Times of Israel (Blogs), Feb 9, 2021
Clemens Heni
Greece and Israel just signed a “deal” to be probably enacted as early as late March 2021 to ONLY allow passengers who are vaccinated against a new or not so new virus – SARS-CoV-2 – to travel via aircraft with no restrictions.
Read: people who for medical, philosophical or political reasons are not vaccinated against a flu-like illness are no longer allowed to travel abroad without taking the risk of been immediately imprisoned in a quarantine-like hotel. Imagine! If you are 23 or 51 or 67 and want to travel to Greece, and you are not sick at all, irrational politicians and the border police will treat you as if you were an infectious monster. Imagine! That is what happens ever since March 2020. And such “deals” will make this the “new normal” of the anti-democratic monster Angela Merkel.
Some 66 percent of American nurses and elderly home staff in Florida reject to be vaccinated. They know that most of them are not threatened by that virus and they know that the vaccination is not done properly, as a real vaccine takes several years to be developed. Even if that percentage drops to 10 percent (as the linked article predicts), still, these 10 percent of people, perhaps some Israeli among them, would never ever be allowed to again travel freely to the Jewish state, at least not to Israel and then to relatives or friends in Greece.
The core aspect, though, is the following: A democracy may never ever allow a political tool like a politically motivated vaccination to be implemented for restrictions of the freedoms of the people. Vaccination against a flu-like virus is a political tool, not a medical tool. Every individual can say yes or no to vaccination, of course. But it may never ever be mandatory to have the usual freedoms to travel wherever we want to go.
There will never ever be 100 percent of vaccinated people, regardless if we talk about Corona or Influenza (kids and young people are truly threatened by Influenza, not by Corona) or any other virus or disease. Never ever will there be a 100 percent rate. But there has to be 100 percent freedom and 100 percent equal rights for every single individual, at least in a democracy.
The infection fatality rate in Germany in 1970 was 0.29 percent during a severe epidemic, the Hongkong Flu. No one took notice at the time. No drama nowhere, such is life, no lockdown, no masks, no a-social distancing, nothing.
Worldwide, Corona has an infection fatality rate of 0.23 percent, says the World Health Organization.
Again, for those who never ever studied democracy: if a country starts differentiating between vaccinated and not vaccinated people that is the start of a totalitarian regime.
If you want to go for a 10 day holiday in Athens, and you are required to stay 10 days in quarantine, as the UK plans, too, you are lost in space. That would be the end of democracy, as the lockdowns already indicate the end of democracy. Politicians treat all of us as if we are sick, infectious and dangerous.
Never ever will all Israeli be vaccinated. Bibi does not want those who are not vaccinated to ever again leave Israel (for Greece or any other place) as free people.
That is what political science calls the “pandemic turn“.
Think about it.
Update, Febr 14, 2021:
Israeli journalist Richard Chaim Schneider embraces Corona restrictions and describes how he came back to Israel via aircraft, how completely (!) digitalized and controlled Israeli society works, and how happy he is about the vaccination program in Israel. Not a single word indicates that he started thinking by himself ever since March 2020, if such measures, quarantine for HEALTHY people, closures of borders for people with no negative PCR-test etc. are democratic or totalitarian in nature.
As if a PCR test is reliable, even the WHO most recently urges governments to only use a PCR test when the Ct value is indicated (and all Ct values above 26 or maximum 30 mean that the test is negative, even if it says „positive“), the WHO also urges politicians to implement the obligatory visit of a physician by every person who is tested postive by a PCR test. Without having seen a physician, no one may be classified as „sick“ or even „infectious“. Schneider seems to be ignoring these WHO recommendations.
Worse, Schneider – like most journalists worldwide – seems to have ignored almost 12 months of international debate among sceptical virologists, medical experts, historians, epidemiologists and social scientists. He neglects the political discussion about the threat deriving mainly from Corona politics and not from a relatively harmless virus (if one is not 85 years old and sick, with several comorbidities) – at least in his German article there is no indication that he ever dealt criticial with the panic driven Corona policies by Bibi or any other government, like Merkel’s, Johnson’s or Macron’s.
In recent decades, I often liked articles, books or films by Schneider, who’s writing has often been criticial of Bibi and the Far Right, authoritarianism and irrationalism, to be sure.
But in 2020/21, Schneider seems to be following the most irrational of all Israeli policies ever since the establishment of the State of Israel. Will the Israeli tourist industry, or the young businesswomen and -men survive this crisis?
Did he forget the writings of Michel Foucault or Ivan Illich, who had written about the dangerous bio-politics many decades ago, as if they anticipated this unprecedented crisis…
I came across this piece by Schneider via the mailinglist of I Like Israel and Sacha Stawski (ILI), a pro-Israel NGO from Germany. I fear, these kind of guys will never ever understand what a desaster Bibi’s Corona politics are for the international reputation of Zionism among those of us, who still follow rationalism and evidence based medicine, including the Great Barrington Declaration or the Israeli Common Sense Model by Israeli professors in medicine, epidemiology, microbiology, and other fields …
The obsession with technical solutions has long been a serious threat to Israel’s society – but most people seem to be enjoying surveillance technology and the end of any kind of privacy… I like Israel is also promoting the Greece-Israel deal I analyzed in this article. To ignore the collateral damage of Bibi’s Corona policies and to embrace the maniac vaccination program, including restrictions for not vaccinated people – as I like Israel does via their support of the truly totalitarian Greece Israel vaccination deal – all this is simply remarkable for people who always pretended to be rational, critical and open-minded, even fact-based.
Wer noch Lust hat auf ein Scherzle:
Kommt ein Patient in eine orthopädische Praxis. Fragt die technisch-medizinische Assistentin: „Haben Sie Halsschmerzen?“, „Nein“. „Haben Sie Fieber?“, „Nein“. „Haben Sie Husten?“, „Nein“. „Gut, dann schreiben wir ‚Corona‘, ’symptomlos‘.“