Covidistan Annals XVII: ruling parties lose big in local elections, rising anti-mandate sentiment across the board, and more 'expert BS'

Just another 'regular' day in Covidistan, with lots of on-the-ground bits and pieces legacy media might cover, but which is typically, and easily so, disregarded by those who wield the levers of power

As reported here and elsewhere, Covidistan’s Committee of Public Safety has found that there are a few token institutional holdouts against their coup d’état: yes, there are sustained mass protests against the vaccination and other mandate, but the main development of the past couple of days is the fact that the Austrian Constitutional Court has sent a long list of questions to Health Minister and wannabe medical tyrant Mückstein on 26 Jan. 2022.

Sidenote: I’m using the adjective ‘Austrian’ here to denote a qualitative difference between what I consider an illegitimate régime—the Covid Puppets, as I’ve called them back in mid-November—and the holdouts of the old Second Republic; here, the latter refers especially to the protesting people whose country was taken away by the power-mad Committee of Public Safety that masquerades as government (political convictions don’t matter anymore, and neither do the acting figureheads, as evidenced by the fact that this is the third chancellor in two years since the last election), but as of 26 Jan. 2022, perhaps also the Constitutional Court.

First references thereto appeared on Friday and Saturday on social media, followed by state and de facto state legacy media that confirmed the authenticity of the Court’s enquiry on Sunday. It was this letter, replete with questions that the régime as well as both state and de facto state legacy media had long derided as ‘tinfoil hat material, ‘conspiratorial’ in nature, and, above all, consisting of views hold by a ‘small fringe minority’ of mainly far-right extremists. If you’d read through the end-of-week pieces on Saturday, you’d never notice that things might change before too long, and now the jury is out on the Committee’s presumptive answers.

Still, as more and more information comes to the fore—by which is meant the state and de facto state media struggle increasingly to obscure, distort, and fabricate horror stories about all matters Covid-19, some of the readers of my little ‘stack are voicing opinions about the Court’s intentions, which brings me to today’s post.

Readers Weigh the Court’s Intent

As a reaction to my initial brief announcement on 30 Jan. 2022, Witzbold (from Germany, I presume) wrote:

The questions are very incisive and really go to the core of the matter such as requesting absolute and relative risk reductions offered by vaccination. If they receive honest answers, that could be it. The END =)

Reader Irena (currently based in the Czech Republic) chimed in:

The funny thing is that the Constitutional Court striking this down may in fact be in the putschists’ best interests, in that it makes it less likely they'll wind up in prison later, once the dust settles.

And here’s some reader commentary from my transcript of the Court’s demands, also published on 30 Jan. 2022. UM Ross suggested this:

It’s almost like the court wants to know if those restrictions and mandates actually make sense.

Paolo (from Italy, I presume), wrote this:

It could be disrupting for all the other EU Const. Courts as here in Italy or the EU Supreme that so far have supported the mainstream media and governments narrative. And doing so they trashed, for cryptocurrencies I guess, all main Constitutional laws regarding health and freedom of choice rights.

C.H. added:

If it happens in Austria then that combined with the US Supreme Court striking down Biden's OSHA mandate might spur on other challenges in places like Germany and France. If those bastions of biotyranny break then so too might other places like Canada and Australia and New Zealand. Perhaps we may even hope for saner policies going forward globally. 

And here’s Rikard, from Sweden (I presume):

And although regime-loyal media might downplay this, the austrian politicians peers within the EU will be keeping their eye on the response - I'm speculating but it wouldn't surprise me if there is a certain amount of frantic teleconferences happening this week, so as to "give a unified response in order to avoid confusion".

Because these differences in reporting from the various EU-provinces while be used as a cause for enforcing a united system not only as a compliment to the national systems but instead of them, with no public access to data.

I cannot possibly add all your comments, so must beg your pardon if you feel like ‘left out’ here in this highly selective listing.

What I’d like to do in the following is to provide you with some of the more ‘obscure’ nuggets of (dis-) information emanating from Covidistan since the Court’s letter became public, followed by my take on the Court’s demands.

Despite posting here and there in the comments, I’ve taken a couple of days to order my thoughts on this entire matter, and once we get to that aspect in the next post.

Bits and Pieces from Covidistan

First up, electoral news. Obscured by much media hype about irrelevant issues (such as, e.g., the Beijing Olympics), there were a couple of local (council) elections in Lower Austria on Sunday, and while these politics are typically not much to talk about outside the various municipalities that hold them, one of them made it on national TV, mainly, perhaps exclusively so, because the two ruling parties (ÖVP and Greens) suffered large-scale losses.

Municipal elections in Waidhofen an der Ybbs—which is, by the way, a very nice little town and literally Austria’s cradle (it was there where, in 1996, an exhibition was staged on ‘1,000 Years of Austria’)—saw the ÖVP lost some 18% of the vote, with the Greens remaining at slightly above 4%. In the last elections (2017), the ÖVP garnered 60% of the vote, but last Sunday, the anti-mandate party ‘Menschen—Freiheit—Grundrechte’ (MFG), which came into being less than two months ago and whose (unvaccinated) candidates couldn’t really campaign due to the ‘house arrest for the unvaccinated’ garnered some 17% of the vote. The official final tally is here.

Of interest here is how this was spun by state and de facto state media, and here are some quotes that show the delusion that has gripped the ruling élites. ÖVP mayor Wolfgang Krammer was ‘disappointed’, according to Mein Bezirk (my emphasis):

This was the first election after Corona vaccination was made mandatory. As a result, we didn’t do as well as we hoped for. None of the established parties did as well as they wanted. We paid the price for federal issues.

State party secretary Bernhard Ebner is quoted by the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten as follows:

It was impossible for us to communicate those topics that are important for the development of [Waidhofen]

National media is even less charitable, as evidenced by the tabloid Heute, which quoted mayor Krammer as follows:

‘Unfortunately, the vaccination mandate was the all-dominant factor’, Krammer bemoaned.

And, finally, state media ORF also provided some spin, quoting Green state party secretary Hikmet Arslan trying to explain the fact that her party lost a quarter of its vote:

[We] of course expected a better result, but one faction used the pandemic to fiddle with the people’s emotions, which is not o.k., and now we’re set to show the people that [this faction] isn’t up to politics, and to do so with all our might [und jetzt gilt es die Partei zu entzaubern, mi taller Macht]

So, that party—or non-party, if you’d buy into the comments of the sore losers from the Green party—is a party that existed for about three months, came about as a result of the illegitimate (policy failure) of the house arrest for the ‘unvaccinated’, and, of course, all established parties decry foul play.

This long listing of an otherwise rather obscure election shows but one or two things: a sizeable chunk of people in that little town of less than 10,000 voters voted for a totally new faction that, due to régime impositions was also prevented from campaigning like their competitors, and gained an impressive 17% of the vote. If this isn’t a clear expression of distrust of the ‘establishment’, I don’t know what is (esp. since, unbelievably, the Freedom Party also lost votes, which provides further evidence of the awareness on part of the electorate that, while the FPÖ’s anti-mandate stance is laudable, people are distrustful of their trustworthiness).

The final say about this matter shall go de facto state media and quasi Green party mouthpiece Der Standard, which quoted MFG chairman Michael Brunner as follows:

            Those who curtail civil liberties will lose elections.

There are many other reports that beg consideration, such as this piece, over at ORF, which reported on the outcome of the ‘reminder’, a letter sent out by Mückstein a few weeks ago that ‘invited’ all residents who didn’t yet get their ‘booster jab’ to do so (my emphases):

What worked in countries like Spain and Portugal has failed in Austria. At the end 2021, the Health Ministry sent a letter with a specific vaccination date to about 1.4m unvaccinated over 17 years of age.

About 60,000 responded and got vaccinated once, or about 4.3% of those who received the letter. The majority, however, ignored the letter from Health Ministry…apart from the letter, 400,000 first vaccinations have taken place since the end of November.

To further, however briefly, illustrate the delusion among the régime’s camp followers, ORF quotes Florian Spitzer, a Ph.D.-holding behavioural economist (CV here) from the Institute of Advanced Studies (the main pro-business community think tank):

The main ‘information’ is this:

On the one hand, the timing of the letter was late. Last summer, the situation regarding vaccination was not yet as deadlocked as it is now while, on the other hand, Spitzer questioned whether the vaccination offer conveyed by mail appeared binding [to the readers]’.

Some states—Vienna, Vorarlberg, and the Tyrol—had sent out comparable ‘offers’ by mail even before the federal ministry, but, according to ORF, ‘here, too, the response was underwhelming’: some 5% of Viennese residents went and got jabbed, and only 0.6% of people in Vorarlberg. Speaking of the latter, the state government’s media office also holds the opinion that ‘it cannot be determined with certainty how many people went and got vaccinated due to that letter, for it is also possible that some individuals got vaccinated on another date because they had no time to do so at the date suggested by the letter’.

While I personally object to that kind of pressure—for both medico-ethical (no pressure must be applied to incentivise individuals to participate in an experiment) and legal grounds—there was yet another letter that is perhaps even more troubling.

In Fußach, Vorarlberg, mayor Peter Böhler ‘reminded’ all public employees that the vaccination mandate ‘will enter into force soon’—and indicated that he’s going to file police reports about all those public servants who continue to remain unvaccinated.

As reported by ORF, all local employees were ‘asked to provide information about their vaccination or recovery status, or a medical exemption within three weeks, if they wish to avoid being notified to the authorities’.

This, understandably, caused an uproar, and mayor Böhler quickly apologised and ‘explained’ his letter in the following way:

He drafted the letter on the road—between two meetings—and while he re-read the content, he was a bit less careful about the wording. Still, he insisted that the municipality will not report anyone to the police.

Finally, by the way, unions are protesting such procedures, noting that no proof of vaccination was required at work as the 3G (proof of vaccination, recovery, or a negative test) is all that’s required to go to work.

Oh, speaking of work-related issues, ORF is further reporting on more than 400,000 people who were jobless in January 2022. Yes, this is part of a seasonal thing, but it’s important to take a closer look as Austria is known to fudge the numbers, by which is meant that part of the jobless are ‘hidden’ in official statistics: those undergoing ‘training’ aren’t included in the official rates.

Hence, if the current unemployment rate of 8.1% is broken down further, it is revealed that some almost 72,000 Austrians are currently undergoing some form of ‘training’. Still, taking the EU as a whole, the unemployment rate according to Eurostat was 7% across all 27 member states, which is, by the way, as noted by ORF, ‘lower than before the pandemic’.

What an accomplishment, indeed.

Increasing Opposition to the Maintenance of the 2G Rule

Last week, the Vienna University of Economics and Business, or WU, introduced the 2G rule (i.e., all students and staff must either be recovered or vaccinated). Citing the usual BS, the university at first didn’t intend to actually provide those who couldn’t—wouldn’t—be able to comply with these mandates with access to training.

This is, of course, an egregious breach of contract law (student enrolment is a mutually binding obligation, something that seems to be lost on the university leadership), in addition to grave misconduct and misappropriation of public funds that finance the university. Apart from WU, only the University of Klagenfurt in Carinthia has introduced the 2G rule.

Still, after some two years, the unions are finally coming out against these mandates, as reported by ORF earlier today. Appealing to ‘common sense’, the major trade union of public employees denounced the 2G rule, citing ‘lack of empirical reasoning’. The union added that the change from the current 3G rule (i.e., students and staff could also provide a negative PCR test) is not warranted, unsupported by evidence, and could, if students sued the university, lead to ‘costly labour legislation-related legal action’.

The Vienna Business Community and Others Agree

Similar arguments are also voiced by Vienna’s business community, as reported by ORF, which also provides rough ballpark numbers of weekly losses: 73m € per week. Read that again—the insane de facto exclusion of ‘the unvaccinated’ costs businesses 73m per week, and keep in mind that policy was put in place in mid-November, i.e., it’s almost three months later now.

If we add the numbers for the ten-plus weeks since the Committee of Public Safety has relegated ‘the unvaccinated’ to second-class citizen status, that amount would be somewhere in the ballpark of about 750m €. In other words: losses that are equivalent to the annual US military budget that is fed directly to the Pentagon.

Still, the next debates about this in Vienna are scheduled to take place tomorrow.

After this insane policy is reversed, we should also discuss the proper role of ‘the state’ in ‘the economy’, I daresay.

Finally, here’s some like-minded concern voiced by sports and freetime activity providers, which also came out in opposition to these absurd mandates. Citing lost income in the range of 30-50% over pre-2G levels, many businesses like gyms, climbing centres, dancing schools, and the like are struggling to survive, as reported by ORF.

All told, a hectic couple of days, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Court’s letter to Mückstein was in a way both opening the floodgates of criticism and an obviously correct reading of public sentiment.

This is a long post already, hence my take on the Court’s intent and the implications of the letter will come in tomorrow’s post.