The recent publication of thousands of pages of minutes of the COVID-19 “crisis team” of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI) has caused a buzz in social and even some traditional media, since they appear to show that the German Government decided on many of the most draconian lockdown and containment measures for which the country became known against the scientific advice of its own public health authority. Germans were, for instance, obliged to wear not just any old masks but nothing less than high-filtration FFP2 masks, even though the minutes contain numerous warnings that wearing FFP2 masks is only appropriate for qualified medical personnel for short periods of time and that sustained use by the general public could even be dangerous.
But if Germany went into a hard lockdown – including schools closures, shop closures and a ban on public gatherings – without any scientific justification, the obvious question is: why? Paul Schreyer is the Co-Editor of the German online magazine Multipolar, and it was his freedom of information request which would lead the RKI ultimately to release the documents, albeit in heavily redacted form.
It should be noted that the RKI turned over the documents to Multipolar of its own accord. Contrary to what has been widely reported, it was not ordered by any court to do so, although Multipolar speculates that it took the “surprising” decision in order to avoid a court order. It should also be noted that on the magazine’s own account, the RKI turned over the documents not two weeks ago, but in April 2023. So, Multipolar had the documents for nearly a full year before making them publicly available.
Schreyer suggests that even the RKI’s March 2020 decision to “upscale” its assessment of the risk represented by COVID-19 from “moderate” to “high” was made under political pressure and had no scientific justification. That decision was announced by then RKI president Lothar Wieler on March 17th and would, as Schreyer says, serve as the basis for all the subsequent lockdown measures. Angela Merkel would announce radical nationwide measures on March 22nd. But, Schreyer argues, if the number of Covid ‘cases’ did indeed triple in Germany in March 2020, this may only be because the number of Covid tests being administered tripled as well.
If there was political pressure, however, where did it come from? Schreyer alludes to external sources. The usual suspects, as it were: Bill Gates, what he calls the “U.S. pandemic-management scene” and the WHO.
The suspected vector of U.S. influence is one Heiko Rottmann-Großner, a German Ministry of Health official “with excellent contacts to the U.S. pandemic-management scene”, as Schreyer puts it. His only evidence of these “excellent contacts” is Rottmann-Großner’s participation in a one-day pandemic preparedness exercise which was held in Munich in February 2019 under the auspices of an American NGO. But given that the exercise was held in conjunction with that year’s Munich Security Conference, the annual transatlantic security pow-wow which is sponsored by the German Government, it would have been extremely surprising if a representative of the latter had not been invited.
Indeed, none other than the Robert Koch Institute even plays a starring role in the fictional scenario on which the exercise was based, as can be seen here. It is the RKI which discovers that the ‘plague strain’ which is spreading across the world and has shut down global travel was… wait for it… genetically engineered! This must have been flattering for then RKI President Lothar Wieler, who, though not mentioned in the programme, was also present at the exercise, as pictorial evidence uncovered by Schreyer shows.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been one of many both private and public supporters of NTI, the NGO which hosted the exercise at the Munich Security Conference. For what it is worth, the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Global Affairs Canada) funded the exercise.
But, in any case, Heiko Rottmann-Großner is precisely a German Government official – and one of longstanding to boot. As Schreyer notes, he was already the Chief of Staff of then-Minister of Health Hermann Gröhe in Angela Merkel’s third Government from 2013 to 2018.
It was Gröhe’s ministry, incidentally, which sponsored the symposium which brought together Germany’s ‘star virologist’ Christian Drosten and the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s star bat coronavirus researcher Shi Zhengli – as well as many other luminaries of the German and Chinese virology scenes – in Berlin in 2015. (See my articles here and here.)
When Gröhe was replaced as Health Minister by Jens Spahn in Merkel’s fourth Government in 2018, Rottmann-Großner would stay on in the ministry as head of its “health security” subdivision. He continues to hold this position today under Spahn’s successor Karl Lauterbach. It would prove to be, as Schreyer says, “a key position in the Corona crisis”.
According to one would-be insider account of the German Government’s Covid crisis management, which is cited by Schreyer, Rottmann-Großner was calling for a hard lockdown already on February 24th 2020, at a time when the RKI still assessed the risk from Covid as “low”. He would turn up in a more conspicuously public role in September of last year when the Ministry of Health sent him to serve as Lothar Wieler’s ‘minder’ during the former RKI chief’s testimony on the Covid response in the regional parliament of Brandenburg.
It thus appears clear that Rottmann-Großner has played an important and eminently political role in the context of Germany’s COVID-19 response. He has, incidentally, no medical or scientific background, but merely a BA in politics and economics. Much the same could be said of his boss during the Covid years, then-Health Minister Jens Spahn, whose highest degree obtained is an MA in politics.
But just why Rottmann-Großner should be suspected of having represented anything other than German interests in this connection is anybody’s guess.
And what about the WHO? Schreyer writes that at the same time as Rottman-Großner was calling for more radical containment measures in internal German Government deliberations in February, the WHO was also increasing the pressure. Schreyer says that it would increase the pressure even further following its March 11th pandemic declaration, even though, per the RKI’s assessment, the epidemiological situation in Germany had not changed.
But was it really the WHO which was exerting pressure on Germany and not rather Germany which was exerting pressure on the WHO? Indeed, in those early months of 2020 was it even possible to distinguish between the two?
Here are a few facts about the relationship between the WHO and Germany which Schreyer does not mention.
Firstly, in 2020, Germany virtually overnight became the top funder of the WHO: a position which it would maintain throughout the official pandemic years. More importantly and more to the point, it would be far-and-away the top funder of the WHO’s COVID-19 response. If in 2020 German funding alone represented nearly one-third of the WHO COVID-19 response budget, in 2021 it would rise to nearly 40% and the combined contribution of Germany and the German-dominated EU, under the leadership of former German Minister of Defence Ursula von der Leyen, would represent almost half the budget. (It may well have been more than half, since in 2021 a conspicuously large portion of the response budget is listed as coming from “miscellaneous” sources.) No other country’s contribution even came close. The USA, for instance, only provided around one tenth of the German total. The Gates Foundation, whose supposed influence has received far greater attention, provided veritable peanuts by comparison, representing less than 1% of the total budget or around one fiftieth of the German contribution. (For exact figures and a discussion, See my ‘Gates or Germany? Who “Owns” the WHO’s Covid-19 Response?‘)
The Chef de Cabinet of WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in this period was the German epidemiologist – and current German Foreign Office official – Bernhard Schwartländer. Believe it or not, before becoming Tedros’s Chef de Cabinet in July 2017, just a year and a half before the official start-date of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, Schwartländer had been none other than the WHO representative in China. He presently holds the title of “Global Health Envoy” in the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Astonishingly, per his X profile, as seen below, and other documentary evidence (here and here), Germany’s “Global Health Envoy” is based at the German embassy in Beijing.
When, for instance, in late January and early February 2020, Anthony Fauci, Jeremy Farrar and other Anglosphere scientists and public health officials became concerned by signs that SARS-CoV-2 may have been genetically-engineered and wanted the WHO to lead an investigation into its origins, it was to “Tedros and Bernhard” that they appealed, as the below FOI’d e-mail makes clear.
“Tedros and Bernhard” would indeed assemble a team to investigate the origins of the virus. Its much-maligned investigation would dismiss the possibility of a lab-origin out-of-hand, focusing almost exclusively on possible zoonotic origins.
The presence of Peter Daszak of the U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance in the investigation team has drawn a great deal of comment from English-speaking observers. But the team also included Marion Koopmans: the Dutch virologist whose close association with the German PCR-protocol designer Christian Drosten I have discussed here.
More to the point, it also included an official of none other than Germany’s Robert Koch Institute. The RKI member of the team was Fabian Leendertz, a veterinarian and then head of the RKI’s “Epidemiology of Highly Pathogenic Microorganisms” research group. He is presently the Director of the newly-founded Helmholtz Institute for One Health in Greifswald.
This brings us back to Leendertz’s then-boss at the RKI, Lothar Wieler. Like Leendertz, Wieler is a veterinarian. Like Leendertz, he is a proponent of the “One Health” approach to public health, which places emphasis precisely on the risks for human health originating from the animal kingdom.
As Schreyer knows (because he has touched upon it here), in the period in question no other public health official in the world had better connections to the WHO, namely because Wieler was in fact himself a key player at the WHO. As documented in the below excerpt from his current CV on the website of the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina), Wieler was serving as a member of no less than three WHO committees and as the Chair or Co-Chair of two of them.
Most importantly in the present connection, he chaired the committee charged with reviewing the WHO’s International Health Regulations in light of the COVID-19 Response. The revision of the International Health Regulations has formed part of the same process as the more highly publicised ‘Pandemic Treaty’, which, incidentally, as I show in my article here, Germany has also spearheaded.
As detailed in the same article, the WHO ‘Pandemic Hub’, which was inaugurated in Berlin in September 2021, is nothing less than a full-fledged joint-venture between the WHO and Germany’s Robert Koch Institute. The hub was created with $100 million in funding from the German Government, and the Charité University Hospital of one Christian Drosten is also a partner.
And, finally, we should not forget the aforementioned Christian Drosten. The WHO would famously adopt Drosten’s PCR protocol as the ‘gold standard’ in Covid testing. Even before the protocol had been ‘validated’ by the EU-funded journal Eurosurveillance in an infamous 24-hour “peer review”, the WHO had already published two earlier versions of Drosten’s protocol on its website. Astonishingly, the earliest version is dated January 13th 2020, i.e., just two weeks after the first official reports of the illness in Wuhan. (Some have questioned whether it was also published that day, but, in any case, as a reference in another Eurosurveillance article shows, it was accessible on the WHO website by January 17th at the latest.)
As the below excerpt from March 9th 2020 correspondence between the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the WHO makes clear, by early March the WHO was shipping hundreds of thousands of PCR test kits manufactured by Berlin-based TIB Molbiol. TIB Molbiol is the company of Drosten-collaborator and PCR-protocol co-author Olfert Landt.
Why was the WHO in such a hurry to adopt the notoriously over-sensitive Drosten-Landt test? Could the hundreds of millions of euros which Germany would start pouring into the organisation have had something to do with it?
But what interest could the German Government possibly have had in exaggerating the threat represented by COVID-19? Well, this would be blindingly obvious were it not for three years of incessantly saying “Pfizer” when the actual owner and legal manufacturer of the mRNA vaccine which was the cornerstone of the response to the threat is the German firm BioNTech. As I already showed in detail in my first article on the subject in November 2021, the German Government had long been BioNTech’s state sponsor and would directly sponsor its vaccine candidate.
Even if others may somehow remain befuddled about just whose drug the so-called vaccine really is, in Germany, at any rate, there has never been any doubt. “Invented in Germany, made in Germany”, then German Minister of Health Jens Spahn would say proudly during the inauguration of BioNTech’s mRNA manufacturing facility in Marburg on April 1st 2021.
Indeed, as Spahn noted to in his speech, not just one but two of the three mRNA companies which had been in the running to produce a COVID-19 vaccine were German, the other being CureVac. Both were sponsored by the German Government. The German Government would even directly invest in CureVac in June 2020, thus ensuring the company’s continued existence in case its vaccine candidate did not get the nod – which is exactly what came to pass.
The BioNTech facility in Marburg, Spahn continued, would be a “starting point for the Federal Republic [of Germany] as a whole” – these were his exact words – namely, for making the country into what he called a “vaccine hub”. “We would like to become an mRNA hub… for the world and for Europe,” Spahn said unabashedly – sounding more like a Minister of the Economy than a Minister of Health.
Spahn fondly recalled his first meeting with BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin “around 12 months ago” and their discussing how the German Government could support the company’s vaccine project. Around 12 months ago? Well, that would take us back to precisely the time when the RKI, according to Schreyer, was raising its assessment of the COVID-19 threat level without scientific justification, based merely upon ramped-up PCR-testing.
Was all of Germany turned into a stage for Covid theatre, with 80 million Germans forced into the role of extras, all in order to help realise the “dream” (as Jürgen Kirchner has put it) of “vaccine hub Germany”?
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As news of Mr Anderson’s defection to Reform spread throughout Westminster on Monday morning, one senior Tory backbencher captured the mood by saying that “disbelief is the feeling amongst colleagues.”
Disbelief? Are they seriously surprised by this? What on earth did they expect? Can they really be that dim?
The answer to your last question Tof, is yes.
Dim. Arrogant. So used to getting things their way that they can’t ever envisage not getting things their way.
MPs are expected to put their careers above everything else and joining a dissident right-wing party instead of groveling in one’s waste products (a quote from a 1980s computer game called Starflight) is certainly a career-killing move, hence, disbelief.
Reform is “a dissident right-wing party?”
Sadly, it is not. Middle of the road possibly.
Let’s celebrate our pride in being British: our amazing culture, our unbreakable communities, our incredible heritage.
A statement like this, made in German by a German party, would be sufficient to be branded as arch-nazi by everyone commanding a public voice and to start initial investigations for extreme-right-wing-isms by the Federal Office for Protecting the Constitution (inland secret service). Things aren’t yet as bad on the UK but that’s where the journey is supposed to go to (Gove’s undermining of liberal democracy etc).
Sensible people would describe Reform as traditional centre-right party seeking to occupy the spot the Tories are supposed to be occupy. To career blobsters, that’s far more far right than anything should legally allowed to be. After all, the party is planning a thermageddon genocide of all of mankind by keeping to burn oil, coal and gas.
Stalking horse, pressure valve. I think Reform could be okay, but not under Tice, he’s not the right person, wrong on too many issues. He’s pro mRNA, pro “Covid” measures, pro Net Zero, not calling for peace in Russia v Ukraine so possibly a Neocon warmonger.
Similarly, Lee Anderson is wrong on many issues. And, if we’re being honest Farage.
Farage delivered Brexit, but on many issues he’s equally wrong headed.
I can’t say anything about the other topics, but Reform certainly calls for everything-Net-Zero to be scrapped.
Okay, happy to concede that point, if that is the case. But he was awful regards all things “Covid” and was very pro “vax”.
Someone believing the mRNA injections “might” be useful for the elderly and chronically ill, could be forgiven for being swept along by the all pervasive hysteria, but to suggest mandating, vaccine passports and ignoring the concept of “informed consent” or just “refusal for any reason” is unacceptable and unforgivable.
Yes times were tough in the first couple of years (at least), but some of us had the fortitude and insight to see this was all a massive con and betrayal by those in “charge”. We were betrayed by the people we should have been able to trust and rely on, and Tice and his ilk did not stand up and be counted, despite being offered a very powerful opportunity.
Tice is probably controlled opposition – sadly! Sadly because we need someone genuine, principled, committed and on the side of freedom, rights, truth, with integrity and morality.
The way Reform are polling, they have real potential, not in 1st past the post, but if more do what Lee Anderson has done!
Forcing young girls, who just want to dance, to have vaccines almost certain to mean increased still births, miscarriages, disabled children, infertility. Remember the vaccines still on emergency approval only. Revolting, disgusting.
RICHARD TICE, 19 JULY 2020.
Yes, I’ve heard Tice say that on a number of occasions
They do call for Net Zero to be scrapped. But to do that they will have an almighty battle on their hands against the huge Climate Industrial Complex. ——-I am all for this battle but it is going to be like Kursk on speed
Yes, except his excellent policy of “Net Zero Migration”.
Not their ‘net zero’ migration policy they don’t!
And the candidate they put up in the ‘Groomers of Young White Girls ‘R’ Us’ Rochdale by-election of all places, was a former Labour MP done for sending creepy messages to Young Girls.
Reform needs to up its game considerably and relegate Tice to a back seat behind Nigel.
I pretty much agree with you kev. On all of it.
Lukewarm as my support for Reform is (their net zero migration policy ‘one out, one in’ is ludicrous), if they manage to get even a small wrecking ball to knock the Uniparty skittle drones into disarray, that will be a start.
“Can they really be that dim?”
Oh yes indeed they can and are.
I have the feeling that career politicians feel that if they all swarm around the middle ground it will simply be a question of what bunch of wimps to vote for. They all want to sell the basic stuff like bread butter and milk, because they don’t seem to think the public want anything else. —-I can assure the silly Tories that if they think they are better off just being Labour Lite then they will have no identity anymore.
At last! Just what is needed, now come Nigel join in
And maybe even Andrew Brigden?!
Nigel’s doing a sterling job on GB News …. and I expect his priority is doing whatever he can to help get Trump back in the White House.
That’s great news! Now, Andrew Bridgen, you, too.
Bridgen won’t join Reform because Tice is so wrong on everything “Covid” related. Tice is wrong on a lot of things! So is Farage, sadly!
No, it is you who are wrong, apparently because you haven’t taken time to actually read the Reform policies on their website, or looked up any quotes from Richard Tice, like this one:
“Forcing young girls, who just want to dance, to have vaccines almost certain to mean increased still births, miscarriages, disabled children, infertility. Remember the vaccines still on emergency approval only. Revolting, disgusting.”
RICHARD TICE, 19 JULY 2020.
Lee was wasted in Sunak’s party because there was no place for him. He’s a conservative.
Stout fellow!
True, he was like a trumpet with a wah wah stuck in the end, now he can really let rip!
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/irish-voters-i-salute-you/
Laura Perrins rubbing the Irish establishments noses in their gruesome defeat over a revised Constitution.
Sometimes, just sometimes the plebs do the right thing.
Marvellous.
Now let’s have a referendum on immigration and net zero (yer right, more chance of walking on Mars!)
The problem is we had a referendum, and the blob have spent the last 6 years trying to dilute and destroy what the majority voted for.
We even have a second bercow!
Quite a few column inches (to use the old term) on GBN this lunchtime on that. Having been around for a while, the whole affair reminded me of the formation of the SDP in the early 1980s, when Labour broke apart.
Labour may well break apart again as George G is very keen to stand more candidates & could well take 20 or more seats from them.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/anti-semitic-londons-echoes-of-1930s-berlin/
Londonistan.
This is what you get when somebody with no allegiance to this country is allowed to become Mayor.
I don’t know how the establishment sleeps at night – traitors all.
There were no Arabs shouting anything in “1930s Berlin” and the Arabs currently shouting something in London aren’t burning books written by German communists and communism supporters and other beneficiaries or proponents of the Versailles treaty and the Weimar republic/ system it begat. This (the article) is nothing but another clumsy (very clumsy, actually, as the related events aren’t even superficially similar) to repurpose well-established anti-German stereotypes for supporting the present policy of the government of Israel.
Did we know this? I didn’t know this. Smells like appeasement again, it’s getting way too familiar a stench methinks;
”More than £117m of taxpayers’ money will be used to protect mosques, Muslim schools and community centres from hate attacks over the next four years.
Home Secretary James Cleverly said the money, which will be spent on measures including CCTV cameras, alarms and fencing, would give “reassurance and confidence to UK Muslims”. The announcement, which follows a £70m package for Jewish groups, comes in response to concerns that the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza is fuelling division in the UK.
The Government condemned a recent rise in reported anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish hatred and ministers have made it clear they expect the police to fully investigate all hate crimes and work with the Crown Prosecution Service to bring perpetrators to justice.
Mr Cleverly said: “Anti-Muslim hatred has absolutely no place in our society. We will not let events in the Middle East be used as an excuse to justify abuse against British Muslims.
“The Prime Minister has made clear that we stand with Muslims in the UK. That is exactly why we have committed to this funding, giving reassurance and confidence to UK Muslims at a time when it is crucially needed.”
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/government-commits-more-117m-protect-28792057
Not that we need any further confirmation of who the Met police favour and give preferential treatment to. We all know who the perma-victims are. So does this mean we can expect zero ‘incidents’ perpetrated by a certain not insignificant section of society now that we’ve entered the ‘peaceful’ month-long Ramadan festival?
https://twitter.com/blonschki/status/1767134772155822437
Go Go Go ———–Thanks for your great contributions. I am going to have to create a new Twitter account to see all the links you post as my last one seems to have bitten the dust. —-cheers.
Cheers, Varmint.
It’s nice to be nice.
Are the front bench idiots doing anything to protect the rightful people of this country whose forefathers and mothers suffered, shed blood and died in numerous wars over centuries against would-be invaders and dictators to keep this country safe and free?
No, they would rather appease the izlamists by spending our taxes protecting jihadis who would like to murder us, & on idealogues who plot to outnumber us, sabotage our society by using democracy against us and turn the UK into the kind of 3rd world izlamic ****hole they came from.
Vile traitors sit in Westminster.
The Tories then have given up being right of centre and have morphed into just another hand wringing bunch of Liberal Progressive wimps. ——–What we do not want though is for Reform to become the rabble rouser party, we still need to make cohesive and sophisticated arguments. —-I say “we” because I now have no choice but to abandon the former conservatives known as Tories and vote for the only right of centre party now available.
QuoteLee Anderson Defects from Globalist Uniparty 1 to Intelligence Agency Outfit.
There, fixed it for you.
Are Reform becoming the GB News of Politics ? Tice backed the Jabs at one point & now word up is that Anderson did too ? + they don’t seem to back Bridgen !
Whoever vetted this chap, should be ashamed. He is not a benefit to anyone’s party. For the simple reason, he believes the covid
saved millions of lives.
I raised this & got a downtick for my trouble
I mentioned this a couple of days ago. For his position on the jibby’s he is suss.
That’s a belief he probably shares with the overwhelming majority of the population who got jabbed because they were told it was the right thing to do and who don’t want to admit – at least not publically – that all they really did was saddle themselves with an avoidable health risk for pharma industry profits and with the ultimate outcome that the covaxxes ceased to be bestselling product because everybody (almost) got tired of being pricked with needles and thus, restarted living in this germ-ridden world as if the pandemic of Corona madness had never occurred. It’s futile to demand perfection from people.
A competent leader uses the wise man, the brave man, the avaricious man and the stupid man. The wise man wants to distinguish himself, the brave man wants to prove his courage by fighting, the avaricious man seeks his own benefit and the stupid man doesn’t fear death.
[Sun Tsu, The Art of War]
Apparently the Party Grandees are planning to fight back by deploying Lord Dave of Greenshill Lobbying and the Fat Oaf on the campaign trail. If they can get the knives out of each other’s and Sunak’s back first, of course.
Now I agree that for some strange reason, the Fat Oaf does seem to appeal to many working class voters. But the Greenshill grifter ….. words fail me.
Do you mean Bunter ? The Booster blaring 80 Seat majority Chunt !!!
We seem to be gearing up to enforce a PR system onto the Westminster Uni Party, which is desperate to keep FPTP ….. with Reform snapping at the heels of the Not-a-Conservative-Party and Galloway gearing up to inflict some serious damage on Fabian-Labour.
Jolly Dee ….
That’s not really a good idea. PR systems cement the division of people instead of representing their unity and invariably lead to professional particians putting the interest of their party above everything else.
One of the reasons why the first world-war was terminated by a revolution in Germany is that particians of the largest party (the SPD) didn’t think, and very much rightly so, it wouldn’t be in the best interest of their own party if the war ended with a German victory or even just with amiable peace negotiations among the warring powers. This caused millions of people to get killed or be driven from their homes (there’s really only one world-war with 20 years of an uneasy armistice in between) but to this day, the SPD is a major, if not the major political force in whatever remains of German it currently controls.
From the standpoint of the SPD, this was absolutely the right strategy and the sacrifces fell mostly onto others.