In March, it will be four years since the official announcement of the Covid-19 pandemic, silently concluded by the WHO. In Germany, there are resignations, lawsuits, and questions. How to get people to say yes to coercion in a democracy? And how cynical can the strategy of “fear communication” be? A thousand pages of protocols of the Robert Koch Institute’s Corona Crisis Group, which monitored the pandemic, have been made public.

Blacked out protocols

After a long legal battle, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) has published the minutes of its team on the corona crisis. HiDrive The right-wing online magazine Multipolarny, which sued RKI, published documents totaling 1,059 pages. Mehr als tausend Passagen geschwärzt: Multipolar published freigeklagte RKI-Protokolle im Original – (multipolar-magazin.de) In contrast to the required transparency, they are partially obscured.

Documents released on Wednesday show how the decision was made on March 17, 2020 to change the risk assessment for the new coronavirus from “moderate” to “high”. A day earlier, the documents said a new risk assessment had been prepared and was now to be “improved”. “A risk assessment will be released as soon as (personal name blacked out) gives the signal.” RKI makes the key actor uncertain.

The publication “Multipolar” assumes that the announcement of a change in the level of risk was made at the behest of an external player. According to “ZDF Today”, however, the passage suggests that “RKI itself carried out a risk assessment and, based on this, classified the risk as ‘high’. Only the publication of the risk assessment was dependent on the release of an unnamed person. The RKI has not yet commented on the protocols.

Here’s what Spiegel.de also reports on Monday about some of the RKI reports.

On 30 October 2020, the RKI addressed FFP2 masks and explained: “… there is no evidence of FFP2 masks being used outside occupational health, this information can also be made public.” Since then, the public has heard nothing of such an attitude. In the winter of 2020, stricter mask requirements were already applied, and the FFP2 mask became mandatory in various federal states.

The crisis team considered the AstraZeneca vaccine very critical. On January 8, 2021, it said: “Not as sure a result as others because the vaccine is less than perfect.” Just two months later, in early March, the Standing Committee on Vaccination (Stiko) recommended the vaccine for all age groups, citing new research findings.

Wheeler squadron

Lothar Wheeler, former head of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) from 2015-2023, gave an interview to Tagesschau.de on Friday on the occasion of the four-year anniversary of the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. The interview is an example of the arrogance of the veterinarian who ran the institute that monitored the development of the Covid-19 pandemic in Germany on a daily basis.

“During the pandemic, we experienced a strong polarization of society. Groups that asked unsubstantiated questions about vaccinations or other Corona measures. Could you have imagined before that it would be so drastic?” In other words, the only criticism of vaccinations came from groups of fools and naysayers because they “questioned the effect” of vaccinations, which was supposedly beyond doubt.

Germans remember the “professional, competent, calm objectivity” of Lothar Wheeler, among other things, asking that the world just “grit its teeth” for a few more months, and until then obey without objection the norms that he considers such. necessary

German citizens were also the subject of a request for a general vaccination requirement because “we have sufficient evidence of efficacy and safety,” Wheeler told Die Welt newspaper at the time.

Health authorities under Lothar Wheeler spread misinformation, and the federal government assumed, based on the first report of the Robert Koch Institute, that even vaccinated people were protected from infection.

“We promoted vaccination as a way out of the pandemic and created expectations that we ultimately failed to fulfill,” Helge Braun, a former minister in former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet, later admitted, as quoted by Spiegel and Tagesspiegel.de

How to promote coercion in democracies

In a recent Die Welt interview with Heinz Bude, an adviser to the German government during the Covid-19 pandemic, he says interesting things, not to call them cynical, about the “communication of fear”. Corona-Aufarbeitung: Einblicke in die zynische Welt der “Angstkommunikation” – WELT In 2020, sociologist Heinz Bude co-authored the Federal Ministry of the Interior’s strategy document on the Covid pandemic.

Budd admitted that everything was simply invented to control the population. “I said we have to find a pattern to create the fit, which is a bit like science. And that was the “smoothing the curve” formula. “How can we attract people? We tell them it’s like science, right? If you are disciplined, you can change the curve.”

Boode goes on to explain, “This basically means that there is an illustration of individual behavioral change in some scientific representation built into that model. We stole it from a science journalist, we didn’t invent it ourselves.”

A “scientific-like” model was the idea of ​​”Flatten the Curve,” which was popularized not by a scientist but by Silicon Valley consultant Thomas Pouillot in a viral video, Budd admits.

But not only in Germany, Pouyot, this Nostradamus of the coronavirus, had proselytes. At the end of February 2021, journalist Wolfgang Rössler reported on Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz at the time: “The young head of government in Vienna is following the Crown strategy, which the American author and Silicon Valley consultant Thomas Pouyo called “Hammer and Dance”. .

In the media, Thomas Pueyo has alternately been presented as an entrepreneur, consultant, manager, economist, speaker, science blogger, engineer and behavioral expert.

A 2022 article in the Berliner Zeitung, however, shows that his prophecies also turned a profit.

“How great was the influence of Thomas Pueyo on those who make political decisions, one can only guess. However, his sideline activity has a positive impact on the turnover of his former employer, Course Hero. The e-learning platform has seen significant sales growth in isolation and home learning, and some revenue has been generated through tens of millions in venture capital acquisitions. As of December 2021, the startup was valued at $3.6 billion.”