Covidistan Annals: Reflections on the 'Lockdown for the Unvaccinated'
A selection of comments I received, plus a telling tweet (meme) by one of the most ardent Zero Covid Hawks that illustrates the effect of 'the pandemic™' on the human mind
Yesterday, I posted a few lines in memory of the declaration by then-chancellor Alexander Schallenberg (ÖVP) of a ‘lockdown for the unvaccinated’ in Austria = Covidistan:
As it happens, I also wrote a piece (in German) over at TKP—which you can access here (there’s also the option of a machine translation by Google).
Both here and in the comment section over at TKP, many people expressed their opinions, with another reader writing the below lines to me via email. I selected a few of these, and that email, and I wish to post them here in my translation to illustrate the impact of this momentous decision two years ago.
Email by a Reader:
Your article today over at tkp about the vaxx count [orig. Impf-Graf Schallenberg] and his short-lived régime in 2021 speaks to me from the heart and I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way.
This threatening Christmas-related speech ultimately persuaded me and my wife to leave our homeland [orig. Heimat]. It was the last drop in an already overflowing bucket.
It was unbearable for me that after 1938, it was once again possible—this time under the guise of a health measure—to hunt people down to the hooting of a majority in my country.
In my new home country of Norway, we were able to get to know a completely different type of people. It is now possible to take a deep breath again.
From the Comments Section over at TKP
Don't forget and don't forgive. But a reckoning will never come. I don't see any hope there. And especially Schallenberg, [Minister for Constitutional Affairs] Edtstadler, [Vienna Mayor] Ludwig, [Vienna State Secretary of Health and Human Services] Hacker, and the line of health ministers and this uniformed wretch [that would be Major General Striedinger, co-chair of the Joint Covid Task Force GECKO], as well as the doctors who went along with all of this, I wish endless suffering. It could be in another life, I have time.
In response to the above, the following lines were posted:
‘as well as the doctors who went along with all of this’
I actually don't want to go to those anymore because in my opinion they have completely misunderstood and misused their profession and their professional ethics. For example, there are currently some who require masks in their practices (at least that was recently reported to me by a friend). I wonder what kind of barbaric monsters they are. Doesn't being a doctor primarily have to do with humanity and charity? Apparently not for all those who supported the whole madness.
Other readers made super important additions:
Without exception, all of these extremist political criminals should have long since been removed from all offices, dispossessed of all their positions, stripped of all titles and sent to prison forever.
Any historical superficial comparisons turn out to be laudable, but without clearly presenting the hygiene discourses that have prevailed since the Middle Ages up to Auschwitz and up to now, the topic is not even approached to shed light on it in a clarifying way…once again, it was too late to simply name the most important thing before the catastrophe occurred again, when the most magnificent ostentatious testified again and again: ‘Oh, how could something like that happen?’
Still, other readers were very wary:
Anyone who thinks ‘it’ is over is mistaken…just today there was a flashy announcement in the local newspaper about a ‘discussion event’ on the topic of when does the public good take precedence over personal rights…expressly including vaccination requirements…the fact that this is possible again says it all…
’Suddenly and unexpectedly’ it will happen again…just a matter of time. Thanks to globalism, which brings with it every plague and disease you can imagine. Then of course you have to immediately demand that every backwoodsman must be vaccinated against monkeypox etc.
In response, the following was posted:
‘When does the public good take precedence over personal rights…’
yes, especially when this ‘public good’ was declared completely subjectively and arbitrarily. Because in previous, more severe flu waves, human rights were not undermined so rabidly. And what I ask myself is: who, even today, still defends the ‘corona measures’ has a moral right to be upset about human rights violations in other countries or on other continents? probably hardly any more. I don't need people coming to me who, on the one hand, find the forced burqa in Afghanistan so bad and, on the other hand, applauded the forced FFP2 mask here. This is a double standard beyond compare.
I could go on and on and on, but I would like to provide you with a translation of Hans Rauscher’s op-ed that appeared on the occasion of the anniversary in the Zero Covid paper Der Standard to illustrate the depravity of the pro-mandate hawks (source; emphases mine):
Were unvaccinated people treated like lepers?
FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl recalls the terrible time of the lockdown
Herbert Kickl gave a press conference on the topic of the ‘Fortress Austria’. Of course. At the same time, however, the FPÖ leader also felt the need to recall one of the ‘dramatic and tragic highlights of the strategy of psychological warfare against the country's own population’.
Er, what was that again? For Kickl and the FPÖ, practically the entire activity of the ‘system’ (his term for a democratic government) is a single extermination campaign [orig. Vernichtungsfeldzug] against the hapless and helpless Austrians. His explanation: ‘Two years ago today, the federal government sent the unvaccinated into a lockdown. With the sole aim of treating the unvaccinated like lepers.’ Satanic, isn't it?
A look at the archives shows that the then Federal Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg announced a lockdown for the unvaccinated on 14 November 2021, because: ‘The coronavirus situation in Austria is serious, and like a whole series of other European countries, we are currently being hit hard by a fourth wave…while the incidence among vaccinated people is declining, it continues to rise exponentially among unvaccinated people.’
This is why there were restrictions to leave their homes for unvaccinated people, but hardly anyone adhered to them and they were hardly checked. If you want to get upset about this, then it's more likely to be on the grounds that it was a pointless pseudo-measure.
Of course, the claim that ‘the unvaccinated’ were ‘hardly checked’ is contradicted by ‘reporting’ in, yes, Der Standard from 21 Nov. 2021 (translation and emphases mine):
When the woman with her shopping bag leaves the shop on Mariahilfer Straße, she was probably not prepared to be met by a police officer. ‘May I ask for your 2G proof?’ asks Inspector [lowest police rank, gained right after completion of the police academy] of Dominik B. as the lady steps out onto the street. ‘Sorry’, the woman squeezes out, startled, she doesn't understand German very well. When the officer mentions the term ‘green passport’, everything is clear to the woman—but she does not have it with her. She can only offer her e-card [Austrian health insurance card]. However, as B. later explains, she ‘credibly’ assures the officer that the vaccination card is at home. The woman gets off with a warning…
Police are certainly causing a stir with their checks, and time and again one or the other quickly changes sides of the road. If you don't behave too conspicuously, you probably won't be checked at random in the lockdown for the unvaccinated. After all, everyone is allowed to go for a walk. Shopping, however, is not. That's why the police are now primarily stationed in front of shop entrances. ‘We check where people come together’, is how Interior Ministry spokesman Paul Eidenberger sums it up. That means above all: restaurants and shops.
Read the rest here, if you can stomach it:
Woke Journo Locks Himself on the Toilet to Avoid Covid
Finally, if you made it that far, here’s a particular gem of these wondrous times, which includes ultra-woke and hardcore Zero Covid (moron) Florian Klenk, still serving as editor in chief of the weekly left-ish magazine Der Falter (which is, of course, heavily subsidised by the SPÖ-led Vienna State government:
Via Twitter, 13 Dec. 2021, at 9:43 p.m. (my translations, top left screen shot):
NightJet Vienna-Venice. No 2G obligation [i.e., exclusion of ‘the unvaccinated’]. In the sitting cars, virtually no-one wears a mask. To hell with this irresponsibility…
Via Twitter, 13 Dec. 2021, at 9:45 p.m. (bottom left screen shot):
Why isn’t there a 2G obligation on trains (esp. in overnight connections with compartments for 6 people)?
Via Twitter, 13 Dec. 2021, at 9:49 p.m. (bottom right screen shot):
I now travel here [toilet] because there’s no mask mandate in the 6-person compartments.
To sum up—woke ’journo’ and Zero Covid (moron) Florian Klenk was so afraid that he locked himself into the train’s toilet to ‘avoid exposure’.
What a brilliant, if supremely selfish and anti-social thing to block the toilet for his fellow travellers.
I suppose we’ll now pile some shame (shit) on him, for he richly deserves that we remember this.
#we won’t forget
In Germany they shut us out of public transportation, but still allowed us to go to the supermarket.
I gather it was the other way around in Austria.
Looks almost like an experiment doesn't it?