The latest Covid Juice release is for sale in Germany as of Monday, and Health Minister Karl Lauterbach was first in line. There’s abundant evidence that he’s not a great fan of vaccination; he got his third dose in secret, well after the rest of the vaccinators, and his claims to have gotten a fourth are subject to considerable doubt. No matter: he’s learned from past mistakes, and while he’s denounced the “exorbitant” profits of vaccine manufacturers and called vaccine injuries “dismaying”, the Vaccinator Stand is the only booth still open at the Covid Circus, so Lauterbach has made himself the face of it. He turned 60 in February, so technically he counts as old and vulnerable enough to warrant a fifth (or a fourth) vaccination.
From Die Zeit:
[Lauterbach] has ruled out state virus measures despite rising infection statistics. Germany is “much better prepared”, he said, and there is additionally “broad immunity” in the population. “We don’t need any contact restrictions” …Voluntary masking is still advisable for those who are infected and cannot avoid social contacts, said Lars Schaade, the President of the Robert Koch Institute.
Lauterbach advises caution despite the lack of Government action. Corona is “not a cold”, and permanent damage – for example from Long Covid – remains a possibility. Lauterbach therefore recommends vaccination above all for people who are particularly at risk. “People over 60 years of age and risk groups should get vaccinated, preferably against influenza as well,” said the Minister.
In a separate piece timed to coincide with the rollout, Die Zeit called up a Bremen epidemiologist who says he expects masks to return to clinics and care homes, and who holds out hope for expanded vaccine recommendations in the course of the winter. I’m quite sure some care homes will once again impose inhumane mask requirements, but there’s no chance vaccine regulators will urge wider uptake. We’re in a long, slow process of deradicalisation, and that only runs in one direction.
On the Left, Tageszeitung (taz)– basically a cut-rate German Guardian – has already registered its displeasure that the vaccines are a) no longer free and b) no longer being urged on absolutely everybody:
It’s not so easy to stay healthy in Germany. Now that virtually all protective measures have been lifted, vaccination is also on the block. The Standing Commission on Vaccination (STIKO) couldn’t bring itself to recommend the booster for everyone. Now only certain, narrowly defined risk groups are allowed to be immunised… The rest will have to explain why they want to be vaccinated. …
What is more, because the health insurance companies hide behind the STIKO recommendation, you have to pay for the vaccination yourself. At a cost of probably just under €50 per jab. In view of the vaccination campaigns ‘Sleeves up’ (2021) and ‘Vaccination helps’ [2022], this is totally absurd. The Federal Ministry of Health spent €287 million and €38 million on these campaigns. The motto for 2023 would then rather be: “Well, let’s see.”
In the USA, the CDC recommends vaccination for all people over six months of age. From the very start of the pandemic, STIKO has acted with extreme hesitation and thus contributed to the general uncertainty. It’s partly responsible for the growing number of vaccine sceptics in Germany.
Indeed it’s interesting that the Health Ministry has so quickly forgotten its vaccination appeals from just last year. With a little more introspection, taz might’ve drawn some important conclusions from this curiosity. As for STIKO and vaccine hesitancy, I fear they’ve gotten it backwards. The regulators are plainly trying to preserve remaining public faith in vaccines by reining in their mass Covid jab campaigns.
Holger Schelp, Chairman of the General Practitioners’ Association in Bremen remarked to local media this morning that there will be no “great rush” for the new jabs, admitting that “interest is so low that many practices have not even ordered the vaccine”.
The official recommendation… is that everyone who is 60 or older, or who belongs to an at-risk group, should be vaccinated.
The evidence supporting this recommendation isn’t very strong though. It’s based on small numbers. We doctors don’t know how many people we’d have to vaccinate to prevent an infection, or how many we need to vaccinate to prevent a death. … I think that’s a bit embarrassing for a large-scale vaccination effort.
Most colleagues therefore tell their patients the official line, and then add unofficially that, in all honesty, there is no good knowledge about whether they should get vaccinated or not. Patients should therefore go with their gut feeling. We also don’t want to vaccinate anyone who might feel pressured to get the jab. We want them to say: “Yes, I need it.” Or to say with a clear conscience: “No, I’m sceptical, I’m not going to get vaccinated now.” (emphasis added)
That may not sound like much, but you need to remember that these are words from an important medical bureaucrat in the most heavily vaccinated German state.
This, then, is how it ends. All the Very Important Science People have been wrong about everything, which means that none of them can pull the plug on this farce. They’ll continue their doubtful performances, selling slightly updated versions of failed pharmaceutical products and making claims well in excess of the evidence to an ever shrinking audience of virus enthusiasts. These dead-enders will shriek that they’ve been abandoned; they’ll write long meandering columns full of hand-wringing about “crowded waiting rooms, trains, classrooms and offices”, pleading that we need more “hybrid teaching” and more vaccine outreach, all of it to a suddenly indifferent political class. With all eyes on the upcoming state elections in Bavaria and Hesse, nobody cares what they have to say. The major papers are closed to their fears, although virologically nothing has changed since last Fall, when Covid was dangerous enough to warrant lingering mask mandates and wall-to-wall vaccine marketing. Even virus fangirl Christina Berndt has been brought into line, penning mild vaccine FAQs for the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Forgotten is the Oktoberfest scaremongering to which she treated us just 12 months ago.
Covid was the original focus of the Plague Chronicle, and for that reason it will always be an important theme of this blog – but as political stories go, this one has played out. For lockdowns and mass vaccination to come back, they’ll need a new virus. I have no doubt at all that they’re already looking for one.
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He’s going to be barred from standing in any future election, so this is irrelevant.
There won’t be any future elections.
The way things are going I wouldn’t be surprised!
But it will help prevent the spread of ‘the virus’, so it’s perfectly OK.
Quite so. As I said yesterday, what really worries me is what happens when someone competent, hard-working and dominating gets into his shoes. Inevitably, it is the very worst people, with zero empathy or care for others, who get to the top and, in an increasingly totalitarian world, that will include Hitlers and Stalins. Bad enough now, but we ain’t seen nothing yet!!
You can mark Matt Hancock down for that. He thinks he’s saved the country.
All hail King Matt.
You seem to be suggesting that Johnson is harmless. Even if that were true he has cleared the ground, got rid of the Overton window and made it clear that anything is possible to dictator.
That has already happened, Gove is the man in power. Boris is just the puppet.
ok i’ll bite.. why not?
Killed far more people (+millions in the 3rd world) through lockdowns and making the NHS a Covid only ‘service’ for 9 months (as the sole government in the world), than were killed through and with Covid- a number which we increased significantly through our reckless policy of sending people from hospitals into nursing homes untested, and by censoring, diffamating, manipulating and withholding data on the cheap, effective, safe and available treatments for Covid and those treatments themselves, and, possibly, by coercing people en masse into getting only rushed gene therapies instead.
This was inspired by Leonardo Conti and Josef Mengele, of course.
Stats from the Care Quality Commission show 3 out of 5 deaths from Covid last year were disabled folk with illegal DNR’s slapped on them; can’t remember what percentage (high) of those were people with learning difficulties. Sounds pretty Mengele to me!
Did Prince Philip die with or from covid? Or is he the only person to die on Britain for over a year by natural causes
Vaccine….
Yes. He had recently had the vaccine. We should keep an eye on ma’am, as she had it at the same time.
espec if she still has to get second dose and is also heartbroken at loss of husband – could soon be a case of all hail King Charles
The crucial question, though, is when lockdowns return. The local elections 6 May, G7 11-13 June and then the big one, Mr Johnson’s wedding in July, mean that restrictions will be mainly dropped to accommodate the Govt’s real priorities. But after that? The ‘return’ of ‘flu, the Ruritanian variant and climate change targets will have us slammed down from next Oct, I believe.
I have wondered if Mr Johnson is fully aware of the nature of his fiancée, and is dragging this out due to dread of telling her that the wedding is off, and sod the rest of us.
I often wonder if she was planted.
Unlikely that she was planted, as he’s the vegetable.
I have often cheekily wondered if the ban on weddings has not been convenient for him.
No. I think the Azerbaijan variant is the really dangerous one to watch – but not until after the wedding, obviously.
Only if we, along with the rest of Europe, allow them to get away with it.
Johnson has always had a reputation for fickleness and unreliability, but his transformation from fun-loving libertarian to joyless woke authoritarian is beyond parody. I’ll be voting for an anti-lockdown candidate in the forthcoming local elections; and if no such candidate is standing, I’ll simply spoil the ballot paper.
My wife spoke to someone today who is convinced that he has been killed 4 years ago already and been replaced with a Doppelgänger…
As good an explanation as any.
Is Wilfred real? The original pictures weren’t very convincing to be honest.
Me too.
Shouldn’t that be Boris Rong Un?
Kim Jong Johnson
Never voting Tory again … I just might be persuaded to change my mind if Boris is removed and given a lengthy prison sentence along with his entire cabinet and then replaced with someone like Sir Charles Walker maybe … who seems to be genuine enough and share my concerns about the governments tyrannical response to covid19 and the removal of our freedoms and liberty in this country since March last year … the problem I have though is that I also trusted Boris Johnston once upon a time to be a guardian of our freedoms and liberties only for him to do a complete about turn and transform himself into a cross between Caroline Lucas and Pol Pot. That is my fear about voting for any Tory candidate again – they all seem to change their tune once they get into power drop their conservatism and become Blairites instead
If there is an anti-lockdown candidate in the area (Reclaim, Reform whatever) they will definitely get my vote otherwise my ballot paper gets spoiled.
Me too; been a Tory voter for 50 years but never ever again! Still have to pinch myself some mornings when I wake up to believe that a Tory Government had reduced us to that of a totalitarian police state.
How many female Tory MPs claim to be huge Margaret Thatcher fans only to turn into Yvette Cooper as soon as they are elected?
I can trace my falling out with the conservative party to 1995 when John Redwood lost his leadership battle with John Major. Redwood’s always been a voice of sense and reason and he’s currently on the right side of this issue. Like you I will never vote for them again and regret lending them my vote this time around.
And still they clap.
To be fair to Fat Boy (the younger one), he doesn’t really pretend that he cares about people, so he has the virtue of (murderous) honesty compared to the Fat Man.
The latest polls suggest there enough ‘savients’ willing to give him everlasting leadership.
Polls are often wrong.
Brexit.
Donald Trump…
Dr Naomi Wolf on Vaccine Passports and why they Equal Slavery – The Daily Clout
https://theduran.com/dr-naomi-wolf-on-vaccine-passports-and-why-they-equal-slavery-the-daily-clout/
Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday 10am meet fellow lockdown sceptics
He forgot: Joe Stalin Biden
That one’s most devoted adherent is Little Wrinkly Tortoise Would-Be Josef Stalin Drakeford.
How can so many still support Johnson’s government?! Deranged idiots, the lot of them! Voting for an anti-lockdown party or spoiling your ballot paper is the ONLY rational thing to do.
What a brilliant summary of Boris’ complete and utter destruction of this country. Retweet, Facebook, telegram to every friend and/or enemy. Help get the word out.
Can you count on my vote? No Chance!
Wow, what great article. Puts into stark perspective the damage this country needs to face up to if we are to ever recover real control if our lives
Very apt article. I think we could all add to it.
Time to give the despot a bloody nose at the election box people.
I might cast a futile vote for the Liberal Democrats now they have belatedly started to remember that the name of their party means something.
I enjoyed reading this but will correct you on a Constitutional point.
The Constitution is The English Constitution, most recently affirmed in The 1689 Bill of Rights. A British Constitution has NEVER existed. The English Constitution gives us inalienable Rights. Those Rights have been and continue to be subverted by The British State.
Kim Jong Johnson is a better name but that’s the only quibble.
Johnson and his infandous cabal remind me of the Spitting Image’ sketch with Margaret Thatcher ordering. ‘What about the vegetables? They’ll have the same as me’.