The WHO-declared, so-called ‘Corona Pandemic™’ has been exceptionally ‘good’ for ‘the experts™’ who benefitted personally from all the attention they suddenly received. Professor Florian Krammer, an Austrian-born vaccinologist (what else) working at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York (faculty profile) is a wonderful case-in-point.
He was a more or less permanent fixture in the Covid ‘expert™’ panel, a frequent, and highly sought-after, contributor to the Covid astrologers’ most cherished, ‘antivaxx’ hate-spewing ‘Zero Covid’ daily Der Standard (just peruse the search function), and he’s now returning to Austria, albeit ‘only’ as a part-time professor of infectious diseases at the Medical University of Vienna (20% FTE) and, from 2025 onwards, head of the newly-founded Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Pandemic Preparedness and Science Communication (Institut für Pandemievorsorge und Wissenschaftsvermittlung).
Austrian state broadcaster ORF, specifically its ‘Science’ department, conducted a telling interview with Professor Krammer. It is the topic of today’s posting, and I’ll bring you these ‘insights’ in my translation, with emphases added, and with a few bottom lines.
‘Nipah Virus Gives me Nightmares’
An interview with Florian Krammer, by Elke Ziegler, ORF Science, 4 April 2024 [source]
He expects two to three more pandemics before he retires, says Austrian virologist Florian Krammer, who works in New York. He is very concerned about the Nipah virus, which repeatedly causes serious illness in South-East Asia. In contrast, he is comparatively relaxed about bird flu.
At the beginning of March, Florian Krammer took up a professorship for infectious disease at the Medical University of Vienna, and next year he will take over the management of a new Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Pandemic Prevention and Science Communication. Science ORF conducted an in-depth interview on the latest pandemic, viruses with pandemic potential, and his plans in Austria.
Mr Krammer, is the coronavirus pandemic actually over for you?
Florian Krammer: Not for me. For me, the influenza pandemics of 1968 and 2009 are not over either [welcome to the institutionalised pandemic, which is the best term to refer to this kind of grift]. We have to deal with the consequences, we have to look at how our system [the immune system? Society? Alas, it isn’t clarified] reacts to them, and how we can better protect ourselves against them. These viruses are still circulating. So for me, the pandemic is not over in that sense.
Caption: ‘Florian Krammer heads the Ignaz Semmelweis Institute for Infectious Disease Research at the Medical University in Vienna. Once fully operational, the ISI will employ approx. 100 researchers, in particular focussing on basic research about pandemic management.’
Let's look specifically at the most recent pandemic and the trigger Sars-CoV-2. At Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, you have been conducting a study on immunity after infection and after vaccination since April 2020, i.e., almost since the outbreak of the pandemic. What are the main results?
Krammer: Our cohort, i.e., our study group, was the hospital staff [at Mt Sinai Hospital]. In this group, we saw right at the beginning: if you were infected, you remained protected from reinfection in the initial phase of the pandemic. From December 2020, everyone was vaccinated. And from this point onwards, we saw differences between people who were vaccinated without prior infection and those who were already infected and were vaccinated afterwards [there goes the entire evidence-based ‘logic’ for vaccine passports]. This has already been shown: after previous infection, it only takes one vaccination to achieve a very high level of immunity [and here goes BioNTech/Pfizer’s and Moderna’s business model].
However, this has also been shown: After vaccination, antibody levels are very high, but then drops again quickly…
Krammer: Yes, that's true, but we have also seen something else. Although antibody levels fall, they then stabilise and the immune response lasts for a very long time. And then the Omicron variant arrived in January 2022, and that was of course very interesting because Omicron is a highly modified virus. The immune response triggered by the vaccinations and the original infections hardly neutralises it any more. And then, of course, infections occurred.
Even during the pandemic and now in retrospect,there have always been statements that the vaccination was actually ‘oversold’, i.e., that it was suggested that people would be protected from infection, which was not the case [what a disgustingly dishonest statement]. But if I understand your study correctly, this was an effect that occurred as a result of Omicron, i.e., comparatively late in the pandemic. With regard to your research work: what could, what can the vaccination actually do?
Krammer: That's a very interesting question, and you have to go back to the beginning to answer it. Basically, we knew: when you inject a vaccine into muscle, there is a weak immune response in the upper respiratory tract. This is the case with all vaccinations. You don't get strong immunity in the upper respiratory tract, where the virus ends up. I published on this in Nature back in September 2020. I emphasised that we shouldn't expect the vaccinations to protect against infections. And then the first results came out from Biontech/Pfizer and Moderna, who were researching modRNA [so-called] vaccines. And they initially had a good signal that the vaccinations could also protect against infections, because the antibody levels were also higher in the upper respiratory tract immediately after vaccination. They then drop, unfortunately. But there was a certain degree of protection, and in the beginning I think this effect was overestimated [it was also used to discriminate against ‘the unvaccinated’, mandate these injections, and introduce so-called ‘vaccine passports’—my question here would be: does this count as self-serving absolution or is this merely lipstick on a pig? (sorry, pigs)].
Protection against infection was not a requirement of the health authorities when the vaccine was developed [again, this they didn’t say when politicians, aided and abetted by legacy media and the public health establishment instituted—mandated—mass ‘vaccination’ and Covid passports].
Krammer: Yes, the assessment was that if the vaccination protects 50% of infected people from death, it is a good vaccination. That was what the FDA, the regulatory authority in the USA, wanted. And, of course, the vaccinations were much better. And in the course of the pandemic, of course, there has also been the effect that the virus has changed. I see that as the biggest problem. It's simply no longer the same as it was at the beginning of the pandemic and it escapes the immune response much better [no-one in the fields of vaccinology could have anticipated this, eh?].
When did you actually reach a point in the pandemic when you thought to yourself: ‘Okay, this really is a turning point’?
Krammer: For me, it was when the first data from Pfizer and Moderna was published. That's when you realised: This works, this will protect. And as I said, it's not about preventing all infections, but about protecting against serious illnesses [which is *not* what politicians, aided and abetted by legacy media and the public health establishment, have emphasised back then]. I have previously seen the data from many vaccines in animal models that were published in the course of 2020. And that was also very promising. But then to see that it works in humans was the turning point for me.
There are many people who see the turning point as the time when the virus changed to Omicron and it became clear that this variant has a harder time infecting the cells in the lungs and other organs. That wasn't so relevant for you?
Krammer: Of course this has changed the situation, but on the other hand it was clear that the virus would never disappear. The only question is, what will it do? And if you have a vaccination, then of course you prevent a lot of damage. So for me, it was really the time when it became clear that the vaccination works and will soon be available [back in 2020].
How do you see this development in Austria, where there are once again many cases of some diseases that were thought to have been largely overcome? For example, measles or whooping cough, which caused the death of a newborn baby in Graz this year [now use ‘the Covid shitshow’ to deviate to something else entirely].
Krammer: What we need now are awareness campaigns. I don't think people realise what the risks are. People simply don't realise that you can die from measles, that measles can wipe out your immune memory and that any banal infection can become a problem. And I understand that because there have hardly been any more cases due to the vaccinations. If you're not confronted with it, you forget about it. More information is urgently needed here.
Intermission: About Measles and Deaths
I typically don’t interrupt such pieces, but in this case, it seems appropriate. Now, before you look at the below graph, consider the following: Professor Krammer holds that ‘there have hardly been any more cases due to vaccinations’ after noting that ‘you can die from measles’.
This careful wording is highly misleading, as Professor Krammer conflates dying from measles with ‘more cases’, and as the below graph (source) shows, these two are quite…different things:
Note that the blue line = deaths per 100,000 vs. the red line = cases reported to the CDC are telling: yes, ‘cases’ dropped after the introduction of the measles vaccine in 1963, but it’s hard to spot a death differential between the blue line 1940-70 vs. the red line 1965-
Instead of being consistent in his argumentation, Professor Krammer—dishonestly, in my opinion, because he surely knows the above data and understands its meaning—conflates ‘cases’ with mortality, thereby shilling for the measles vaccines vs. discussing benefits vs. disadvantages.
At this point, I cannot recommend highly enough Brian Mowrey’s posting about how things stood before the widespread adoption of the modern childhood vaccine schedule. The gist of Brian’s piece is this:
My comment: if you can find ‘measles’ there anywhere, you win.
Pediatric public health in 1953 was obviously “just fine” but for the exception of tuberculosis and polio. Further pediatric health improvements beyond those two diseases ought to have taken less priority than, for example, swimming instruction, or automobile design — and did not demand bothering the 299 out of 300 children who would not die from infectious disease with any novel, preemptive injections. Such unneeded medical interventions are no more reasonable than locking 100% of children in foam-padded rooms until age 20, to protect the unknown handful who might break a bone every day.
That being said, let’s return to Professor Krammer.
You will be 42 years old this year and say that you expect two to three more pandemics before you retire. Which viruses are at the top of the list of possible triggers?
Krammer: Influenza is right at the top. I'm sure it will come back. But there are other viruses that I'm more afraid of. The Nipah virus, for example, is on the list of viruses that give me nightmares. It is distantly related to measles and is found in fruit bats in South East Asia. It doesn't do much to the bats, but people are repeatedly infected—either by drinking sap from trees that the fruit bats have also nibbled on, or it is transmitted to humans via pigs that are bitten by the bats [the movie ‘Contagion’ is the predictive programming alluded to here]. The problem with Nipah is that it is respiratory transmissible, albeit not very well at present [I’m quite sure some bat-shit (pun intended) crazy virologist and/or vaccinologist will make that happen via GoF ‘research’ to ‘prevent’ the next WHO-declared ‘pandemic™’]. However, it could well mutate at some point and become more transmissible. If this happens and the severity of the disease does not decrease, this would be highly problematic. This is because Nipah is very deadly, with 60-90% of infected people currently dying [Nature recently (2021) wrote about a 40-70% fatality rate; the main reason for Nipah infections, it seems, is habitat destruction, an issue that is omitted here—I wonder why…].
This year, there have also been many cases of bird flu in mammals during the winter season, in very different parts of the world. Are you also worried about the bird flu virus?
Krammer: Yes and no. I find it very interesting, and yes, we are seeing more and more mammals becoming infected and dying. So it could be that the bird flu virus is becoming more and more transmissible. On the other hand, this pathogen is found almost everywhere, people come into contact with it, and there have only been a few human infections. I believe that there could be some protection, and we now also want to research this in Vienna.
You took up a professorship in infectious medicine at the Medical University of Vienna in March. From next year, you will head a Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Pandemic Preparedness and Science Communication. What are your most important plans?
Krammer: As a team, we want to try to bridge the gap between virus monitoring, especially in urban areas, and possible countermeasures. We are focussing on Vienna, want to involve the population, and communicate risks well in order to evaluate them afterwards: how well did the communication work and what can be improved?
Can you already give specific examples of what this means? What does virus monitoring in urban areas mean, what does it mean to involve the population?
Krammer: One of the projects is to collect bird droppings and then look at which influenza viruses are circulating there, for example. You can do this together with high school students at the 10th grade, not only when collecting the samples, but also when analysing them. We already have such a project in New York (the New York City Virus Hunters), and this is also set to become a pilot project in Vienna.
Bottom Lines
In the spirit of full disclosure, I met Florian Krammer once in autumn 2018 at the Austrian UN Embassy in NYC when I was a visiting professor at Columbia University.
We chatted nicely, as I recall, and if memory serves, he was quite clear about the dearth of research opportunities in Austria. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to ‘go home’, but in terms of career opportunities, this was a no-go (it still is, it’s an ongoing ‘problem’, and nothing will be done about it).
That said, if you read the above interview carefully, you note that the interviewer, the ORF’s Elke Ziegler, isn’t really good at what she does: there is so much that’s omitted, left unasked, or, esp. in the case of Prof. Krammer’s shilling for Big Pharma products, omission of crucial fact paired with obfuscation on part of the vaccinologist. I’m left asking myself if this was intentionally misleading (and here it doesn’t matter if it was Krammer or Ziegler who did so, or both) or ‘merely’ stunning levels of ignorance. Either way, it’s very problematic, I’d argue.
What I find ‘even’ more appalling is the re-writing of the Covid Pandemic’s history with respect to ‘vaccine’-induced ‘immunity’(sic) and the casual disregard for bodily autonomy, constitutional (natural) liberties, and the tyranny of esp. Covid Passports. Professor Krammer alleges that ‘everybody knew’ that these modRNA injections would not provide protection from infection, yet, to my knowledge neither Professor Krammer nor any other ‘expert™’ said so publicly in 2021. Shame on them.
Finally, let’s mention his absurd utterances concerning pandemics in general, past, present, and future. That the 1968 ‘influenza pandemic’ never ended is one thing, and to hold the same view on the 2009 ‘swine flu’ shitshow is even more appalling in light of Forbes Magazinereporting from 2016:
Why The WHO Faked A Pandemic
The World Health Organization has suddenly gone from crying “The sky is falling!” like a cackling Chicken Little to squealing like a stuck pig. The reason: charges that the agency deliberately fomented swine flu hysteria. “The world is going through a real pandemic. The description of it as a fake is wrong and irresponsible,” the agency claims on its Web site. A WHO spokesman declined to specify who or what gave this “description,” but the primary accuser is hard to ignore.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), a human rights watchdog, is publicly investigating the WHO’s motives in declaring a pandemic. Indeed, the chairman of its influential health committee, epidemiologist Wolfgang Wodarg, has declared that the “false pandemic” is “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century.”
Even within the agency, the director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Epidemiology in Munster, Germany, Dr. Ulrich Kiel, has essentially labeled the pandemic a hoax. “We are witnessing a gigantic misallocation of resources [$18 billion so far] in terms of public health,” he said.
They’re right. This wasn’t merely overcautiousness or simple misjudgment. The pandemic declaration and all the Klaxon-ringing since reflect sheer dishonesty motivated not by medical concerns but political ones.
Don’t forget the academic grifters and public health officialdom abusing such dishonest declarations to further their own importance.
For a particularly appalling example, I refer you to Dr. Preben Aavitsland, head of the infectious disease unit at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and in charge of the swine flu mass vaccination campaign:
As a bonus feature, here’s a bit of history from Wikipedia:
The predecessor to today's [Institute of Public Health] institute, Statens institutt for folkehelse (SIFF), was founded in 1929 following a donation of 1 million Norwegian kroner from the Rockefeller Foundation. The first director was Einar Aaser. However, the idea of a public institute to address population health issues was born fifty years before and the notion of governmental responsibility for public preventive measures even earlier.
We haven’t learned a thing since the ‘swine flu pandemic’ hoax, and as long as people like Professor Krammer are spewing such disingenuous nonsense, we won’t learn a thing.
JSM in Oct 2020: "SARS-CoV-2 is capable of re-infecting people who have already had the disease, but the frequency of re-infection is unknown...Furthermore, there is no evidence for lasting protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection".
FK now: "we saw right at the beginning: if you were infected, you remained protected from reinfection in the initial phase of the pandemic."
Please note the use of the word 'countermeasure.' This is military terminology.
Also, for Professor Krammer, the Plague of Justinian is not over! Wear a mask for the Plague of Justinian!
I imagine he is being paid well in his new position to promote all this fear. What a silly 'man.'
Krammer co-authored the John Snow Memorandum (https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(20)32153-X/fulltext), the mostly forgotten Covidian response to the Great Barrington Declaration. Let's compare and contrast.
JSM in Oct 2020: "SARS-CoV-2 is capable of re-infecting people who have already had the disease, but the frequency of re-infection is unknown...Furthermore, there is no evidence for lasting protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 following natural infection".
FK now: "we saw right at the beginning: if you were infected, you remained protected from reinfection in the initial phase of the pandemic."
Maybe some journalists could ask him about this.