Fear and Loathing in Vienna

Returning to the "City of My Dreams" two years after the pandemic's end.

During the pandemic I was appalled by the news of the city’s brutal lockdowns and insane testing requirements. The very notion of having to present a paper displaying a negative test result in order to enter a coffee house struck me a repugnant. In 2021, the only way to obtain freedom from almost daily testing requirement was to get a new, hastily developed COVID-19 vaccine.

The vaccinated were free to move around and free from ostracism, while the unvaccinated were second-class citizens, regarded with fear and loathing, and subjected to constant testing.

As the Advent season of 2021 approached, public health authorities began to amplify their dark rhetoric for all those unclean, obstinate, stupid, and unsocial people who were still holding out against the experimental gene therapy shots. As then Austrian Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said in November 2021, “Winter and Christmas will be unpleasant [ungemütlich] for the unvaccinated.” Many perceived a sinister quality in his laconic phrasing.

As I heard reports of this totalitarian madness visiting the city, it reminded me of the dark autumn of 1938, when Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany.

The madness of 2020-2021 culminated on January 20, 2022, when the Austrian Parliament passed a vaccine mandate for the entire country. For everyone who’d held out through the “unpleasant” Christmas season, the writing was on the wall—very soon you will be legally required to receive the COVID-19 vaccine or you will (apparently) remain under house arrest.

At this point, something surprising happened. A public demonstration was announced on the Vienna Ringstrasse—the grand boulevard that encircles the old city center. The Austrian state and its dutiful lackeys in the media reported that only around ten to thirty thousand people were expected to participate—that is, only a tiny minority of esoteric weirdos.

Instead, approximately 500,000 people showed up for the march. Extrapolating from this number, it was estimated that around 2 million Austrians (of a total population of 9 million) were vehemently against the mandate.

The demonstrators consisted of the sensible, liberal-minded, and thoughtful Austrians I’d come to know and love during my happy years of living in the country. Their demonstration proved to be successful. Shortly thereafter, Parliament postponed imposing the mandate, and then dropped it altogether later that spring.

In an atmosphere of fear and propaganda, the majority of people instantly become astonishingly unquestioning and compliant.
Most of the Austrian academic medical establishment revealed itself to have zero courage or critical thinking ability.
All of the official pandemic measures were ineffectual at best. Most of them were downright fraudulent.
It is precisely during a time of grave crisis that our constitutional protections count the most. It’s when we are most frightened that we are called upon to stick with our constitution, and NOT yield to emergency measures passed by flawed politicians and public health bureaucrats.
Thank God this new generation of mRNA vaccines don’t work against respiratory viruses. If they DID work, we would experience a new respiratory virus coming out of a lab somewhere in the world every year or so, because the money—paid by the state—is just too good for the vaccine cartel to pass up.

https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/fear-and-loathing-in-vienna