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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Brilliant way to start the day. Haven’t stopped laughing for at least ten minutes. More like this please – even the dumbest Guardian readers might start quivering an eyebrow!
And to top it all, you’re guaranteed a ‘happy ending.’
That’s reptilist
Ah, the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, an assembly of fiction authors.
The earth’s 4.6billion year history has all come down to Hitting Vulnerable Indonesian Trans Sex Workers!
Oh, the poor little mites!
What about the one that says frogs will croak a semi tone higher because of climate change. Or the one that said pigs will fart quieter because of climate change. Or the one that said humans will shrink back to pigmy size. ————-OK so I made it all up. But what is the difference between me making it all up and government funded scientists making it all up? ——-The only difference is that I get no taxpayer subsidy
Perhaps the increasingly ridiculous nature of these scare stories is a sign that the alarmists realise that they are losing the battle of ideas, that the tide has turned (!) and that fewer and fewer people give them any credence? It’s a shame that Numberwatch has gone into hibernation, although its corpse is still embalmed at: https://web.archive.org/web/20120419022917/http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
Unfortunately we are left with a compromised, unaffordable power supply and transport chaos.
And of course the frogs will disappear, models show: https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/poison-dart-frog
How many people spotted that actually, that is the most ridiculous statement of all.
Just to be clear, Indonesia is comprised of over 17,000 islands, totalling 1.9 million square kilometres spread out over literally thousands of kilometres.
The idea that you can produce some meaningful temperature statistic for an entire year for all that area and then assert that there has been a change in five years of 0.14°C, a difference so small you couldn’t even feel it.
But that’s where we are. We are so used to hearing and repeating insane things that even an intelligent and well meaning person like Mr Morrison ends up writing something so ridiculous without realising (i presume) that it’s complete nonsensical garbage.
Some things lose their meaning when you average them ——Temperature is one of those things. Mainly because temperature is not an amount of anything. Indonesia doesn’t have a temperature and neither does Earth. Sure you can record thousands of temperatures on thermometers and work out some average or other, but the number you get is not actually a temperature. It is just a statistic. It is not the temperature of anything.
Absolutely. And it would be nice if Mr Morrison didn’t indulge the stupidity by using these meaningless stats even if they supposedly favour his argument. Or if he does, at least he should mention that the statistic doesn’t actually make any sense.
It’s not my intention to appear critical of Mr Morrisson.I really appreciate his reporting on climate policy here on the DS.
I just think it’s worth making the point that when we use the distorted language and false concepts that are used to prop up these ideologies, we are implicitly accepting them and therefore inadvertently conceding an argument that should never be conceded.
Like the word pandemic applied to covid 19. It’s a gross distortion of language to cement the idea that covid was an extremely dangerous diseases when it just wasn’t.
400 journalists from across the world take lengthy sabbaticals to be indoctrinated into the campaign to push a climate ‘emergency’ narrative into every conceivable story.
I reminded of the situation a few years ago (probably ongoing) in which many local newspapers carried articles with essentially the same script and graphics, entitled something like “What would [XYZ] look like if sea levels rose?” The XYZ was replaced by the locality of the paper, and the graphics appeared to be simply the output of the same computer program when told to produce a map of the coastline around XYZ. The maps all re-drew the coastline in a suitably scary colour scheme to show how far inland the “rising sea level” would reach, typically by going up estuaries and flood plains.. Based on the notion that “a picture is worth a thousand words” I would guess that readers would remember the scary graphic but forget all the words like “would”, “if”, and “might”. The question I ask is: who funded the development of the program and its targeted marketing to many local newspapers? It’s fairly cheap to produce, but is obviously based on objective data like land height merged with model data of sea level rise of a few feet: the rest is just colouring in blue pixels.
Quite separately, in schools some twenty years ago as teachers we had to create or use pre-created teaching materials such as “Why Doncaster might be a coastal resort by 2050”. Although presented as a game in a light-hearted manner, the teaching materials surely left the children with the image that Doncaster (or their local town) WOULD be a coastal resort if they flew away on holiday but all would be well if they built windmills, put their rubbish in coloured bins and painted their school in rainbow colours.
It was was much the same in learning how to teach English as a Second Language in schools: the “comprehension” articles we used often used materials derived from the Global Warming narrative or sometimes the anti-colonialism movement. I felt that this was subliminal indoctrination for those causes, but it was dangerous to comment on this.
Summary: the infiltration of climate change ideas is apparent not just in journalism but in education. Who is paying for all this? Why are sceptics blocked?
Nothing like a climate & trans story to hide the news that Sir Sneer is going to introduce an NHS App as the way to resolve the NHS problems.
HuxleyP and others foresaw this as the WEF need digital control over our lives.
It has nothing to do with medicine since the three biggest groups who use the services would not be able to use an App eg
1) The elderly with cognitive decline
2) The mentally ill
3) The addicted
Another conspiracy theory come true.
The mediocrity of the people that wield all this power against us is so depressing.
An App. FFS.
And don’t forget that Slimey Sunak’s father in law is cofounder of Infosys, a company which works very closely with the WEF and runs the largest digital ID and social credit systems in the world…. be afraid, very afraid
“How climate change is causing cases of trans spread Venereal Disease in Indonesia to plummet!” So, good news then.
Another excellent article from the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
It also shows the new Globalist/Communist neurolinguistic programming term “vulnerable”, now applied to every type of criminal, along with “mental health problems”, inviting sympathy with predators instead of their victims.
It’s a bizarre & wild garbage story but why not when they know most people believe anything they hear ?
id like some grant to research & 100% prove how climate “crisis” is effecting the lives of snakes disguised as human politicians by making them richer
I lap up everything you write here, Chris, but this story did not warrant coverage other than on 01 April.