Covidistan Annals I

An Inquest into a Failing Covid Régime: December 4-5 Edition

I’ve taken a couple of days to collate the Covidistan-related information about the past weekend to produce a hopefully more concise post here. I shall hope that you ‘liked’ the three-part series I posted last Saturday, and I shall strive for a more analytical style now that the main events in Covidistan’s brief, if absurd, history have passed. That said, here’s what’s in this piece:

1. What happened on Saturday, 4 Dec.

2. What the Committee of Public Safety ‘thinks’

One last ‘warning’ before we venture down into this particular rabbit-hole: this is an overly dynamic situation, much like a stone dropped into a superficially frozen pond in winter. While I personally hope for more cracks and suchlike, there’s always the distinct possibility that the powers-that-be will regroup and try to forestall any change.

What happened in Covidistan last weekend?

First of all, I won’t recapitulate what happened last week (for background on the below accounting, see my three-part series, entitled ‘Limping Towards Catharsis’, part 1, part 2, and part 3), hence we’ll continue where we left off on Saturday.

Saturday, 4 Dec. 2021, was another day of protests. While smaller demonstrations were actually occurring in the middle (!) of last week in the early (!) afternoon on Wednesday (1 Dec.), they took place in all nine federal states. Last Saturday’s protest was supposedly ‘special’, for it would, again, make Vienna the focal point.

Two crucial aspects stand out, which are essential to any clear-eyed assessment:

There was no one big organising force, such as the Freedom Party; they encouraged participation, but they did not organise anything.

Despite calls by police to abstain, the number of protestors—officially (i.e., low-balled by at least 50-75%, I reckon’) was given as ‘some 10,000’ until 16:03 in the afternoon; from thence onwards, even state media claimed 42,000 people, i.e., a higher total than the big protest two weeks earlier that had the Freedom Party behind it.

Here’s state broadcaster ORF on this:

‘In downtown Vienna…about 42,000 people demonstrated against the Covid measures. Police took stock today: 621 charges were filed, of which 67 were criminal offences; 5 officers were injured.’

Let’s look at this in detail 621 charges is less than 1.5% of all participants; of these, a whopping 604 (!) received citations because they adhering to the distance and/or masking requirements. Do note the following part, again from the above piece by ORF:

‘In all, the more than 1,200 police officers from Vienna, Carinthia, Lower Austria, Upper Austria, and Styria succeeded in ensuring public order and safety in the city…according to the official police report.’

Let that sink in: the ‘successful’ sort-of enforcement of public order required detachments of police from five out of Covidistan’s nine states. Like I told you a few days ago, the Committee of Public Safety is afraid of the people because they know two things:

• Police is both over-stretched and they aren’t entirely reliable.

• Soon, police will call it quits because they can’t keep up anymore.

There’s some 30,900 federal police in all of Covidistan; I have family (in-laws) who work in law enforcement in Vienna, and I’m told, privately, that they have to close entire precincts due to lack of manpower. Of course, the Committee won’t tell you that, but I know—and what’s more important than either you or me knowing, police also knows.

Of course, you may object now: ‘o.k., I accept this anecdote, but do you have any data to back this up?’ As a matter of fact, I do, as this piece from Der Standard (6 Dec.) shows (my emphases):

‘More and more overtime, as well as Covid cases…infections are rising among police, [Social Democrat-affiliated] police union leader Hermann Greylinger complains to Radio Wien [that’s the ORF’s Vienna-based station]: “There is twice as high an infection rate—as high as 20%—among police relative to the general population”, with more than 80% of officers vaccinated.

This was corroborated by [Conservative-affiliated] police union leader Gerhard Zauner. Although he didn’t provide exact figures, he pointed to increasing sick leave, which in turn increases others’ overtime. Due to the anti-Covid protests, police are also working more overtime than usual.

Currently, “an average of about 60 overtime hours per month” are done by each officer, says Zauner, who went on to assess this situation as “unacceptable”. The main problem: “Officers are regularly called in during their time off and ordered to put in another 24-hour shift”.’

How much longer, pray tell, do you think Covidistan police will be able to protect the régime? How much longer until an overworked, stressed out, and exhausted officer will do something stupid? (All police in Covidistan are armed, and they are only required to ‘perform’ quarterly shooting training, as per my in-law.)

Also: are these 20% ‘unvaccinated’ officers on duty or would they be left home due to their higher (?) ‘infection’ risks?

To sum up Saturday: the régime-controlled and -friendly media tried at first to downplay the number of protests. Police asked the people to stay away from them. There wasn’t one large, capable organisation (Freedom Party) who contributed more than words. Yet, there were many more people than two weeks earlier. And protestors stayed quite long, despite 2-3° Centigrade and freezing rain. (The below picture was sent to me by a friend who attended: it shows an evening scene outside the Federal Chancellery, left, and the President’s Office, right.)

Sentiment is rising, and police strength is sagging; let’s see what the Committee did.

Sunday, 5 Dec. 2021, a date which shall live in infamy

Displaying his well-established tinpot-dictatorial arrogance Committee Chairman Nehammer (by now Chancellor) referred to Saturday’s protests in the following way (per ORF):

‘The large number of criminal charges clearly shows the anti-democratic and anti-social behaviour of individual participants, displayed against police and society.’

Note the following two aspects (and you’ll know how this guy operates):

1. For Nehammer, ‘police’ comes before ‘society’, whose members, by taking to the streets in protest, displayed ‘anti-democratic and anti-social behaviour’.

2. Also, there were 67 criminal charges, which corresponds to an ‘incidence’ of .16%. Now, I don’t know about you, but that’s more a gigantically small molehill and certainly not a towering mountain range of lawlessness.

Note further the presence of ‘many families and children’ among the protesters, carrying placards with messages like ‘We aren’t serfs or subjects’ and ‘We think for ourselves’.

The overwhelming majority refused to don face diapers (way to go), and while police, again disingenuously so, asked people to refrain from participating ‘due to the current Covid pandemic and to reduce the risk of infection’, here’s the same ORF piece, and this is hidden in the final paragraph (my emphasis):

‘It was also repeatedly announced that FFP2 [KN95] masks were mandatory at the protests—but the vast majority did not comply. Accordingly, violations of the mask mandate were also frequently fined.’

Whatever you may personally think of these mask mandates (nuts, in my opinion), ‘the vast majority did not comply’. Also, since there were 621 reported violations, the number of such citations must, necessarily, be somewhere around that ballpark, i.e., some 1.5% of protestors were actually fined (basis for this calculation: 42,000 participants, i.e., the official number).

So, where are we now?

I still believe that something will give before too long. If the Committee makes it through the remainder of the pre-Christmas season (sort of) unscathed, it may fall in January when the question of forced vaccination comes before parliament.

Still, the Committee may actually make it past this point, and if they do, the next—logical—question becomes: who will enforce this abomination of a (potential) law?

Stay tuned for more absurdities coming your way.