1. Thread about this Welt story from early Feb

It's about how Seehofer, German Minister of Interior, pressured epidemiologists at RKI (=German CDC) & other scientists to come up with a scary modelling study that would justify extending the 1st lockdown https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/plus225868061/Corona-Politik-Wie-das-Innenministerium-Wissenschaftler-einspannte.html?cid=onsite.onsitesearch

2. Christian Drosten & Lothar Wieler (head of RKI) pressured Seehofer to extend the 1st lockdown, which was scheduled to end on Easter 2020.

They appear to have acted right at the time the lockdown was announced – before anybody could say anything about its success or failure.

3. So Seehover got his underling, Staatssekretär Markus Kerber (picrelated) to recruit various scientists from the RKI and other institutes, to produce a scary modelling study that would justify extending the lockdown.

4. We only know about this, because some lawyers, among them Niko Härting, forced the German government to disclose over 200 pages of related email correspondence about the genesis of this modelling study.

5. Remember that Neil Ferguson's notorious Imperial College model was released on 16 March. The German interior minister wanted his own model, just like the Brits. Remember that copying methods and strategies is a common feature of Corona containment policy.

6. The full text of the emails hasn't been released, as far as I know, but the Welt report contains some quite revealing passages.

Kerber told the scientists he wanted a model that would help him plan "measures of a prevantative and repressive nature".

7. He demanded that everybody keep the initiative secret & suggested they exchange phone numbers b/c he wasn't sure "whether & how long networks will be reliably functioning"

Vry hard to know whether Kerber really thought the lights were about to go out, or he's just an idiot

8. Within four days the ridiculous modellers had done their hocus-pocus and came up with a secret paper that predicted one million deaths in Germany as a worst-case scenario.

9. This paper included very revealing speculation, about how Germany might be shocked into compliance. People had to be confronted with terrifying triage scenarios, according to which their relatives would be denied admission to hospital and die suffocating at home.

10. Interior ministry bureaucrats were involved at every point of work on the fake modelling study. At the same time, the researchers themselves, in the leaked emails, constantly express political opinions.

11. Markus Söder, the Bavarian Ministerpräsident and die-hard Corona enthusiast, "is intuitively right," one of them says. "We must balance this growing feeling of powerlessness with the impression of strong state intervention."

12. Some of the researchers thought an RKI model, putting the Corona IFR at 0,56%, was too low. They thought this number should be arbitrarily doubled in order to create pressure for more repressive containment measures, and also according to a "precautionary principle."

13. In fact over the past year, we have seen how almost everything coming out of the epidemiological establishment is relentlessly exaggerated, for purposes of advocacy.

14. The email correspondence itself has been heavily redacted by the German government. Reason given?

"Protection of intellectual property; trade and business secrets." https://twitter.com/nhaerting/status/1358791154330980354

15. More still: Throughout the correspondence, it is obvious to see that "China" is a frequent object of discussion, but the word "China" is apparently in every case redacted.

Reason given: "Could have negative consequences for international relations" https://twitter.com/nhaerting/status/1358793972961976321

16. Key public health doctrines about Corona were forged in mid- late-March, by international agencies like the WHO, government officials, and cowed scientists. What is being sold to you as Scientific Consensus is sloppy propaganda intended to justify mass containment.