Germany’s redacted covid files provide political ammunition for pro-freedom parties

The German public health agency, RKI, received 2,500 pages of covid protocols from early 2020 to April 2021 but the files were heavily redacted, similar to state secrets concerning high diplomacy or military matters.

German online magazine Multipolar has filed a legal action to enforce disclosure of the redacted parts, which amount to about one-third of the files but the legal battle will be lengthy.  In the interim, Multipolar has published what it has received so far and the questions it raises are proving politically explosive.

(Related: Documents from Germany’s public health agency reveal the decision to “lockdown” was political and German government documents obtained under court order reveal covid crisis political manipulation)

The following is an article titled ‘Why were Germany’s covid files redacted?’ written by Italian documentary maker Manfred Manera and published by The Spectator UK.

There are two kinds of long covid. One is a medical syndrome, the other manifests as a healthy obsession – an urge to shed light on what happened during the pandemic crisis.

Too many questions remain unanswered: why did Sweden come out of the pandemic better than other countries without having endured a lockdown? Why were masks imposed when scientific studies repeatedly demonstrated that they were unnecessary? Why was discrimination introduced between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated when it was clear that vaccines were incapable of blocking the transmission of the infection? And why, since the lockdowns, has there been such a high excess death rate in Europe?

Such questions have motivated Multipolar, a small German online magazine, to fight for the disclosure of Robert Koch Institute (“RKI”) documents. RKI is the prestigious German equivalent of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. This institute is meant to provide the scientific basis for the public health (and lockdown) decisions of the German government. It also has extensive influence on smaller neighbouring countries, such as Austria, where RKI’s suggestions are regarded as the gold standard for health policy.

Multipolar has sought to investigate on which scientific grounds fundamental liberties were curtailed, schools closed, lockdowns established and vaccines imposed. It is especially surprising that this legitimate curiosity has until recently not been shared by the wider German media. As a result of an ongoing legal battle, Multipolar finally succeeded (at least partially) in its aims.

In the spring of last year it received the 2,500 pages of the RKI’s covid protocols, from early in 2020 to April 2021. But the files were heavily redacted – as if they contained state secrets concerning high diplomacy or military matters. So Multipolar has filed a second legal action to enforce disclosure of the redacted parts, which amount to about one-third of the files. This court hearing will take place next month.

Realising that the legal battle would be lengthy, Multipolar decided to publish what it had so far received. In the face of such disclosures, the rest of the German press could no longer stay silent. But revealing their displeasure at having been scooped by a tiny media outlet, they routinely dismiss Multipolar as belonging to the “fringe media” and being “conspiratorial.” Since the beginning of the pandemic, that word has been used to smear critics and silence legitimate doubts. Yet we now know how often statements initially labelled as conspiratorial have turned out to be eminently rational.

In one of the RKI memos, dated March 2020, it says that the health risk for covid should be raised as soon as (name-redacted) gives approval. Is this mysterious entity a scientist, a politician? Was the collective raising of the alarm level based on hard evidence or someone’s opinion? When asked, the RKI said it was an internal employee. But if so, why the secrecy?

Then, masks. “There is no evidence for the use of FFP2 masks outside of occupational safety,” said the RKI in October 2020 – that is to say, useful for nurses but not the general public. So why were FFP2 masks still being mandated by the German government? The most heavily redacted part of the RKI files concerns its advice on the various vaccines, their efficacy and who they should be given to. Keeping such advice secret is hardly conducive to public confidence.

Multipolar is also asking for memos from spring 2021 onwards, which might contain even more important revelations since it was then that the vaccination campaign went into full gear. At the time, the idea was that vaccines conferred immunity – hence the idea of vaccine passports. It also explains why many countries, including Britain, threatened to fire unvaccinated healthcare workers. But in October 2022, a Pfizer employee told a European parliament hearing that there had been no testing to prove that the vaccines would stop the transmission. Earlier this month, according to the Finnish journalist Ike Novikoff, Hanna Nohynek, the chair of the WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization, testified at a court hearing that she advised her government against covid vaccine passports because the jab did not stop virus transmission. The passports, she said, would give a false sense of security.

Such arguments are likely to provide incendiary ammunition during the forthcoming European election campaigns. Austria’s Freedom party, which opposed lockdown, is riding the wave of the RKI files and is now the most popular party in Austria in an election year. Herbert Kickl, its leader, is claiming vindication. His general message is that voters should use the elections to say that those who imposed lockdown should not “get away with it.” His motives are, of course, political but it’s a game everyone is playing. Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission chief, said earlier this year that Europe needed to acquire arms “just as we did very successfully with the vaccines.” It’s not an analogy that inspires universal confidence.

Attempts to shed light on what happened are in place in other countries as well. Britain’s own Covid Inquiry is designed to move at a glacial pace (it’s due to report in 2027) but an investigative parliamentary commission on the pandemic has just kicked off in Italy. Next month a US Congress hearing will take evidence from Peter Daszak, head of the EcoHealth Alliance, the NGO which from the start has been at the centre of the controversy over the lab origin of the virus. A hypothesis at first loudly dismissed as a conspiracy, now looking ever more plausible.

The now-deceased Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier declared in the first few weeks of the pandemic that the virus came out of a laboratory in Wuhan. For this, he was widely denounced as a conspiracy theorist. “Truth always prevails in the end,” he used to say. “But it takes the staircase, not the elevator.” The world’s covid inquiries may prove his point once again.

Watch Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Sunetra Gupta reveal some of the lies told throughout the pandemic on Spectator TV:

Featured image taken from: Corona measures justified? Online magazine publishes RKI protocols, Tagesschau, 25 March 2024