What does it mean to deal with the past? Reflections before Christmas as a prelude to Professor Stefan Homburg’s extraordinary speech in the German Bundestag.
Prof. Homburg’s speech to the German Bundestag on 11 November, taken from his website.
Stefan Homburg. Translated with the help of www.DeepL.com/Translator. Without corrections.
Text in the cover picture: “The lockdown has no effect at all on the spread of the virus.”
Updated 22 November 2023.
The 2nd Coronavirus Symposium was held in the German Bundestag, where several prominent voices against unscientific measures and the harmful vaccination campaign expressed their views. Among others, Prof. Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, Dr. Michael Yeadon, Prof. Dr. Stefan Hockerz, Prof. Dr. Andreas Sönnichsen and many other important critical voices who have spoken out during the coronavirus era.
Prof. Dr. S. Homburg’s speech, delivered in the German Bundestag on 11 November and published on his website, provides a fact-based overview of the coronavirus era. This is preceded by some introductory thoughts.
“Aufarbeitung” is a German word that is not easy to translate into English. The best possible translation is probably “to deal with, to come to terms with the past”. The main question of Aufarbeitung in a historical context is how Germans deal with their fascist past. This question has been addressed by the philosophers Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, among others, and their critical theory has had a profound influence on German post-war history.
Here is one of Adorno’s important thoughts:
“The past will only be dealt with when the causes of what has happened have been removed. It is only because these causes still exist that the ties of that past have not yet been severed.”
Benito Mussolini said bluntly about this thought of Th. W. Adorno: “Fascism is more appropriately called corporatism, because it is the fusion of the power of the State and the power of the corporations.”
If you want to look more closely at this subject, take the story of IBM as an example. If it had not been for this American company, Auschwitz would not have been possible on this scale. Of course, this does not mean that the German responsibility can be brushed aside.
One of the conditions for Aufarbeitung – overcoming – is that we can talk about the past without prejudice and accept it. This dialogue between our friends and acquaintances is a task for each of us. It is the only way to heal wounds and to preserve relationships. (Such a clarification of the past has not happened in Germany, or has only partially happened. For example, personal traumatic war experiences were not discussed. The consequences are still felt today.)
Hannah Arendt, in her Vita activa, or The Human Condition, stresses the crucial role of forgiveness and promise:
“The possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility──of being unable to undo what one has done──is the faculty of forgiving. The remedy for unpredictability, for the chaotic uncertainty of the future, is contained in the faculty to make and keep promises. Both faculties depend upon plurality, on the presence and acting of others, for no man can forgive himself and no one can be bound by a promise made only to himself.”
And:
“Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever, not unlike the sorcerer’s apprentice who lacked the magic formula to break the spell. Without being bound to the fulfillment of promises, we would never be able to keep our identities; we would be condemned to wander helplessly and without direction in the darkness of each man’s lonely heart, caught in its contradictions and equivocalities — a darkness which only the light shed over the public realm through the presence of others, who confirm the identity between the one who promises and the one who fulfills, can dispel. Both faculties, therefore, depend on plurality, on the presence and acting of others, for no one can forgive himself and no one can feel bound by a promise made only to himself; forgiving and promising enacted in solitude or isolation remain without reality and can signify no more than a role played before one’s self.”
And now the speech by Prof. Dr. Stefan Homburg (translated with deepl.com)
“We have lived through a dark time”
Ladies and gentlemen, we have lived through a dark time. Let us start with the essentials – five essential points.
Firstly, by 2020, hospital occupancy rates across Germany have fallen to record lows. That is according to the Federal Ministry of Health.
Second, in 2020 and 2021, there were no more serious respiratory illnesses than usual. The corona has come, the flu has disappeared (according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) Sentinel).
Thirdly, no more people died in 2020 than usual, standardised by age. Mortality rates have only been rising since 2021 (based on data from the Federal Statistical Office).
Fourth, the average age of people who had coronavirus or died from it was 83 years old, while the average age of the other deceased was 82 years old (according to the RKI and the Federal Statistical Office).
Fifth, Sweden, which did not introduce confinement measures and did not require the wearing of masks, had better results than Germany, according to WHO. So it’s not all down to the measures.
To summarise: from a clinical point of view, in terms of actual illnesses and deaths, nothing special happened. Everything was normal. These are the facts, and that is the key point. The idea of a pandemic was based solely on a new type of mass, uncaused test, the results of which fluctuated wildly and led people to believe that there were more sicknesses and deaths than normal. This is not true. PCR testing for rhinoviruses may have created similar illusions. It would be possible to continue to create these illusions if the will was there.
How have politicians reacted to a normal clinical situation? They closed kindergartens, schools, shops, churches and businesses for months, isolated the elderly and left them to die alone, destroying their existence. The police banned people from reading books on park benches, harassed young people who went outside and children playing in the snow, and repressed peaceful demonstrators. Politicians marginalised anyone who had doubts about the meaning of these measures. They told the state-run TV channel ZDF to announce that children are rats carrying viruses and that unvaccinated people are appendages, useless to the body of the nation. We have not heard such talk for 75 years.
Normally, the power of government is limited by the courts, the media and science. This time, they have all failed.
The courts hardly examined at all whether such measures were adequate, and only relied on two witnesses under the authority of the Minister for Health, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) and the Paul Erlich Institute (PEI). This gave the government the opportunity to approve the lockdown measures and the vaccination obligation itself. In addition, the courts sent doctors to prisons who, in an ethical manner, used certificates to protect patients from interference with their bodily integrity. Almost everyone known to criticise such measures has been criminalised, suspended, dismissed, arrested or had their home searched. The Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe cynically declared that the fundamental rights of citizens had not been violated, but that they could no longer be exercised.
The media continuously published the test figures without mentioning that the clinical situation was normal. It presented the narrative of the PCR without critical scrutiny: Professor Püschel, who was the first to carry out the autopsies, as a racist, Professor Bhakdi as an anti-Semite, and all those who questioned the measures as conspiracy theorists and enemies of the state.
Scientists in the field, especially epidemiologists and public health doctors, disappeared from view. They were replaced by physicists, transport planners, microbiologists and military experts, who kept the public in suspense with new and erroneous predictions and calculations. For months. Years.
Unsplash.com photo
The interpretation of these events (Aufarbeitung) should address three questions.
First, according to the textbook, at the beginning of a truly dangerous pandemic, the government should reassure the population so that they do not suffer collateral damage. Instead, why did they decide to draw up the so-called Schockpapier, a shocking document which, for example, was used to scare children into suffocating their grandparents? Why was there no doctor on the Shock Document Commission, but a sociologist and a German language teacher? Why did the politicians instigate this scare for years and now claim to have made only a few mistakes at the outset, and that only out of ignorance?
Secondly, in February 2020, the textbooks and the WHO guidelines advised against measures such as lockdowns or school closures. At that time, the RKI announced that wearing masks is ineffective and corona is usually easy. Mr Drosten emphasised this in all interviews and at the federal press conference. (Note: German virologist Christian Drosten has been instrumental in spreading the coronavirus narrative around the world and is responsible for the PCR tests.) The same Mr Drosten told the current Federal Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, on a talk show that if it were not for the PCR tests, the pandemic would not even have been noticed. What led to the decision to do something different in March 2020, even though the data already showed that there was no particular risk? Given that Sweden, which did not have the obligation to wear masks and lockdowns, clearly performed better than Germany, we must also ask whether these measures were really aimed at preventing infections, which they clearly failed to do, or whether they were rather aimed at breaking down people’s resistance to vaccination?
Thirdly, why did politicians not only allow the administration of an experimental vaccine, but actually force people to use it by imposing 2G/3G rules (2G rule – vaccinated or recovered; 3G rule – vaccinated, recovered or tested) and a compulsory vaccination in certain areas? Why were vaccines authorised on an emergency basis when there was no need? Why were the statistics not published showing that many of the effects caused by vaccines pass without any consequences?
Bestsellers are now appearing with titles that clearly reflect the widespread sentiment: Thomas Lausen’s Intensiv-Mafia, Dr Frank’s Crime of State, or Dr Röhrig’s The Corona Plot. All books were published in large five-figure print runs.
Politicians who refuse to participate in this discourse lose credibility and distance themselves from the electorate. Because of the enormous scale on which the population has been affected, it would have been right to set up a committee of inquiry. Since the Bundestag did not want to do this, I am grateful that today we can contribute in this way to the clarification.
Photo by Irmantas Gelūnas / BNS Photo
Source supplement
1) All-time low hospital occupancy rate in 2020 During the period under review in 2020, since the launch of COVID-19 in mid-March, Germany has seen a steady decline in hospital admissions, namely by around 30% until the end of May, and then – including the second wave – by 10% thereafter. Over the whole year, these declining figures amount to a 13% decline, As the average length of stay in hospital increased only marginally, the number of days spent in hospital also decreased by 12%. As a result, bed occupancy rates fell to a record low of 67.3% (and 68.6% in intensive care units). This already takes into account the care of COVID-19 patients, whose inpatient care required on average 2% of all beds and just under 4% of intensive care beds per year, taking into account the over-treatment of long-staying patients, of course, bearing in mind time and geographical peaks.
Federal Ministry of Health, BMG, reference, page 4.
2) Few serious respiratory diseases. Peaks in March 2018 and at the end of 2022, i.e. before and after the alleged pandemic. No noticeable changes in the intervening years. Changes in cold viruses (influenza, rhinovirus, RSV, coronavirus), with little change in the clinical situation. Reference (RKI).
3) Age-standardised mortality rates. In 2020, the rates were between 2018 and 2019. Since the start of vaccination in 2021, there has been a significant increase in deaths. Reference (Destatis): here and here. In the latter link, select table 12411-0005.
4) High median age of “corona deaths”. On average, the average age of those who died in the PRR was 83 years, while the average age of the other deaths was 82 years. This indicates that the majority of deaths from coronavirus or coronavirus-related illnesses were among the very old with co-morbidities. However, young people, even children, were frightened.
References (Robert Koch Institute, RKI, and Federal Population Research Institute, BIB): here and here.
5) Comparison of Germany with Sweden. According to the WHO, Sweden had a lower overall mortality rate than Germany. It was the only European country that followed the textbooks and guidelines and abandoned closures and compulsory wearing of masks. WDR explanation in German. Link WHO.
An interesting comparison with Sweden: despite rising infection rates, almost no restrictions have been introduced in this country. Masks were not compulsory, events went on as usual and schools remained open. There were no bans, only recommendations. In the long term, the number of deaths in Sweden rose rapidly. However, according to the WHO, the country’s overall situation today looks good. Reference (WDR).
This text appeared on 11 November 2023 under the title “Vortrag Prof. Dr. Stefan Homburg im Deutschen Bundestag” on the website stefan-homburg.de.
Translated with the help of www.DeepL.com/Translator. Without corrections.
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