By Mathias Bröckers.
Since the number of corona experts (CE) now exceeds the number of corona infected individuals (CI), stronger loosening of the lockdown can be initiated. With the wild confetti of numbers that has been used for months to justify worldwide pandemic policy, a curve with projections of the CE-CI parameter in relation to the number of deaths (CT) could well cause a furore, because even the official, “serious” figures do not yet provide a representative assessment of the spread and danger of the coronavirus. And thus also no valid statement on whether the lockdown measures are necessary and effective. The fact that the infection rate had already fallen to around 1 before the measures came into force and has remained at this level ever since – as the official figures in Germany (RKI) and Switzerland (BAG) show – should actually raise serious doubts about the usefulness of lockdowns and contact restrictions. But they don’t. Governments continue to push through their measures as the “right way forward” and hold out the prospect of a complete turnaround for an indefinite period of time – “when a vaccine is found”. All this is based on, as already mentioned, highly uncertain data, because representative samples have not been collected for months. While TV ratings, Sunday questions or political barometers can be called up in real time – which statistically (with a certain margin of error) are quite meaningful – the statistical information on the coronavirus that keeps the whole planet in check is just confetti numbers. Is it really so difficult to collect and test 5,000 households, a representative cross-section of the population, with a swab and a drop of blood every three days? The data from this control group – number of infected, hospitalized, healthy, dead – and their development curves would provide information on the spread, rate of infection and danger, albeit still with a certain error rate, but reasonably reliable. Instead, a number of infected people are reported daily without comparing the number of tests, unreported numbers are expected to be between three and 100 times the measured data, hardly any distinction is made among the dead whether they died from or with the coronavirus, etc., etc. In summary: the data basis is poor, the uncertainty is great. And from the half-baked statistics both can be read out: evidence of pandemic denial as well as legitimate concern.
“In Danger and Dire Distress the Middle of the Road Leads to Death” the baroque lyricist Friedrich von Logau once wrote about the unconditional nature of exceptional situations – which is why one does not want to be stuck in the skin of decision-makers and rulers at present: their usual “royal road” – the practicable middle way, the acceptable compromise, the “sitting out” of problems – is blocked. And the title of a much-read essay – The Hammer and the Dance – names options that are each unacceptable in themselves. After all, neither can citizens be locked up for months with the quarantine hammer, nor can the danger of infection and its consequences be simply ignored. The fact that China immediately unpacked the hammer and placed the greater Wuhan area with its almost 10 million inhabitants under strict quarantine after the first Covid-19 cases was usually noticed in the West with a shake of the head, the carnival in Germany continued and in New York – the great virologist Trump announced – nobody would have to fear the “Chinese virus”. Currently, the “excess mortality” in the New York area is 300 percent above normal, while in Wuhan and throughout China, the daily new infections and death figures have dropped to double-digit figures.
So is the hammer helping after all? And would the infection rates in Germany and Switzerland, which had already fallen to a low level before the lockdown, have risen again without these measures? No one can answer this question.
The Chancellor’s assertion that “the measures are effective” is as little proven as the assertion of her critics that they are ineffective and completely unnecessary. The same applies to the statements of the pandemic scaremongers claiming that much stricter regulations are needed, and the same applies to the fascism scaremongers for whom the totalitarian seizure of power has already taken place with the Infection Protection Act. Basically and for all of them, however, the following applies: we do not know anything specific! The virus “Sars-Cov-2” and the disease “Covid-19” are still unknown cases. Whoever claims to know them and to know exactly what to do is deluding himself.
But decisions must be made immediately, even if you continue to navigate in the fog and the prognosis is uncertain. In such a situation, the good captain can only assume the “worst case” and try to avoid it. That simply doing nothing and letting the orchestra continue to play is not a solution – as the grand captains Donald and Boris on his brexit-steamer initially ordered – is shown by the number of deaths in their countries. They are ten times as high as in China (USA currently 53,000) or four times as high as in Germany (UK currently 20,000). Is the difference in the quality of the health care systems responsible for this large discrepancy or not – maybe – the different anti-corona measures of the governments?
“This is a police state, what’s going on here”, an old anti-authoritarian friend grumbled at me when I asked him this question, “Control and conditioning of the population, Orwell 3.0, with compulsory vaccination, compulsory app and fever measurement by drones and travelling only with digital vaccination certificate, issued by Bill Gates. It’s all sicker than a fucking virus can even make.”
I agreed with my friend on all counts. Anyone who has a hammer sees nails everywhere, which is why it is now important to snatch the hammer entrusted to the rulers for alleged “danger and extreme hardship” from them as quickly as possible. Otherwise we are actually heading towards a digital bio-politics in which a Michel Foucault’s hair would grow back in horror – a power that has the heart rate, blood count and genes of its subjects under total control.
But my friend hadn’t answered my question, whether he thinks the previous measures are all wrong and what he would have done as an old anarchist instead of the government. So I asked him what he thought about the new mouthguard regulation and expected another outburst of anger. But that did not happen. Because he told me that in the last years he was often travelling in Asia, where a mask is quite natural for people – not because of fear of diseases, but out of politeness and respect, because one does not want to bother others. “Now Montgomery also said,” he added, “the World Doctors President, I happen to know him, he’s from Berlin, good man. So I have no problem with mouthguards in the subway. But all the rest they have in the pipeline, that’s extremely creepy…”
Indeed, which is why the demand can only be to either deposit the pandemic hammer as quickly as possible with representative data justifying its use – or to wrap it up immediately. Everything now indicates that “Sars-Cov2” is not a “killer virus” and that the risk of death from Covid-19 is extremely low for those under the age of 65 and those who have not previously been ill. According to a new study by Professor John Ioannidis of Stanford University, the corona crisis has so far been as life-threatening for U-65 year olds as a 14.5 km trip by car every day. It is obvious that to protect against such a risk the massive restriction of basic rights through a lockdown is disproportionate. You don’t have to be a constitutional court judge to realize this – and governments, not only in Germany, would be better off voluntarily packing the hammer before the courts knock it around their ears. The therapy must not be more harmful than the disease. To the weather-related end of the pandemic, there will now be a little masked ball with a ban on dancing – but the hammer can go.
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Thanks to the author for the right to publish.
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Image source: kize13 / shutterstock
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