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”?
Robert Kogon is the pen name of a widely-published journalist covering European affairs. Subscribe to his Substack.
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It’s good that the DS is getting attention from mainstream sources and that they are driven to increasingly desperate measures. It means a nerve has been hit.
In answer to the question in the title of this article, which I suppose may be rhetorical, I think “never” or “when we win the war” are probable answers.
“Both Reuters and USA Today”
Well that is good news because there might be some remnants of their readership still in possession of marginally functioning brains who may decide that the DS articles are “worth reading in full” for themselves.
I think it is vitally important that DS continues to challenge these myths around climate ‘change’ and so called anthropogenic global warning because the subjects are inextricably linked to the reset / Agenda 2030.
Plain old common sense tells me that a trace gas comprising just 0.04% of the earth’s atmosphere cannot possibly alter climate and planetary temperatures in the way ascribed.
The same common sense tells me that even reducing our so-called Co2 emissions by 50% – see what I did there – from 1% to 0.5% of global emissions, will make bugger all difference to the world’s weather.
The science is settled for me – climate changes and always will do and there is naff all we should be doing about it.
Actually wasn’t climate change / global warming an agreed fictional construct dating from the inception of the Club of Rome and intended simply to invoke and maintain a fear narrative in the proletariat?
Climate change is almost a contradiction because change is inherent in any climate.
Man-made global warming is sheer and utter bullshit designed for thickos and sheep.
Many years ago I used to work for Reuters. Then it was a highly respected and impartial news organisation and I was proud to be an employee.
I find it sad that it has degenerated into just another Globalist Propagandist.
Total atmospheric Co2 = 0.04%. 4% of that is anthropogenic. 1% of that is UK. That’s the UK producing 0.00001% of global Co2.
Where we live our mayor apparently think Co2 is the greatest threat facing Greater Manchester. Divided by the population, this means if we believe what he says, Andy Burnham is bravely fighting 0.0000006% of a gaseous plant food that keeps everything on this planet alive.
Some Russian cosmonauts have said you can smell Andy Burnham’s bullshit from space.
Burnham is a proper See You Next Tuesday Warrior. We even have to tolerate him in Saddleworth. Utter evil.
Has Burnham been on some of those trams (I hear some supporters of the congestion charge try to avoid them)?
Burnham is bringing in pollution charges July 2023. Ten (£10) per day for commercial vehicles. Funnily enough no parts of Greater Manchester have ‘pollution’ levels exceeding their arbitrary limits. The charge was supposed to be installed this Summer but he put it off for a consultation – yeah right.
As usual the party of the working classes is working hardest at crucifying the….erm…working man.
Glad we’ve sorted that out.
I wonder if they’d still lose a referendum on charges?
“The people have spoken – the bastards”.
While I certainly don’t buy the narrative of “catastrophic man-made climate change”, my understanding is that man’s share of atmospheric Co2 is a lot higher than 4%. From around 1850 to the present day, co2 in the atmosphere has risen from 280 ppm (0.028%) to 410 ppm (0.041%), with all or most of the increase being due to fossil fuel usage. Which would suggest man’s share being nearer 30%.
You may be right, but 30% sounds unlikely. Some references are needed! Then we can talk.
They aren’t fact checkers, they are narrative enforcers for the regime, similar to the SS or the ministry of internal affairs in the Soviet Union. Understand these ppl are not interested in the truth, they seek absolute control are evil and deserve no benefit of any doubt.
Politicians and scientists have long had this symbiotic relationship. The government needs to make policy and if it can show that the “science” supports that policy then they can always come back later and say we were only taking the advice of the “scientists”. Scientists need to pay their mortgage and feed their family and if government want to pay them money to look for a purple horse, they are not likely to be in a big hurry to report back that they can’t find any. ——So what we end with isn’t “science”. It is “Official Science”. It is science in support of public policy or “consensus science”. It takes a very brave scientist to question dogma that he suspects might not be the whole truth or is only partially true, or is a pack of blatant lies, for he will simply be replaced. The role of scientists should not be to hide the many uncertainties so that a negotiated consensus can be presented as the “science”. Many governments now have a “Chief Scientist”, but this is so obviously simply to provide a veneer of scientific respectability to pronouncements about public policy. But “climate change” is not just a scientific issue. It is an economic moral and social one. Governments really must balance cost with benefit of policies, and we can see with NET ZERO that not one single question as to cost/ benefit was asked by any politician of any major party. They put ideology and dogma first and people last.
To answer the question posed in the headline – NEVER
Chris thank you for your diligence, much appreciated.
Environmentalism and its sub-cult Climatism is a religious movement. Religions have no facts they have only dogma. Any who do not accept, or challenge or disobey this are heretics and anathema. They must be cast out, their books burned, denied public discourse.
This is not an intellectual argument, or genuine scientific enquiry and the scepticism inherent in that. Climatism is therefore unfalsifiable, just like the existence of God, no evidence, no logic or reason can change the minds of the zealots.
Science, just like religion, has both an evidence-based aspect and a faith-based aspect. All of the world’s religions, for example, have scriptures that form the basis of their practise and belief systems. Much of the content of the scriptures, for example the Bible, can backed up with reference to historical documents, providing evidence that events chronicled in the scriptures actually did happen, albeit perhaps not precisely in the way penned by the original scribes in the language of their time.
However, a large portion of religious scriptures is also open to interpretation, and it is the job of the religious scholar to apply their interpretations in the most meaningful way they can.
Similarly, taking climate science as the most pertinent example here, while we are literally “drowning” in hard data providing evidence that the climate is changing, and that atmospheric CO2 is changing and has changed constantly since an atmosphere came into existence, the faith-based aspect of this science is whether or not we are to blame for the climate and atmospheric conditions; whether or not what is happening currently is net-destructive compared with similar weather events in that past; and whether or not the steps we take to “mitigate climate change” will make any difference to the future of the climate.
In my opinion, an interpretation of data should never be used to inform public policy. For example, moratoria on fracking, curbing investment in fossil-fuel energy production and committing to net zero by 2050, are ALL based on an interpretation leading to a perceived consensus, where even this “consensus” itself is an interpretation of the balance of scientific opinion!
Well said Mr Morrison and please keep saying it.
It’s when you’re over the target that the flak is greatest.
I set up a WhatsApp group with a couple of old university friends about four years ago. Just the three of us. One of them – nameless, obviously – is the Reuters Bureau Desk Chief for Blank Blank. I adore him because, well, he’s one of my many very successful old friends and has helped me out over the years (problems, problems…). We have much in common when talking about music, for instance. And humour. By contrast, I’m nobody and have done nothing of note. But OMG he talks s**t on a variety of subjects. I’ve not yet confronted him with the old Gates/WEF/Conflict of Interest stuff (amply evidenced by many researches I’ve indulged in), and I actually hope I’m never brought to that pitch. But it’s all very trying; despite an old mates’ agreement that we’ll never post in our group anything other than Derek & Clive references and comments on books, music and other pretentious stuff, he will Not Stop posting stuff which to say the least he knows will, er, get my attention. I’m a small-c conservative, he’s a raging leftie. We get by, but only because I don’t lay out my wares, as it were, for him to bloody well think about. As I say, I love him, but he’s a stupid t**t.
Yes, I understand that one well. It’s hard to sometimes share with friends who are on a different trajectory, have fixed ideas about things and think they know what is happening. For the sake of the friendship, you keep schtum, don’t make waves and go along with all the superficial stuff that the friendship is based on. I’ve found that such friendships get stretched over time and that I now have found new friends from the people I know who are switched on and who share my viewpoints. I do keep a lifeline open to old friends but it is no longer so important to me and I’m not bothered about ‘missing out’ – I’m just doing my thing and am forging a new creative life for myself and making friends of all different types, connecting with like-minded souls and other people who I wouldn’t have thought could become important to me. It’s a funny old life for sure.