport ‘only’.
So, what Dr. Gartlehner is telling us is this: if you want to have his expert support, lock down the country.
Citing a ‘lack of proportionality’ for more stringent mandates, Dr. Gartlehner explains:
There is probably a lack of proportionality for a mask obligation at the moment.
Probably, Dr. Expert, but who knows, really, eh?
A mask requirement would only really make sense if hospitals were again threatened with overload. ‘But then it should not be an isolated mask obligation in public transport, but a broader mask obligation for indoor areas. It always takes a bundle of measures to curb the incidence of infections.’
Nevertheless, the Covid expert emphatically points out that ‘masks are basically a good means to protect yourself, even if there is no obligation. One should always wear the mask when many people gather indoors. Not only in public transport.’
This is too stupid to comment on, really.
Bottom Lines
How much longer will this charade—protect the hospitals and healthcare workers—go on while responsible politicians ignore the many real problems, ranging from staff shortages to lack of qualified personnel to crappy status and remuneration, esp. for nursing staff?
Another angle of concern would, of course, be the continued insistence on mandatory masking in public transport in Vienna. While this is localised, it is all the more absurd, and patently so, for those who commute into Vienna from outside the state (which is hundreds of thousands of people daily), to say nothing about visitors from other parts of the country.
A friend told me last night over Zoom that the Medical University where he works has extended Covid Passport checks until 15 Jan. 2023.
I suspect it will be extended beyond that point, again, once this deadline approaches, if only because people are now habituated to this crap and because there’s not more pushback.
I also suspect that, despite these patently absurd and abominable odds, the Committee of Public Safety and its many willing executioners are actually deeply afraid:
What if, if you’d imagine, more and more people will simply cease complying?
What if, say, injection uptake falls—always fictional, as the ‘validity’ of one’s Covid Passport will be reduced over time—well below 50%?
I would suspect once that happens, most measures will go away, too.
There’s no political change to be made insisting on stuff that cannot be enforced.
Once that happens, we’re in it’s autumn in 1989 Eastern Europe territory.
Coming soon.
Covid in Austria: Desperation, Trickery, and Loads of Media Gaslighting: A Selection
They will jab until austrians start keeling over dead in the streets because someone sneezed a block away. Not mass formation, but mass psychosis.
(By the way, Substacker "Peter Sweden" who lives in Norway sometimes cover Covid-relatd stuff from Norway.)
Here, they are trying to revv up the ole' jab-engine regarding RSV. There are some weak yet hopeful signs of growing resistance among the medical professions - they've been bullied about on everything for decades now since they were put under the control of health care-politicans and are rather fed up with that people with no education and no medical license gets to make policy on treatments and such.
Som regions have more health care-politicans and assorted paper-pushers than they have doctors. Hire a new surgeon? Oh no, no budget. But hey hey, we've got yet another public relations and inclusivity HR-kommissar!