Covid in Austria: Mandate Hawks are Scheming, Masks Remain Mandatory until 8 July, and the Courts Dismiss More Motions…

…because principled concerns over infringements of Consitutional Liberties aren't good enough, apparently; at the end of May, the injection mandate will be reviewed again, and much more

With Covid in the backseat, politicians and experts in Covidistan are getting itchy: while it was finally admitted that the virus is going to drive what we humans do, the prospects are quite dim, as the below brief survey of the current legacy media landscape indicates.

Get ‘mentally and organisationally prepared…for social distancing’

In a piece published by Der Standard two days ago—by notorious Covid hawk Gabriele Scherndl, no less—Chief Medical Officer Katharina Reich, a trained physician who serves as co-chair of the régime’s main advisory panel GECKO, called on the population ‘to already think about autumn’.

Taking no chances at cheap pot-shots at the faux conservative ÖVP of Chancellor Nehammer, the piece contains a number of items of interest: Ms. Scherndl decries that the EU has revoked a few mandates (esp. mandatory masking in aircraft) even before the Committee of Public Safety rescinded all Covid-related entry regulations as of 16 May 2022. That means you wouldn’t need to present our personal medical data at the border, but before you book your trip, keep in mind that…

FFP 2 masks are only mandatory on public transport (including at train stations and airports), when using taxis and in essentials shops (e. g. supermarkets, post offices and pharmacies).

Children under the age of 6 are exempt, those from 6 to 13 can wear a regular mask while FFP2 masks are mandatory from the age of 14.

FFP 2 masks are not mandatory on coaches, excursion boats, cable cars and ski lifts.

The rules apply to all regions including Vienna.

Back to the piece in Der Standard (which is an edited version of an interview Ms. Reich gave to Kleine Zeitung a day earlier), and it opens with this gem of a question:

[Q:] At the moment, we see a constant level of case numbers, and according to the forecast, these case numbers will continue to decrease only slowly, provided that no further variants arise. How do you personally behave: where do you still wear a mask, do you visit places, do you test?

[Ms. Reich:] I only recently flew again for the first time, which was quite unusual. I try to wear a mask everywhere where people are close together or in enclosed spaces. Each of us should develop an individual sense of ‘have a mask in your pocket’, as the WHO suggests. You can’t mandate everything, and I would like us to come to a self-understanding of where a mask is necessary and where it is not. I try this out myself on a daily basis.

Note that the paper used a less-than-favourable picture of Ms. Reich, which made her come across as a part-time vampire impersonator:

Transl.: ‘K. Reich speaks about differences of opinions between the various Covid advisory boards, explains why she thinks we’d better keep masked up, and how a future '“dilemma” in autumn may be avoided’ | the small blurb on the right translates as follows: ‘it’s really a tightrope walk between science and politics’, says K. Reich, co-chair of the main Covid advisory board GECKO.

According to Ms. Reich’s ‘personal opinion, and that is for several reasons—psychological as well as those of social habituation [soziale Gewöhnung, I suspect she means normalisation, but the choice of wording is telling]—the [FFP2 or N95] mask should remain an essential item during the summer’, adding that ‘this is a question that only politicians can decide’.

With the current mandates set to expire on 8 July, Ms. Reich’s attitude is supported by another notorious Covid Mandate Hawk, virologist Dorothea von Laer (U Innsbruck), who similarly showed herself o.k. with no more mask mandates now, if only to make it more palatable to re-introduce them later this year.

As regards ‘The Science’, well, Covidistan’s tinpot authoritarians never really cared about evidence, it turns out. As Ms. Scherndl admits, much to her chagrin, the Committee of Public Safety repeatedly ignored its own advisory panel GECKO (of whom Ms. Reich is the co-chair) and, what pissed her off even more, the current Health Minister has a history of ignoring ‘scientific evidence’

The shape of things to come were revealed to the public a couple of weeks ago, and it includes a Zero Covid Strategy, if the worst case happens. As to what that may be, the strategy (ahem) paper outlines merely that once hospitals are on the verge of collapsing, then we’ll go back to hard lockdowns, potentially Melbourne or Shanghai style.

For Ms. Reich and Scherndl, though, ‘one must not wait’ for the Committee of Public Safety to lead, ‘each and every one of us must be prepared individually’:

You can get prepared, e.g., for a possible home office scenario. You can discuss [house arrest] with your family, with the children, with relatives: ‘Can we possibly celebrate a birthday in September instead of November? It is a matter of ‘preparing oneself mentally and organisationally for a possibly socially reduced setting’.

About ‘Long Covid’ and the Injection Mandate

While, again much to Ms. Scherndl’s dismay, ‘Long Covid’ doesn’t play any role in the Committee’s planning documents, ‘even though it affects many thousands of people for months’, there is some wailing about a lack of data.

[K. Reich:] ‘People who experience problems need to know where to go first’, she says in the interview—without explaining where to. ‘It's not efficient if everyone who thinks they have Long Covid to immediately turn to a special outpatient clinic’. In April, Health Minister [J. Rauch] emphasised in parliament that the treatment of people with Long Covid symptoms is to be carried out by primary care providers [i.e., family doctors, GPs, ambulatory nursing staff].

The Standard piece concludes as follows (my emphases):

As is well known, the number of vaccinations has been declining for months, and experts always emphasise that everyone’s protection must be boosted before autumn. The government is planning a campaign to this end—after all, compulsory vaccination is still on the agenda. The report of a medical and legal commission will probably be published next week. This commission currently analyses whether compulsory vaccination could be necessary and constitutional as early as this summer. The current suspension of the compulsory vaccination law expires at the end of May.

Stay tuned for more crap coming your way, then, is what is said: more agit-prop, more fear-mongering, and more coercion to get injected with yet another shot of a product that has 53% efficacy vs. Omicron for 20 days and whose protective cover is gone thereafter, according to the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

Speaking of Agit-Prop…more from the Constitutional Court

So, here we are: recently, the Constitutional Court has ruled again on the first ‘lockdown of the unvaccinated’ (which occurred last November), which was retroactively green-lighted in a number of other cases.

On 6 May, the Court deemed that the mandates effective from 21-30 Jan. 2022 were justified because…

although the number of Covid-19 patients in ICUs was declining at the end of January 2022, the authority [Behörde] correctly included the availability of further resources and capacities in the health care system in its assessment of whether there was a risk of said system being overrun. In particular with regard to Omicron, which was dominant at the time, the authorities had to expect that the high number of people infected at the same time would lead to further staff shortages in the health system and thus to a critical situation. In addition, the treatment and care of patients infected with Covid-19 in normal wards and ICUs is particularly personnel-intensive. The Health Minister therefore understandably assumed that it was essential to maintain the initial regulation for persons without 2G detection in the period from 21 January to 30 January 2022 (my emphases).

Notice the sleight of hand?

In her motion, the plaintiff had argued that hospitalisation numbers were declining since 6 Dec. 2021, hence the imposed restrictions would curtail her constitutional liberties and the Covid-19 enabling legislation.

In its ruling, the Court didn’t even bother to refute the plaintiff’s arguments, as the judges hold (paragr. 78, p. 82-83), which merely determine that ‘the contested regulations and entry restrictions for non-immunised persons were not unsuitable for achieving the [government’s] objectives’.

Sidenote: the Court always writes Behörde, which literally translates as ‘magistrate’, and not ‘government—sure, I’m nitpicking here, but the Behörde is part of the executive while the latter is, theoretically, responsible to the legislature. Then again, since the Court de facto ended the separation of power by conflating both in earlier rulings, why bother with these things, such as popular sovereignty, the constitution, or the like.

In a second ruling, which was handed down on 10 May 2022, the Court refuted another motion to summarily revoke the Covid-related injection mandate. In yet another fit of contra-legal extremism, the judges summarily dismissed the motion in the following way (my emphases):

With regard to the entire law, which in the contested original version consisted of twenty paragraphs, the motion was delimited to assertions of a general nature. The plaintiff had failed to set out in detail the concerns against the constitutionality of each of these provisions.

Likewise, it was inadmissible to challenge only §1 (1) of the Act. According to the case law of the Constitutional Court, all provisions that are inseparably connected must be challenged. Such a connection exists, for example, with § 4, which regulates the scope of the vaccination obligation (my emphases).

Yet, in their much shorter ruling—which, by the way, occurred behind closed doors without public oral arguments—the judges actually held that

the petitioning parties have failed to specifically identify those standards that are affected by the concerns raised. The application is essentially limited to unsubstantiated allegations and general concerns about the law as a whole (my emphases; paragr. 54, pp. 28-29).

I’m unsure if this can be called ‘circular logic’, as the judges fail, in my opinion, to actually rule on the merits of the ‘unsubstantiated allegations and general concerns’. Instead, they hide behind this technicality, which may be described as ‘cowardice’.

While I can see the Court invoking the time-honoured notion of in dubio pro reo (when in doubt, for the accused), I’m unsure that this principle of criminal law is actually applicable in constitutional cases, such as the injection mandate that violates a number of constitutional rights and civil liberties.

I suppose that there will soon be a case before the Court that will lay out, in minute detail, all the problems with the various sections, though, for these absurdities and legal obfuscations will not go unnoticed.

The Shape of Things to Come

Where will all of this lead? Well, in the short run, pressure by the tourism and hospitality industries are rising, which certainly contributed to the revocation of some mandates in advance of the summer season.

Still, it’s important to note that the Committee of Public Safety has no medium- or long-term plan. Everything they do is political to the extreme—witness Chancellor Nehammer’s recent call on the occasion of the ÖVP’s party convention: ‘So many people in such a small room also means so many viruses. But today we don’t care!’—while nothing will be done to address the serious long-term implications.

Nursing and care systems were troubled long before Sars-Cov-2, but nothing will be done. To the contrary, as I’ve explained recently using Norway as an example, things will get much worse. There’s no one addressing these issues who’s heard by those who claim authority over the people anywhere.

Thus, they will double and triple down on whatever crap has failed in the past, ranging from the insanities spouted by Ms. Reich to Dr. Herwig Kollaritsch’s ‘suggestions’ to take a fourth injection, if you intend to go abroad during the summer while at the same time recommending to ‘wait for updated variant vaccines in autumn’ (which would be jab no. 5, if you’re counting).

At the same time, the criminalisation of any transgression will be ramped up, if the recent ruling on two young people (aged 20) is any indication. Their crime? They had tested positive for Sars-Cov-2 (whatever that means…) and went out to party, but because the test eventually came back ‘positive’—although the 20yo stated to have read the email only two weeks later—he was sentenced to 9 months (on parole, bedingt) while his partner-in-crime was sentenced to pay fees worth 2,500 € in fees, in the former case because he had four prior convictions, but note that the fine was levied on someone without any criminal record.

Finally, as related by another piece that appeared just yesterday in Der Standard (written by equally notorious Covid Hawk David Krutzler), who noted that

hospitalisation figures continue to decline and currently give no cause for concern: as of Wednesday [18 May 2022], only 54 infected people were still in ICUs—a week ago, there were 24 more. Comparably low hospitalisations were reached last year only at the beginning of July (my emphasis).

Yet, while Covidistan switched to (equally useless) face masks only at that time, authorities insist on keeping FFP2 masks to enter essential businesses such as grocery stores and pharmacies until 8 July. Evidence and prognoses be damned, Mr. Krutzler noted that ‘Covid Prognosticators [Covid-Prognosekonsortium]’ expect ‘a further slight decrease of hospitalisations’, which will eventually ‘bottom out around 40’ at the beginning of June.

It pains me to note—but each people gets the treatment it allows the government to get away with.

I suppose that there was never a better time for sustained mass protests to chase out these incompetent evildoers masquerading as government.

Ready the pitchforks, I’d say (even though I also know that it won’t happen).

That said, this is the third warning now (for the two earlier instances, see my piece from early February and click here for the mid-April piece).

I’ll keep these receipts, lest anyone pretends that ‘no-one could have seen this coming’.