Game over?

28/07/2022 · Marcan

The undisputed star for more than two years, Covid no longer seems to draw the crowds. The arrival of a new variant no longer seems to worry many people. Within the political class, one senses that their heart is no longer in it. And when Yves Van Laethem, the interfederal Covid spokesperson, explains “We don’t give a damn about the number of cases”^{^[1]} or when Frank Vandenbroucke has, for the time being, given up on mandatory vaccination for healthcare staff, one feels that even within the government the tone has changed.

What happened? What could be the reasons for this U-turn? Strategic retreat or unconditional surrender? We will try to answer these questions…

A weary population

Vaccinated or not, the entire Belgian population has had Covid at least once, and the overwhelming majority have come through it very well. The fear of the unknown no longer exists, and the images of hospitals strewn with intubated patients no longer match our reality.
The vaccine, once regarded as the holy grail, no longer convinces many people either. By making people believe that it could protect others and eradicate the virus, the authorities ended up losing their credibility, at the cost of growing mistrust. A number of vaccinated people experienced post-vaccination incidents which they associated, rightly or wrongly, with the vaccine; this convinced them and those around them to abstain during the next vaccination campaign.
Finally, PCR tests and tracing are being shunned, and those who test “positive” often keep a very low profile so as not to disrupt their social or professional lives. The example of the players who tested positive at Roland-Garros perfectly illustrates a general situation: “Everyone had it and we said nothing”^{^[2]}.
Three fundamental pillars of the strategy, fear, tests and the vaccine, are therefore no longer holding up, rendering the whole Covid edifice obsolete. Of course, the return of the CST (Covid Safe Ticket) could change the game, but does the government still have the means to do so?

A reassuring epidemic trend

New variants that are more contagious but less virulent, broad herd immunity^{^[3]}, most of the people most at risk having already died, ...
Most experts now acknowledge it: we are in the endemic phase.
Hit hard during the first two waves, Belgium probably made the shift to endemicity in December 2020…

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COVID-19 Data Explorer - Our World in Data

Science returns to the path of reason

Under the pretext of urgency, certain scientific and ethical principles were put on hold^{^[4]}.
Science was no longer a rigorous approach but a showcase used to sell a strategy without scientific foundations.

Aerosol transmission
Many now agree that transmission occurs essentially through aerosols. The famous droplet theory has fizzled out: droplets have very little chance of infecting the respiratory tract^{^[5]}. Hand sanitiser gel and masks^{^[6]} therefore have only a very limited, or even non-existent, effectiveness.
The only real solution for reducing transmission in an enclosed space is simply ventilation.

A virus that mutates
The authorities clearly did not take this factor into account in their vaccination strategy. Yet several scientists had warned that mass vaccination was not desirable during an epidemic, particularly when the vaccine is poorly immunising and specific to one epitope of the virus. The risk being to “provoke vaccine resistance through the genetic recombination of the variant”^{^[7]}.

The number of cases is not a relevant indicator
For the first time in human history, massive testing campaigns were organised, even extending to testing asymptomatic people. Moreover, the use of PCR tests with up to 40 cycles created a flood of insignificant cases which, via the tracing machine, caused case numbers to explode. These figures were then used to induce fear and to impose “emergency” measures without scientific foundations.
All the experts now acknowledge it: the number of cases is not a relevant indicator. “The only interesting data are those that measure the number of severe Covid cases and hospitalisations. And even then, one must make sure they are reliable. We know today that half of the patients hospitalised with Covid actually have another condition that is the cause of their hospitalisation. During the first waves, the figures, often concealed, indicated that a third of patients died with Covid but not from Covid”^{^[8]}.

A virus that is critical above all for people at risk
“The statistical analysis of these data showed that the risk of death (lethality) of patients hospitalised for COVID-19 increased with the following pre-existing factors: advanced age, male sex, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic kidney, liver or lung disease, neurological and cognitive problems, cancer. For patients under 65, obesity was also a significant risk factor.”^{^[9]}

To visualise the age-related risk, here is a Sciensano chart showing the Belgian population who died of Covid (0 to 22.5%) from March 2020 to February 2021, by age group and by sex.

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Surveillance De La Mortalité Covid-19 En Belgique- Figure 9 - page 12

It is the complications that kill
Patients who end up in hospital or who die are essentially victims of complications:

hypoxia (lack of oxygen)
bacterial superinfection
coagulation problems
excessive inflammatory reaction

Early follow-up
Early follow-up (general condition, temperature, oximeter, ...) and outpatient treatments (oxygen therapy, antibiotics, anticoagulants, steroidal anti-inflammatories, …) make it possible to prevent or rapidly treat complications, so as to avoid a worsening of the patient’s condition and thus greatly reduce the risk of hospitalisation and death.
The disqualification of primary care on the very first day of the epidemic, when doctors were advised to intervene remotely to make sure that the patient isolated or, in severe cases, went to hospital ^{^[10]} had a catastrophic impact on hospitalisations and deaths.

A disappointing vaccine
Very quickly presented as the only solution for eradicating Sars-Cov2, the vaccine could only disappoint: “...anyone who knows a little bit about infectious diseases knew from the outset that eradicating a respiratory virus, SARS-CoV-2, is nonsense. It’s not possible!”^{^[11]}

Béatrice Swennen, docteur en médecine et chercheuse
au département d’épidémiologie et de médecine préventive - Eradiquer un virus respiratoire ?

Yet it was in the name of this eradication that the authorities imposed an “altruistic” vaccination campaign that had more to do with bad faith than with reality. It was indeed difficult to convince people who, as we saw above, had no personal reasons to get vaccinated.
If, on the other side, we place a significant number of reported side effects^{^[12]}^{^[13]}^{^[14]}^{^[15]}^{^[16]}, the current impossibility of guaranteeing long-term safety and the poor effectiveness after three months, it is clear that the generalised vaccination campaign was both a waste and a major error.

Worse still, over time the vaccine could tend to increase the risk of infection^{^[17]} .

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Christophe de Brouwer - "La loi, la liberté." de Bernard Crutzen

Even for deaths, where the vaccine still seemed to be justified, we are witnessing the same worrying phenomenon, particularly for two doses. One may wonder whether the phenomenon will also affect three doses in a few months. In that case, the authorities might be tempted to push a fourth dose to temporarily mask this problem… at the risk of aggravating it in the long run.

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Covid-19 bulletin epidemiologique hebdomadaire (1 juillet 2022)

An origin still shrouded in mystery
It is a question that is raised only sporadically. What is the origin of Sars-Cov2?
After any disaster (plane crash, industrial disaster, …) a meticulous investigation is carried out to find out its origin. The reason is simple: to prevent it from happening again. The WHO should have sent its finest sleuths to resolve this fundamental question as quickly as possible. All the more so since, if the lab-leak hypothesis is confirmed, the problem would probably be easier to solve than a natural origin. One may therefore legitimately wonder why the WHO is showing such negligence when it comes to finding an answer to a question that could save millions of people^{^[18]} .

Nouveaux doutes sur l’origine du Covid-19 - C à vous - 07/06/2022

A catastrophic toll

Not only did the “health” measures fail to deliver the expected benefits, but they had catastrophic consequences. Moreover, focusing all resources on ONE disease, relegating all other aspects of health and society to the background, is a drift that will take a heavy toll on society and on future generations.

Economy
Lockdowns, closures, costly rules, the CST, … had a major impact on economic activity.
“The analysis of the twelve sectors that make up market services indicates that seven sectors have not yet returned to their pre-crisis level of turnover over the first three quarters of 2021 as a whole. Events (RR) and the hospitality sector (II) were particularly hard hit in 2020 and remain so in 2021.”^{^[19]}

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Dette et déficit budgétaire en Belgique

The State and the regions supported the hardest-hit sectors and therefore deepened the deficit, already strained by a fall in tax revenue and a rise in unemployment due to the slowdown in activity. In addition, the management of the crisis generated significant costs: PCR tests, tracing, vaccination campaigns (doses, vaccination centres, logistics, cold chain, communication, introduction of the CST, …).

It should be noted, however, that some sectors in Belgium benefited greatly from the crisis, in particular the pharmaceutical industry, which saw its turnover increase by 101% in the first 9 months of 2021^{^[20]}.

Social and human
Lockdown created difficult situations, particularly among disadvantaged populations, sometimes with three generations sharing the same cramped home. Besides a health problem, overcrowding also led to an increase in domestic violence^{^[21]}.

Precariousness and mental health deteriorated^{^[22]}, particularly among young people, among whom anxiety, stress and the lack of social contact led to an increase in suicides^{^[23]}.
Education also suffered. Between tests, closures, remote classes, bubbles, social distancing, masks, … beyond the academic aspect, children and young people fell behind in many areas. At university, while the 2020/2021 year was relatively good in terms of pass rates, the return to in-person teaching in 2021/2022 was more difficult, revealing numerous failures and drop-outs^{^[24]}.
The sacrifice of a generation for a more than debatable health outcome will remain a dark moment for a society that will have lost its bearings.

As regards the oldest people in nursing homes, while in principle the measures taken were intended to protect them, they also often caused a “glissement syndrome” (failure to thrive) responsible for many deaths in inhumane conditions^{^[25]}. Moreover, “measures that impose lockdown on residents solely because of their presumed frailty and their age imply that they lack the capacity for self-determination to freely choose the risks they intend to take. Using coercion on the pretext of age-related frailty amounts to an invalidation of the resident as an actor, decided solely on the criterion of medical vulnerability. The autonomy and will of residents, and their capacity to reason, are disqualified in the light of a purpose set unilaterally by legal norms.”^{^[26]}

Finally, while today the King is calling for national cohesion^{^[27]}, the health crisis has created multiple divides at the heart of society: masks/anti-masks, covidists/reassurists, vax/anti-vax, pass/anti-pass, …
Fuelled by the guilt-inducing and divisive rhetoric of the government and of certain experts, no family, no group of friends, no professional environment escaped disagreements and radicalisation, sometimes to the point of rupture. While the subject is less emotionally charged today, silence does not always heal wounds that are sometimes deep, because they touched on values that everyone considers fundamental (solidarity, ethics, freedom, law, health, childhood, …).

The rule of law, fundamental rights and democracy

“When lockdown was ordered, more than ten fundamental rights were collectively and massively derogated from!”

Me Arnaud Jansen : Légalité du confinement

The rule of law presupposes the primacy of law over political power. While citizens were being asked to comply with extremely restrictive rules with serious consequences, the government freed itself for seventeen months from any adequate legal framework. Such restrictions of freedoms necessarily had to go through a proper debate and vote in the Chamber. Instead, Belgium was run by the Vandenbroucke–De Croo–Verlinden triumvirate, whose democratic legitimacy was more than debatable^{^[28]}.
It must be acknowledged that, apart from a few opposition MPs, parliamentarians seemed to put up with this situation, which allowed them to avoid taking complex, difficult and divisive decisions.
While the pandemic law signals a relative return to the rule of law, besides the risk of abuse in its use, one may question the relevance of a law supposed to fight a pandemic by essentially repressive means.

The height of hypocrisy is held by the CST which, on the pretext of limiting infections, was a disguised vaccination mandate. While a debate on mandatory vaccination did subsequently take place in the Chamber, it quickly fizzled out^{^[29]}, most of the experts having come out against it. The CST was therefore indeed a means for the government to obtain, by devious and discriminatory means, an obligation that Parliament would not have granted it.

Reduced political room for manoeuvre

In many countries, the various crises have weakened or even toppled those in power: a motion of no confidence and Draghi’s resignation in Italy, economic tensions and cracks in the majority in Germany, Boris Johnson’s resignation under pressure from his own party, farmers’ demonstrations in the Netherlands, the overthrow of the president in Sri Lanka, … the winds are therefore no longer very favourable to those in power.
The loss of the majority in France and the Assembly’s curtailment of the new covid law make it difficult for the Belgian government to justify, as in the past, measures that France no longer applies.

Some opposition parties (NVA, VB, PTB) have taken advantage of the growing discontent of the population, which risks weakening the majority parties even further at the next elections. Let us remember that on the Flemish side, the majority parties are the losers of the election. Parties such as Vooruit (6%) or Groen (5.33%) owe their survival only to the weakness of the other Flemish majority parties. On the French-speaking side, the PTB could overtake Écolo, or even challenge a PS that is losing momentum. In the long run, one hardly dares imagine the Belgian political situation with the NVA and the VB in the lead on one side and a PTB in full ascent on the other…
Finally, between an electorate affected by the Covid measures (self-employed, entrepreneurs, middle classes, ..), a historical discourse centred on respect for freedoms, and its presence in government, the MR has been doing the splits. The alignment of DéFI and the "Engagés" (ex-CDH) with the majority, and the lack of a credible French-speaking liberal political alternative, could allow the MR to hold its ground.

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Chambre des représentants (Belgique) — Wikipédia

Other priorities

In 2022, public finances looked set to be better under control thanks to a recovery in activity, but the war in Ukraine, the sanctions “to provoke the collapse of the Russian economy”^{^[30]}, the soaring energy prices, the fall of the euro and finally inflation have changed the game. The indexation of wages and pensions makes the Belgian situation particularly explosive^{^[31]}.
Under these conditions, the ECB has no choice but to raise interest rates, which will inevitably lead to a fall in economic activity, a rise in unemployment and a problem in financing public debt. Soaring prices and rising rates in turn risk widening the gaps within the euro area, which could lead to a monetary crisis^{^[32]}.
The federal government and the federated entities are therefore with their backs to the wall, facing an economic, budgetary, energy, social and monetary crisis.

Moreover, European governments are under pressure to implement the Commission’s new binding directives under the climate-energy targets for 2030^{^[33]}, which will not happen without gnashing of teeth. If we add to all this an economic war against Russia that is already lost but that some would like to continue^{^[34]}, one feels that if the government needs a crisis, it is spoilt for choice.

Strategic retreat or unconditional surrender?

Covid is not going to disappear with the wave of a magic wand; it will continue to coexist with us, like myriads of viruses and bacteria since the dawn of time. The question is rather whether the government still wishes to pursue its strategy of fear and coercion.
European countries are under pressure from the Commission, which is recommending a fourth dose for this winter,, probably impatient to justify its purchase of 4.2 billion doses^{^[35]}. A purchase whose negotiations took place in circumstances that remain opaque^{^[36]}^{^[37]}. Even though the Commission has means of putting pressure on the States, health remains a sovereign prerogative, and several countries do not fail to point this out^{^[38]}.
Of course, the government could use an increase in the circulation of the virus after the summer to justify certain measures and put pressure on vaccination again. And this article shows that the authorities are capable of taking decisions that defy all apparent logic.

But one may also wonder whether the government does not wish to get rid of the Covid question. First, it no longer enjoys the same trust among the population, nor the same political, budgetary and economic means to impose new measures. Besides the fact that the government has other priorities, this would put the spotlight back on a catastrophic management on which it no longer really wishes to reopen the debate. The authorities could continue managing Covid a minima so as not to lose face. It would then be up to citizens to demand inquiries and obtain safeguards to ensure that the dysfunctions they suffered never happen again, whether for a health crisis or for any other reason.

Marcan for BAM!

^{^[1]}href="https://www.7sur7.be/belgique/on-s-en-fout-du-nombre-de-cas-yves-van-laethem-appelle-a-dedramatiser-la-hausse-des-contaminations~ad197ec8/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“On s’en fout du nombre de cas”: Yves Van Laethem appelle à “dédramatiser” la hausse des contaminations | Belgique | 7sur7.be

^{^[2]}Scandale sur fond de Covid à Roland-Garros ? "Tout le monde l’a eu et on n’a rien dit" - La Libre

^{^[3]}The decline of COVID-19 severity and lethality over two years of pandemic | medRxiv

^{^[4]}Quand la Science dévoyée nuit à la santé – Le blog du #covidrationnel

^{^[5]}La Covid-19 ne se transmettrait pas par les surfaces contaminées : pourquoi ?

^{^[6]}The Best Mask Study Yet ⋆ Brownstone Institute

^{^[7]}Yves Coppieters - Bio!Tempo! Juillet 2022

^{^[8]}Alice Desbiolles - Le Figaro : faut-il avoir encore peur du Covid ?" (in French)

^{^[9]}Surveillance de la mortalité covid-19 en belgique- 2.3. Quelles étaient les caractéristiques des personnes décédées de la Covid-19 à l’hôpital ? - page 12

^{^[10]}Communiqué du Collège de Médecine Générale - COVID19

^{^[11]}Béatrice Swennen, docteur en médecine et chercheuse au département d’épidémiologie et de médecine préventive - Eradiquer un virus respiratoire ? (in French)

^{^[12]}Coronavirus : aperçu mensuel des effets indésirables des vaccins contre la COVID-19 du 28 avril 2022 | AFMPS

^{^[13]}Une enquête en ligne identifie un lien entre troubles menstruels et vaccin contre le covid

^{^[14]}Sa vie a basculé le jour où elle a fait sa deuxième dose

^{^[15]}Les effets indésirables des vaccins contre le covid-19 : auditions au Sénat

^{^[16]}Covid-19 : après la mort de Ludovic, 39 ans, vacciné au Moderna, son père demande des comptes | Actu Nantes

^{^[17]}BAM! News - The reality “not detectable” by Sciensano

^{^[18]}COVID-19 Data Explorer - Our World in Data

^{^[19]}Impact économique du coronavirus | SPF Economie

^{^[20]}Les vaccins contre le Covid ont boosté l’économie belge d’un milliard d’euros - Entreprises - Trends-Tendances

^{^[21]}La violence conjugale, autre face sombre du coronavirus, reste élevée à Bruxelles - rtbf.be