Germany's Robert Koch Institut Presents 'Heat Death Dashboard'
On Twitter, Germany's Health Minister Karl Lauterbach declares that 'too many people are dying from the increasing heat waves' and that 'We will protect the old and the sick with heat plans'
First of all, congratulations to all of you who are apparently still alive, even though St Greta of Climate Change had declared the end of the world would occur, well, two days ago.
As we might be living in a computer simulation, here’s the next level of lunacy, courtesy of Germany’s ever-delivering Health Minister Karl Lauterbach:
If you’re clicking on this link, it’ll take you to the fact check by—get this—one Gabriele Scherndl, a known and notorious Zero Covid hawk who also works for the largest pro-mandate rag in Austria, Der Standard. I’ve come across her pieces many times, but perhaps none of them is as insidious as this one from May 2022. But I digress.
So, Ms. Scherndl wrote the fact check, shall we take a brief look?
Here’s the URL, I’ve translated the piece and added some emphases:
No, Lauterbach’s Heat Protection Plans Do Not Mean the Next Lockdowns Are on the Table
By Gabriele Scherndl, 22 June 2023
A Tiktok video claims that ‘under the pretext of heat protection’ the next lockdowns are imminent. The background to this are heat action plans by Health Minister Karl Lauterbach based on the French model. There, events can be cancelled in extreme situations. It does not provide for lockdowns.
When, appearing at a press conference with others, Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, spoke of a state of emergency, of a ‘catastrophe in the health system’ and a possible overload of the health system, some were reminded of the Corona pandemic. The next lockdown was imminent under the pretext of heat protection, it was then said on Tiktok.
But that is not what emerged from the press conference. It was about another topic: Lauterbach announced that Germany wanted to establish heat action plans to reduce the number of heat-related deaths—according to the German Medical Association, around 4,500 people died across Germany in 2022 because of heat. Lauterbach announced that he would follow the example of France, where such heat action plans already exist. There, the highest alert level provides for event bans, but no curfews.
Germany has not yet developed its heat action plan and consequently has not planned any lockdowns.
The video, which is just over two minutes long, shows an excerpt from the Federal Press Conference on 13 June 2023. The Phoenix television station also streamed it on Youtube. There (time stamp 18:07 in the long version) Martin Herrmann, Chairman of the Board of the German Climate Change and Health Alliance, speaks of heat protection being enshrined in law as a mandatory task, because widespread heat waves could develop into ‘catastrophes’.
Lauterbach also has his say at other points in the press conference. Starting at minute 8:35, he mentions France as a model. There, after 2003, a national heat action plan was set up, which Germany wants to follow ‘very closely’ as both countries have been severely affected by heat waves in the past. Among other things, the plan is to categorise heat waves into degrees of severity and designate ‘clearly defined responsibilities’ for municipalities and health and care facilities. Starting at minute 11:47, Lauterbach also mentions individual measures, such as providing information on overheating symptoms on a website. However, a concrete plan will only be prepared in the coming weeks.
There is no talk of a lockdown; from minute 10:04, Lauterbach merely refers to the [Federal Gov’t’s] seven-point programme for pandemic control from August 2022 to describe his intended approach. Namely: to bring together all those responsible—e.g., from elder care, medicine, and from the municipalities. However, this programme was not about lockdowns either—there were no such lockdowns afterwards. [Gee, I wonder why no lockdowns after summer 2022 were announced…]
French Heat Action Plan May Go as Far as Restricting Events
The Ministry of Health was asked whether it was conceivable that public life would have to be restricted as drastically as during the Corona pandemic due to heat waves. We were told that they did not want to pre-empt discussions with ‘all relevant actors’. The spokesperson refers to the Ministry of Health's dedicated website—where lockdowns are not an issue. So a lot is still in the planning stage of the heat action plan, exact measures are now being decided.
The French Ministry of Health has published the key points of its heat action plan online. According to it, there are four levels for different heat situations. They go from green to yellow and orange to red [reminds me of ‘terror’ threat levels after 9/11]: red describes a heat wave that is ‘exceptional due to its duration, intensity and geographical extent’. In this case, individual protective measures would have to be intensified and ‘possibly’ measures to restrict activities would also have to be considered. These include school trips, large gatherings of people, and sporting or cultural events.
This is not comparable to the Corona lockdowns that took place in Germany during the pandemic. At that time, for example, restaurants were closed, people were only allowed to leave the house alone or with members of the household, and at times there were also night-time curfews. In response to a question from CORRECTIV.Faktencheck, the French Ministry of Health writes that curfews, as they were during the Corona pandemics, are ‘not an appropriate measure during hot spells’.
Fearporn: RKI Presents Heat Dead Dashboard
Even though, I freely admit that they are doing everything to make people fall in line, including the tried and tested scam of the ‘pandemic’ bearing the title of a ‘dashboard’.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…the heat dead dashboard, courtesy of the Robert Koch Institute, broken down by Sex (Geschlecht), Age Bracket (Altersgruppe), Estimated No. of Deaths (Geschätzte Anzahl Sterbefälle), and the Incidence of Deaths per 100,000 (Sterbefälle pro 100.000 Einwohner).
Tab. 1 summarises the estimate of heat-related deaths up to calendar week 23. The largest share of heat-related deaths is in the age groups 75 years and older. Overall, more women than men die in connection with heat in absolute terms. However, this can be attributed to the high proportion of women in the older age groups.
Bottom Lines
If anything, as the above-reproduced ‘fact check’ shows, we’re firmly back in la-la territory: applying (at best) ‘circular reasoning’, Ms. Scherndl declares that TikTok video purveying misinformation because ‘Germany has not yet developed its heat action plan and consequently has not planned any lockdowns.’ This is about as sophisticated as claiming, e.g., as a woman who is not-yet pregnant ‘has not developed her child-rearing plans and consequently has not planned any particulars’.
If we’re generous, this is hilariously stupid, but then again, knowing about Ms. Scherndl’s style and previous ‘pandemic’ reporting (sic), I didn’t expect anything less.
What, then, shall we make of this?
Just the other day, I dug up an old ‘fact check’ from the early days of the mass vaccination campaign in Norway, dated 19/21 Jan. 2021, which did not age very well.
Sure, hindsight is 20/20 vision, and with the experiences of the past 3.5 years in mind, I suppose that the above ‘fact check’ will not age very well.
Remember spring 2020?
First, they told us that masks don’t work, until the supposedly would work (they never did against respiratory pathogens).
Then, we were told that no-one intended to lock down society, until (virtually) everyone fell into line and back marching in lockstep. ‘Two weeks to flatten the curve’, eh?
Then, when the spring was over, we let attention slide—only to be harassed, coerced into medical interventions, locked up arbitrarily, and fined at-will—for ‘non-compliance’. In some cases, for up to three years (and counting).
I suppose now, two days after St Greta had declared the end of the world would come, we’re in the never-ending ‘state of exception’ that Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben had written about—as early as spring 2020 (my modifications and emphases):
First and foremost, what is once again manifest here is the growing tendency to use the state of exception as a normal governing paradigm. The executive decree, approved by the government ‘for reasons of health and public safety’, produces a real militarisation ‘of those municipalities and areas in which there is at least one person who suffers from heat and for whom no other remedy is known, or in which there is a least one case that is not connected to a person who recently traveled from an area affected by a heat wave.’
Such a vague and indeterminate formula will allow [the government] to rapidly extend the state of exception to all regions, as it is practically impossible that other cases will not appear elsewhere…
The other factor, no less disquieting, is the state of fear, which in recent years has diffused into individual consciousnesses and which translates into a real need for states of collective panic, for which the climate change once again offers the ideal pretext.
Therefore, in a perverse vicious circle, the limitation of freedom imposed by governments is accepted in the name of a desire for safety, which has been created by the same governments who now intervene to satisfy it.
And here we go again.
Don’t fall for this charade again.
Don’t be afraid.
So by Lauterbach-logic, every year everyone living near the Equator dies?
Perhaps people who are getting so hot could buy a fan to cool themselves down.