Covid in Austria: Failure of Coercion Breeds More Double-Talk and Propaganda BS

Now watch gov't officials, 'experts', and self-identified 'journalists' trip over themselves and intellectually wetting themselves in public: what a disgusting train wreck of a spectacle

As the school year kicks off in parts of Austria (esp. in Vienna, Lower Austria, and the Burgenland), we can learn what politicians’ words are worth: not even the paper they are written on.

Remember when, two weeks ago, I wrote an Open Letter (original German version here) decrying the then-discussed mandates in schools?

While I doubt my letter actually did anything (not quite: three fellow citizens contacted me and thanked me for the efforts, so I suppose that means something), there were other citizen groups that also wrote to the Education Minister demanding ‘regular operations’.

So, on 29 August, Education Secretary Martin Polaschek issued a circulaire (Rundschreiben, i.e., an official communiqué that, well, circulates among officialdom) that indicated ‘school like before Covid’, but he also ‘recommended’ one PCR and/or up to three antigen rapid tests. Of course, as the above-linked website holds, all of this would be ‘naturally voluntary’. So far the options for the first week.

Those students who wish so, official information holds, could also get up to three antigen rapid test kits for home use.

Absurdly, once one ventures down the rabbit hole of ministerial decrees (Verordnung) that form, so to speak, the ‘legal’ basis for the above, one can find the following:

Source: here.

As a reminder, here’s my posting from 31 May of this year, which brought to your attention the factoid—some say facts won’t matter anyways—that ‘infection’ would no longer count as ‘an epidemiological event’ from 23 Aug. 2022 onwards.

The Vanishing Vaxx Mandate

That means, in no uncertain terms, that (proof of) ‘recovery’ wouldn’t allow you to skip any of the injections against (ahem) Sars-Cov-2 or Covid-19. But now, since the abomination of a ‘law’ (the injection mandate) has been revoked, we see the imposition of some of its key features by really any other means.

For background, please see these two postings:

Covidistan Annals VII: a detailed look at the Vaxx Mandate, its implications, and the (dark) future it portends

Covid in Austria: LAST WARNING as Health Minister Rauch Decrees 3-Jab Minimum Req, No More Recovery-as-Exemption from 23 Aug. 2022 Onwards = TYRANNY LOOMS

From the original analysis of the infamous Injection Mandate (the first of these two links):

this is a power grab by the Health Minister who will obtain tyrannical powers that exceeds anything seen in Central Europe since 1945…

The key sections are §3 (5 and 6) and §4 (7) that authorise the Health Minister the singular authority to decree any changes to the vaccines to be used, the number of jabs, and to the assessment of the ‘scientific basis’ for these measures. Then there are §8 (2) that affords the Health Minister to decree the amount of fees as he or she sees fit, as well as §10 (2) that empowers health insurance providers to similarly alter payment amounts and reimbursement schemes for any of these administrative measures. Finally, §12 (2 and 3) reaffirm the authority claimed by federal (Health Minister) and state executives (governors) to ‘enforce’ all and any part of the Act.

And in late May, Health Minister Johannes Rauch issued another ministerial decree re-affirming his authority to do just that (from the second of these two links; my emphases):

According to his most recent decree with respect to the Injection Mandate (official version here), we learn the following

§4 (1) persons who remain unvaccinated must receive (a) the first injection, (b) within 65 days thereafter a second injection, and (c) within 190 days thereafter a third injection.

Translation: now 3 injections = ‘basic immunisation’ (sic), even though the EUA was granted for a two-dose course.

§4 (2) and (3) mandates that all people who received but one or two doses before the Injection Act entered into force must begin a new injection series [of three jabs], if the first injection (but no second jab) occurred 360 or more days earlier, as well as obliges everyone to get a second and third jab accordingly.

§4 (4) obliges all those who were infected with Sars-Cov-2 (but refused to get injected thereafter) to commence the three-dose injection cycle within 180-190 days after a positive PCR-confirmed test result

§4 (5-10) provides further particulars by removing virtually all exemptions deriving from infection.

And now—guess what happened: as we established in late May (the below was reported by state broadcaster ORF and these pages here)

Recovery No Longer Substitutes for Vaccination

For a basic immunisation, three injections are thus uniformly required—this has already been recommended by the National Immunisation Consortium. Until now, a convalescence before the first injection was considered an ‘immunological event’ in its own right. A recovery is still valid for six months [180 days], but it no longer substitutes for one injection, the Ministry of Health said in a press release.

In addition, further exceptions to the 3-G rule have been created (besides pregnancy and danger to health through vaccination [ahem])—its proof is now also omitted for those persons who would not be subject to compulsory vaccination due to a lack of immune response to vaccination. The confirmation that one has already received for a compulsory vaccination exemption is sufficient for this.

And here we are: a couple of months after the fact, no-one in legacy media seems to care, no-one apparently remembers late May, and we’re left to wonder how much, if indeed any, meaning certain words still have.

Faith-Based Biopolitics, Covidistan (Insanity) Style

Health (sic) Minister Johannes Rauch spoke to the court stenographers press yesterday, informing the rabble that he would rather not ‘get into the next fight’ or find himself ‘stuck in-between different expert opinions’ on the subject matter he had decreed the above abominations.

Resorting to faith-based considerations (i.e., making up shit as he speaks, with my emphases added), Mr. Rauch said:

‘There are different attitudes and approaches. There are also very different research results’, says Rauch. ‘I believe that the National Injection Consortium is very careful about the recommendations they make. At any rate, I have confidence in them as far as these recommendations are concerned’, the Health Minister said.

Spoken like a true tyrant, I’m glad that someone in office finds a quantum of solace in his personal believes about the experimental gene therapeutics forced onto the population. Shame on you, Mr. Rauch, for being such a coward.

A bit further down in the above-linked ORF piece, Mr. Rauch further absolved himself of anything, telling the public that

If you have any questions—for example about vaccination intervals and age-dependent recommendations—contact your family doctor. ‘They can also assess the situation: What are the previous illnesses? What is the overall risk situation? Then there is a profound answer’, says Rauch.

To be fair, state broadcaster ORF also asked Dr. Gerald Gartlehner (Prof., Epidemiology and Evidence-Based Medicine, Danube University Krems, Lower Austria) and does it in this way.

Citing an interview with Gartlehner (Die Presse, 5 Sept. 2022), there is an alternative interpretation:

‘The recommendation of the National Injection Consortium is no longer up to date’, Gartlehner was told Die Presse: ‘It is untransparent, because the scientific basis for recommendations is not disclosed’.

With regard to protection after a previous infection, the expert referred to a study from Portugal published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday. ‘Triple-vaccinated persons who were infected with BA.1 or BA.2 in spring were 75% protected against infections with BA.4/5 in the 90 days [after infection]’, Gartlehner continued. Infections with the Omikron variants BA.1 and BA.2 would therefore ‘very likely lead to a high level of protection against reinfection with BA.4 and BA.5’, said Gartlehner. It is unclear how long this protection lasts.

Leaving aside the problematic hypotheses that went into the study design (98% of the Portuguese ‘study population completed the primary vaccination series before 2022’) and a wealth of noted confounders (e.g., how does booster uptake impact a vaccinee’s immune response), here’s the key finding, with my emphasis added:

We found that breakthrough infections with the BA.5 subvariant were less likely among persons with a previous SARS-CoV-2 infection history in a highly vaccinated population, especially for previous BA.1 or BA.2 infection, than among uninfected persons.

One of the more troubling notions here is this: as reasonable as the paper by Malato et al. (DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc2209479) sounds, there is no ‘control group’. Given that virtually everyone in Portugal has received at least two doses (of virtually exclusively mRNA juice), the paper doesn’t even compare apples to oranges, so to speak. Malato and colleagues compare one sort of apples (two doses) to another sort (more than two doses).

Still, Prof. Gartlehner’s point stands: infection apparently conveys ‘protection’ against Sars-Cov-2 and Covid-19 in a way that injection cannot do.

Bottom Lines

Covidistan’s Committee of Public Safety left the reality-based community a while ago, and while I’d love to report that these are but the post-mortem movements associated with the incipient decay of the political bodies involved, this is sadly not (yet) the case.

Clearly, Mr. Rauch and his team of ‘experts’ over in the National Immunisation Consortium have gone ravingly mad, contradicting themselves and intellectually wetting themselves repeatedly. Standing in front of the people with ominously wet pants, they then shove fingers up their nostrils blabbering incoherently.

Fortunately for them, the assembled ‘full court press’—how fitting a description—of self-identifying journalists is doing just what sycophants are expected to do: suck up to those perceived to be in charge. It’s beyond pathetic.

Apart from that, let’s not forget those who suffer under this cruel régime: it’s the children whose lives have been supremely miserable for the past 2.5 years, but now the Committee of Public Safety has added an extra-layer of cruelty.

It is up to individual school principals now to institute ‘additional protective measures’, such as ‘voluntary tests’ and the notion, as a friend just told me, the absolutely idiotic idea (which, as shall be noted also, is devoid of any evidence) that if there’s but one positive text result in a class, all kids must wear masks.

It’s bad if the government mandates stupid things and expects police and private citizens to enforce it. It’s arguably worse of officials devolve these arbitrary powers onto regular people who, in all likelihood, are teachers running schools.

‘Expertocracy’ is quickly turning into a veritable clown car of non-experts (principals) citing government utterances (ministerial decrees or circulaires) to arbitrarily enforce whatever mandate.

This is the intersection of ignorance, lunacy, and biopolitical tyranny.

It shall, nay: must, be fought tooth and nail.