Covid in Austria: Lies, Damn Lies, and Confusion as State Broadcaster ORF Shills for Big Pharma

So far, nothing new under the sun, but watch Dr. Redlberger-Fritz's intellectual incontinence spill, perhaps inadvertently, some actually correct facts about the arrival of bivalent boosters

I hadn’t planned on writing yet another piece about current developments in Austro-Covidistan, in particular as Saturday’s post—a long interview of Health Minister Johannes Rauch by woke-leftish hate-rag Der Standard—showed the limits of what even the more dimmer bulbs among the country’s politicians are able to stomach.

Yet, yesterday showed me that it is, indeed, quite possible to top Mr. Rauch’s ignorance and proclivity towards ‘making creative statements’ (lying) when I casually checked in with Austro-Covidian legacy media yesterday—and found the below ‘gem’, courtesy of state broadcaster ORF Online’s team of ‘wonderful people doing fabulous journalism’:

Orientation in the Booster Jungle

In Austria, several Covid injections tailored to the Omicron variant [sic] are now available. At the same time, the National Injection Consortium (Nationals Impfgremium, NIG) has specified its recommendations for use. ORF.at asked virologist and NIG member Dr. Monika Redlberger-Fritz from the Medical University of Vienna for guidance for those who want to be vaccinated.

So, let’s take a trip down this particular rabbit hole and find out what the good professor has to say, shall we?

That ORF Online piece informs the public that last Tuesday, 20 Sept., 751,680 doses of BioNTech/Pfizer ‘bivalent’ product. You know, the one that is technically directed at the BA.4/5 variants, that was tested on 8 mice (who all got Omicron afterwards), and for which no human testing was done. So, if you’re in Covidistan (or elsewhere) and eager to take one of these shots, you’re in the human test phase.

Also, at the current rate of injection—according to official information, since last Tuesday, 42,180 ‘booster doses’ were administered across Austria. That means that these 751,680 doses, assuming the continuation of the present rates of injection (which is receding, by the way), there’s enough of these injectable products until well after Christmas, perhaps even until the second half of January 2023. In other words, there’s no need to order or buy more of them right now, eh?

(As an aside, the number of first-dose recipients over the same period of time varied between 129 and 13; their total since 20 Sept. 2022 is 540, i.e., a difference of the factor or 78. These numbers, in other words, aren’t even close.)

Which vaccine is best for which person varies greatly from individual to individual, said virologist Redlberger-Fritz. First, a distinction must be made as to how many vaccinations are to be involved. Three doses are needed for a fully completed vaccination programme. [my emphases]

Note the less-than-subtle change from forced, or mandated, injections based on the idea of a mass vaccination campaign to, well, individual assessments. Perhaps these will even involve a physician taking a close look at each individual before voicing an opinion (/sarcasm).

Back to Dr. Redlberger-Fritz and her patently stupid utterances (my emphases)

For the fourth jab, the actual booster, the first bivalent vaccines have recently been approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). They contain the genetic blueprint of certain omicron variants (BA.1 [in Moderna’s Spikevax] and BA.4/5 [in BioNTech/Pfizer’s Comirnaty]) and that of the wild type. The hope behind the development of these injections is to be able to better prevent symptomatic infections in addition to severe courses.

The Omicron variants are highly infectious and can bypass the antibody immune response of the mucous membranes in the nasopharynx. As a result, thousands of employees fell ill in the spring, pushing critical infrastructure such as healthcare facilities to the breaking point.

‘Protection against the severe infection is induced by any vaccination’, regardless of whether the vaccine is monovalent or bivalent, Redlberger-Fritz stressed. The adapted vaccines ‘possibly convey better vaccine protection against symptomatic infection’, said the virologist.

Well, what can one say at this point in time? There you have it: the current Omicron variants—even though esp. BA.4/5 are on the verge of extinction—escape the (whatever) ‘immunity’, or protection, conveyed by the ‘original’ jabs. Specifically, they escape the antibodies elicited by these concoctions.

I shall refrain from commenting on the third of these paragraphs, because it contradicts, logically as well as epistemologically, the preceding ones. I shall merely mention ‘the hope behind development of these [bivalent] injections’, which is, well, all that’s really there, isn’t it, Dr. Redlberger-Fritz?

With the help of a high vaccination coverage rate, a kind of buffer can be created, and the peak of a wave can be flattened, said Redlberger-Fritz. If many people get vaccinated during an ‘active phase’ of viral spread, ‘then you have taken parts of the population out of the equation. That way you buffer the whole wave’, she said.

I mean…what can really be said about statements such as this one that betray virtually everything that’s known about infectious diseases and the perils of mass vaccination with a leaky product at the height of the spread?

Background: According to Redlberger-Fritz, after ‘antigenic contact’ with the pathogen—by means of a vaccination or infection—a time window of eight to twelve weeks opens up for many people, during which they are protected from symptomatic Covid-19 disease.

According to Redlberger-Fritz, the effect is also seen with the vaccines available so far, but it could be stronger with the bivalent injections. However, data on this are still pending. The products of BioNTech and Pfizer as well as Moderna, which were developed against BA.1 and the original virus type, showed a good antibody response at least in studies and also a certain protection against the BA.4/5 variant that is currently dominant in Austria. It remains to be seen what influence they can have on a possible increase in new infections.

There you have it: 8-12 weeks of ‘protection from symptomatic Covid-19’. While the piece or Dr. Redlberger-Fritz won’t say, one should probably subtract 7-14 days after injections.

This ‘could be stronger’, but it could also be (even) worse; since we don’t have that data, no-one really knows.

Here’s what ORF Online wrote about this data issue, which tells you everything you need to know about the failed EU institution masquerading as European Medicines Agency:

Of Mice and Men

When Biontech and Pfizer's BA.4/ 5 vaccine was approved, the relevant EMA committee based its positive opinion on clinical trials with the BA.1/wild-type vaccine. The studies showed a stronger reaction against BA.1 and the virus of origin in the people who took part. The side effects were not more severe than with the original vaccine.

The BA.4/5 injections differ only minimally from the BA.1 version in its composition. In terms of efficacy, the BA.4/5 product was tested in [eight] mice. Clinical trials in humans are underway, with data being submitted to the EMA on an ongoing basis [you take one of these, you’re in the trial].

Based on the available data [really?], the bivalent BA.4/5 vaccine is ‘expected to elicit a stronger immune response («superior») against the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants than Comirnaty (product name of the Biontech preparation, note)’, writes the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI), which is responsible for drug approval in Germany [nice try, ORF Online, but there’s also one of these agencies in Austria, but they apparently didn’t get asked…or didn’t they want to weigh in on this?]. ‘The safety profile of the vaccine is expected to be comparable to that of Comirnaty Original/Omicron BA.1 and of Comirnaty itself. Large amounts of data are available on the safety and efficacy of Comirnaty’, the PEI added.

This is called ‘immune-bridging’, i.e., assuming that, as one thing has held true in the past (Comirnaty’s ‘performance’), and since we lack data for the bivalent product, the powers that decide on these issues (life and death, that is), are reduced to ‘hopes’ and ‘expectations’.

With its approach, the EMA is entering delicate territory. On the one hand, it is a matter of keeping pace with the rapid development of SARS-CoV-2. The virus variant first detected in China in 2019 [which is also up for debate, as the numerous results from September 2019 in Upper Italy show that the virus might not have originated in Wuhan, China] has now completely disappeared; the Omicron variant BA.1 is also effectively no longer circulating. Experts already have their eyes on a number of new subvariants that could overtake the currently predominant BA.5 variant.

‘We need to allow people to protect themselves from a virus that we can’t fully control.’, German vaccine researcher Leif Erik Sander told Science magazine. On the other hand, authorising vaccine updates that have not been tested in human clinical trials may increase vaccine hesitancy.

Huhu, someone wants to make an omelet without breaking eggs, I daresay.

The blueprint for the faster approval could be provided by the mock-up procedure used for influenza vaccines. In this process, ‘all phases of approval are done, not for individual vaccines, but for the entire procedure’, explained Redlberger-Fritz, who heads the National Influenza Reference Laboratory. ‘This means that the procedure has been patented and approved and can be adapted to the respective vaccines every year.’ To confirm safety, the vaccines are tested on small cohorts of 100 people before they go into production.

This is the last snippet I’m quoting here—as I’ve repeatedly wrote about this as early as February. I suppose that the nightmare scenario is a multivalent mRNA flu/Covid shots, on which I recommend the following piece. Entitled ‘Development of multivalent mRNA vaccine candidates for seasonal pandemic influenza’ and appearing in npj Vaccines 6, art. No. 153 (2021), Chivukula et al. recommend usage of ‘mRNA therapeutic (MRT) platform’ (my emphasis) to use the ‘unprecedented’ EUA-licensed processes to offer more of these products. (See also here for Time Magazine shilling for Moderna.)

To wrap this up, here’s some more evidence-free peddling at the end, courtesy of both ORF Online and Dr. Redlberger-Fritz. Asking who should get a 4th injection, here’s what the public is told (my emphasis):

Any decision on the fourth jab strongly depends on any one’s individual behaviour. ‘For people in health care professions who potentially have a lot of contact with infected people, another injection after six months would make sense’, says Redlberger-Fritz. The same applies to teachers and employees in kindergartens. In the group of five to 14-year-olds, there has been a clear increase in the number of cases since the start of school.

Ahem, there’s no more mandatory testing in schools and kindergartens, so, anyone who claims ‘there has been a clear increase in the number of cases’ in recent weeks must either have that data (but refuses to share it) or is misinforming the public.

One last insight here, courtesy of Vienna’s ORF branch: posted online on 21 Sept. 2022, we learn that 7.5% of all Viennese already (?) received a fourth injection, but in the thirty days prior to that date, there were ‘on average 29 first-dose recipients’. Apparently, the shots have lost quite a bit of their luster.