From Welt:
Authorities have come up with a term that sounds at least halfway sane. They’re calling it “thermal reprocessing”. Four federal states now claim to have thermally reprocessed – or, in plain language, to have incinerated – a total of 17.25 million expired Corona masks.
Baden-Württemberg has destroyed 6.1 million masks, Saxony 5.5 million, North Rhine-Westphalia five million, and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern 656,000 …
The Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) in Berlin has also “thermally recycled” masks in recent months. The number so far is “less than one million units”, a spokesperson said… The destroyed masks were purchased during the peak of the pandemic, and have exceeded their expiration date…
The federal and state governments are currently standing atop a billion-dollar mountain of masks. According to information provided by the Ministry of Health in September, there are a total of 3.7 billion masks in the federal inventory… The federal states have have an additional 180 million Corona masks at their disposal…
The states want to burn even more masks, but for the moment they’re not allowed, because much of the surplus in their possession is technically federal property. Thus they’ve begun begging the Government to take the masks back:
The Interior ministry of Hesse, together with many ministries of other states, have turned to the federal Government with an urgent request to either take back their unusable masks… or grant permission for their destruction…” says a spokesperson. Unfortunately, the federal Government has not yet agreed. “The Federal Ministry of Health has referenced uncertainties in customs law that the Government has not yet been able to clarify.”
I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say the Scholz Government is reluctant to write off the masks purely because of the negative publicity it’ll generate. I can’t imagine how customs regulations would prevent the Health Ministry from destroying its own expiring property.
Karsten Klein, chairman of the FDP faction in the Bundestag Budget Committee, has criticised the previous Government’s over-procurement: “The coalition has inherited a hugely expensive mask mountain [Merkel Health Minister] Jens Spahn. As important as federal support for procuring masks was in 2020, under Spahn it led to literal frenzied buying that completely lost sight of actual demand.”
But we haven’t even got to the best part. The idiot pandemicists are still hoarding masks, even as they’re burning them:
Additionally, the “National Health Protection Reserve is still stockpiling masks. The Reserve was established in mid-2020 by the Merkel Government to prevent future shortages. According to the Ministry of Health, there are currently 245 million masks in the reserve, part of which will expire at the end of 2023.
Doubts about the usefulness of the Reserve are growing. In November, the Budget Committee called on the Government to… examine “whether a federal physical stockpile for the health system is at all necessary or economical”. …
For the taxpayer, mask procurement is very expensive. The costs at the federal level alone have totalled 5.8 billion Euros since the beginning of the pandemic.
It’s just so astounding, this entirely pointless and still ongoing mass delusion. Masks do nothing to stop infection, we have spent three years learning in excruciating detail that they do nothing to stop infection, we are now setting fire to millions of masks heedlessly purchased at the height of pandemic hysteria when there was every reason to expect that masks would do nothing to stop infection, and still we’re pouring millions of Euros into some kind of absurd national strategic mask reserve that will also surely be incinerated in the coming years because masks do nothing to stop infection. Even more unfathomable is this ridiculous fiction that useless products which do nothing can ever “expire”. What is the fear, that expired masks will do even more of nothing than new masks?
Everything about Corona is such a multifaceted ridiculous farce.
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But what a colossal waste. I mean, if you can make clothes out of Coke bottles surely they could’ve recycled these into something actually useful and given them a second life. Also what was wrong with giving them to hospital theatre departments, dentists and other health care settings that routinely use them?
Going out of date. Yes, masks have a ‘Use by’…
Crikey! Who knew?
But I still refuse to believe they couldn’t have done something constructive with them. Even making hamster bedding or nappies would’ve been better than just burning them.
You’re ignoring the fact that Germany’s short of fuel for its power stations atm…
Who would have thunk?! plastic has a use by date!
So did some salt I bought. Been around for millions of years but suddenly due to be out of date, probably turning into uranium or something!
They should have put them into a huge perspex cube and placed that somewhere near the Reichstag building to commemorate the FRG’s finest hour.
They could have entered them for the Turner Prize.
What are these items unable to do after the expiration date that they were able to do prior to it?
Seems a waste of energy – they could surely flog them off for DIY purposes. Might keep a bit of sawdust from entering the nose even if they are useless against viruses.
No good for DIY either as they don’t fit properly to keep out the dust. Basically useless for anything but carrying snot and germs around on! My grandsons cloth mask was disgusting by the end of a schoolday!
I suspect someone somewhere has made a lot of money from the procurement of masks in Germany.
That is an absolutely outrageous comment. Contracts will have been exchanged in good faith.
Wow, this is a classic example of Poe’s Law.
What’s poes law?
I guess it’s marginally better than them ending up in the ocean. But if you’re gonna burn it, then you know you’re gonna breathe it, like the song goes.
And … that’s the punchline … all trials of politicians (mostly national and state MPs) who secured huge provisions to help providers get mask deals resulted in not guilty verdicts. Democracy at its finest.
Secondary punchline: The national German mask industry which was created with huge state subsidies so that masks would be available in case the Chinese would ever stop selling them never produced a single mask for anyone as they couldn’t competitively do so. At one point, they demanded federal regulations for environmental and workplace standards to render Chinese masks unsellable to ensure that their absolutely security-critical facilities could actually operate.
Quintuples all around.
Everything about Corona is such a multifaceted ridiculous farce.
Indeed, but it has revealed just how useless, corrupt and pig ignorant our politicians, institutions and media actually are.
Couldn’t Germany have used all that energy to heat their homes?
I wouldn’t mind resurrecting a medieval custom for a few days and thermally reprocessing a few people who are responsible for the COVID policies they’ve tormented us with for 3 years, and watch them go up in smoke with their beloved masks. It would be a gruesome and yet strangely poetic ending.
Now that’s something I’d bang a few pots and pans for and I’d willingly contribute some fuel to start the thermal reprocessing.
“Everything about Corona is such a multifaceted ridiculous farce.”
Yep, just about sums the last 34 months.
Trouble is it’s still going on, masks in hospitals and even some schools apparently. I have written twice now to my local health authority CEO asking what rationale he has for mask wearing in medical environments and answer come there none. Still if Rebel News can’t get an answer out of Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla or Greta Thunberg at Davos what Hope have I?
Thermal Reprocessing. Is this a way we can deplete the worlds gas and oil reserves in a more environmentally jargoned manner, by distillation, refraction, and industrial processing all requiring the newly established and environmentally acceptable system of thermal reprocessing
I hope they burnt them by battery!
You don’t want to go burning things using fossil fools!