What German politicians learned (and didn't) from COVID-19

BY Marcel Fürstenau

A parliamentary inquiry has been looking into the policy decisions made to contain the coronavirus pandemic in Germany. The decisions made by key leaders from the time are being questioned.

 

Jens Spahn had been called as a witness, but he must have felt like a defendant during his questioning by the parliamentary fact-finding commission.

Spahn, Germany's health minister from 2018 to 2021, played a crucial role at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

Spahn was called by an "enquête-commission," a committee appointed by the Bundestag consisting of 14 members of parliament from all parliamentary groups as well as external experts, which is currently examining how the German state acted during the coronaviirus pandemic.

Spahn, who is now parliamentary group leader for Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), procured huge quantities of protective face masks at apparently greatly inflated prices.

One employee of the Federal Audit Office, which monitors government expenditure, said Spahn's Health Ministry bought about 5.8 billion masks at a unit price of around €1 each. Well over half of them were never distributed and later had to be destroyed. "We see this as massive over-procurement," said the expert from the Federal Audit Office, which monitors the use of taxpayers' money.

The health minister ultimately failed to accept or pay for a large number of the masks he ordered. Germany's government could face payments of some €2.3 billion ($2.7 billion) to health product manufacturers if courts rule against it in the dozens of lawsuits that have been filed over the issue.

In parliament, Spahn defended his decisions. The primary goal, he said, was to contain the spread of the virus to avoid overburdening the healthcare system. With regard to the mask purchases, he said, "the whole world wanted the same thing at the same time. It was a matter of life and death."

In the past, he has admitted that in hindsight he should have done things differently.

Virologist praises Germany's pandemic control

In early December, prominent virologist Christian Drosten, one of the government's leading advisors during the pandemic, also faced questions from the commission. "The danger of the pandemic stemmed from the dynamic transmissibility of the virus," said the virologist from Berlin's renowned Charite hospital. He stressed that the efficiency of pandemic control in Germany was internationally recognized in the early days.

The scientist warned it was impossible to act following a prepared plan for action in an unpredictable crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Pandemic control will always follow the principle: We're building the ship we have already had to set sail in," he said. Action is only possible based on new data daily and new research results, said Drosten. "This requires well-funded infection research and strong public health institutions."

 Close schools or businesses?

Drosten also commented on the highly controversial school closures. During the first wave of the pandemic, this was a precautionary measure to protect children. However, as time went on, many federal states reassessed these measures to make political decisions based on which areas of society would be impacted.

This highlights difficulties in the coordination between the federal and state levels of government. During the pandemic, the leaders of Germany's 16 states convened with the federal government to agree on measures such as imposing complete lockdowns. The Bundestag, however, was often relegated to a more limited role, as the states had more say.

The decisions to close schools or companies were made by politicians, not by scientists, Drosten emphasized. However he refused to blame decision makers. "I don't want to say that politicians only had the interests of employers in mind back then," he said.

The manufacturing industry where working from home is not possible, could not afford to shut down long term. Germany is lagging behind other countries in digitalization and this, according to Drosten, also played a role in preventing workers and students from working from home.

While Germany has a large manufacturing industry, Drosten pointed out, the Swedish capital Stockholm has a very large service sector so it was possible for 40% of its population to simply work from home. "Feasibility is not the same in all countries," said the virologist.

Besides Drosten, other doctors on the commission offered advice on how to deal with future pandemics. Johannes Niessen, who was head of Germany's largest public health department in the western city of  Cologne until 2024, addressed the higher infection rates in socially disadvantaged neighborhoods.

"On the one hand, there are precarious working conditions that are difficult to manage in terms of hygiene," Niessen said. But living conditions also played a major role: "Living with five people in a 50 square meter apartment is quite different from living with two people over 200 square meters. If one of them is infected, they have more space to stay out of the other person's way."

Niessen also pointed out the connection between precarious social conditions and health risks such as cardiovascular disease and often cancer. "These are pre-existing conditions that will affect some people more than others."

Young people at risk

The Cologne health authorities worked with the fire department to set up COVID-19 testing sites "in places where no private providers offered testing." In the future, Niessen concluded, the focus must be on all vulnerable groups from the outset. In his view, this includes not only older adults but also younger people with pre-existing health conditions, people with disabilities and other disadvantaged groups. 

The Bundestag's commission of inquiry has now completed three months of public hearings. When it was set up, parliamentary president Julia Klöckner (CDU) had formulated her expectations as follows: "The pandemic has left wounds — visible and invisible — and it has also alienated people from politics." This makes it all the more important for the commission to thoroughly, constructively and self-critically examine the political decisions made at the time and their social impact.

"It's about listening, understanding, learning and documenting and utilizing the knowledge to combat any future pandemics," Klöckner explained.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a unprecedented turning point for Germany, for the health care system, the education sector and the economy but above all for the daily lives of citizens, Klöckner said. "Many people lost relatives and friends or are still struggling with the health and social consequences. We have paid too little attention to the psychological effects on children and young people in particular."

All of this is to be critically analyzed by the commission in public hearings during 2026 after which it should present  well-founded recommendations for future. A final report is due in June 2027. 

This article has been translated from German.

https://www.dw.com/en/what-german-politicians-learned-and-didnt-from-covid-19/a-75283320

 

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

Long COVID and the concealment of pandemic harm

by Benjamin Mateus

The United States has now entered the seventh year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the country is moving through what the Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative (PMC) characterizes as the 12th major wave. What makes the present period politically decisive is not only the level of transmission, but the systematic degradation of surveillance, the frontal assault on public health institutions, and the deliberate normalization of mass infection—conditions that for good reason undermine public trust in the official figures posted on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website.

Within this context, the PMC at Tulane University has stepped in to fill the void in public health information. According to the PMC’s December 22, 2025 national estimate of the scale of transmission in the United States, based on wastewater surveillance, around 732,000 people are being infected daily. In the current year, there have been a total of 232,000,000 infections. The same dashboard estimates that one in 67 people (1.5 percent of the population) is actively infectious on a given day, and that cumulative infections per person since the start of the pandemic have reached 4.86, a clear reflection of the official policy of repeated exposure.

 

This is not an abstract curve. The PMC estimates that new infections are generating 224,000 to 890,000 Long COVID cases per week. Even under conditions of lowered acute fatality risk compared to the first two years of the pandemic, the PMC estimates 220 to 360 excess deaths per day from new infections and 1,300 to 2,200 excess deaths per week from new infections. These are deaths “in excess” of expected baselines, and are frequently not recorded as “COVID deaths” in routine tallies.

At the same time, the very wastewater-driven heat map that the PMC draws on highlights how fragmented and incomplete US surveillance has become. Large sections of the country are marked as having “limited data,” while the map itself warns that the data are “lagged” and levels are “worse than shown.” This is a practical expression of the political assault on public health: society is being led through an ongoing mass-disabling event with the instruments for measuring it intentionally blunted.

Observed deaths versus attributable deaths—or how the pandemic is rendered invisible

The CDC’s provisional mortality surveillance for January 4 through December 13, 2025 lists approximately 21,380 deaths with COVID-19 coded as the underlying cause of death. But if one makes an annual estimate of COVID-related excess deaths based on the PMC’s figure for the week of December 22, 2025, a relatively low number according to the PMC, this translates to between 67,600 and 114,400 excess COVID-related deaths. The question then arises as to how to resolve this discrepancy? One answer stems from the CDC report that estimates annualized observed deaths from influenza, COVID and pneumonia, a questionable lumping of the data as it conceals a clear examination of the implication of respiratory illnesses. Nevertheless, over the period January 4 through December 13, 2025, the CDC reports 196,283 deaths in the combined category.

These numbers are not contradictory. They expose the method by which pandemic mortality is obscured.

“Observed COVID deaths” typically refers to death certificates where COVID-19 is listed as the single underlying cause. This narrow category depends on access to testing, physician attribution and coding practices that have deteriorated sharply since the end of the federal public health emergency. In contrast, the combined flu–COVID–pneumonia category captures deaths where any of these conditions appear on the death certificate, whether as underlying or contributing causes.

The overwhelming majority of deaths in this combined category are now coded as pneumonia, a non-specific terminal diagnosis that frequently represents the final pathway of fatal viral illness. COVID-19 is a multi-organ vascular disease that increases the risk of respiratory failure, thrombosis, cardiac events, stroke, renal failure and immune dysregulation. When the initiating viral infection is not documented—perhaps because it is politically inconvenient to do so—it disappears from the record, replaced by downstream diagnoses such as pneumonia, heart disease, or metabolic decompensation.

This is why epidemiologists distinguish between COVID-coded deaths and COVID-attributable deaths. The latter includes deaths where SARS-CoV-2 plausibly initiated the causal chain, even if it is not listed as the underlying cause. Excess mortality analysis—used by EuroMOMO in Europe and the UK Office for National Statistics—consistently shows that total deaths remain elevated well above pre-pandemic baselines, even as official COVID death tallies decline.

In other words, COVID has not stopped killing. It has been administratively erased.

Long COVID and the structural mechanisms of ongoing harm

Six years after the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, the most consequential and enduring dimension of the pandemic is Long COVID, which provides the clearest explanation for the persistence of excess disease, disability and mortality worldwide despite repeated claims of normalization.

First, Long COVID represents a massive global burden of disease. A growing body of high-impact research converges on the finding that approximately 6 to 10 percent of all SARS-CoV-2 infections result in symptoms lasting at least three months, with prevalence rising substantially after severe or repeated infections (Ballering et al., 2022; Davis et al., 2023; Global Burden of Disease Long COVID Collaborators, 2022). A large multinational cross-sectional study spanning 33 countries found persistent post-COVID symptoms across all regions and income levels, with fatigue, cognitive impairment, cardiopulmonary symptoms and autonomic dysfunction among the most frequently reported manifestations (Amin-Chowdhury et al., 2025). Taken together, these findings indicate that hundreds of millions of people globally are now living with Long COVID, establishing it as a population-scale chronic health condition rather than a marginal post-viral syndrome.

Longitudinal cohort studies further underscore the seriousness of this burden. Three-year follow-up data from the US Veterans Health Administration, published in Nature Medicine, demonstrate sustained excess risk of death and multisystem disease extending into the third year after infection, including cardiovascular disease, thromboembolic events, neurological disorders, kidney disease and metabolic dysfunction (Xie, Choi, and Al-Aly, 2024). Importantly, risk did not return to baseline even after several years, confirming that the health effects of SARS-CoV-2 are durable and cumulative, not transient.

Second, reinfection substantially amplifies the risk of Long COVID, including among children and adolescents. Analysis from the RECOVER-EHR program during the Omicron era found that the incidence of Long COVID approximately doubled following reinfection, with cases encompassing autonomic dysfunction, fatigue syndromes, cardiovascular symptoms and neurocognitive impairment (RECOVER Initiative, 2024). These findings directly contradict claims that repeated SARS-CoV-2 infections are benign, particularly in younger populations.

Third, routine healthcare data captures only a fraction of Long COVID cases, leading to systematic underestimation of prevalence. A 2025 population-based study from the Barcelona Integral Healthcare Consortium, using primary-care electronic health records, initially identified Long COVID in 2.4 per 1,000 individuals. After correcting for under-ascertainment related to missed diagnoses, delayed presentation and inconsistent coding, prevalence increased by more than 25 percent, with a clear dose-response relationship: prevalence rose steadily with each additional infection (Català et al., 2025). The critical implication is not the precise percentage, but the structural limitation of health system data, which detects only a subset of cases—particularly among working-age adults who remain partially functional while chronically ill.

Taken together, these studies establish Long COVID as the primary mechanism through which hyperendemic SARS-CoV-2 transmission translates into cumulative social harm. In the context of repeated infection waves, each surge generates new cohorts of chronically ill individuals while worsening outcomes for those already affected. Long COVID therefore reveals that the pandemic has not ended but has entered a protracted phase of population-level morbidity, largely obscured by weakened surveillance, yet increasingly evident in healthcare strain, labor force attrition and excess mortality.

Finland as a high-resolution case study

Finland provides a rare, high-resolution view of these dynamics—not because it is biologically unique, but because it still maintains relatively comprehensive national health registries and wastewater surveillance.

Much of the most accessible synthesis of this data has been produced by Ilkka Rauvola, an equity research analyst by profession, who publishes independent analyses under the handle @jukka235 and in a Substack newsletter (“Ilkka’s Newsletter”). Rauvola is not a clinician or epidemiologist. His contribution lies in applying rigorous time-series analysis to public data released by Finland’s health authorities.

Central to his work is Avohilmo, Finland’s national primary healthcare register, maintained by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL). The registry captures diagnoses and encounters across the public healthcare system and allows longitudinal tracking of disease burden by age group and medical diagnosis. While no registry is perfect, Avohilmo’s national scope and continuity make it far more informative than the fragmented and delayed datasets now available in the United States.

Rauvola’s analyses show that since 2019, the cumulative share of the population recorded with disease diagnoses has risen across nearly every major ICD-10 category. By 2025, compared with 2019 levels, Finland has seen:

• Mental and behavioral disorders rise to 1.73 times baseline
• Blood and immune disorders to 1.68
• Diseases of the nervous system to 1.64
• Genitourinary diseases to 1.56
• Endocrine and metabolic diseases to 1.48
• Total disease burden across categories to 1.35

Age-stratified analyses using 2020 as the baseline show increases across all age groups by 2025, including 1.39 times baseline among ages 25–49, 1.47 among ages 50–74, 1.61 among those over 85, and 1.62 among infants.

As Rauvola recently noted on his social media post: “In fact, we’re seeing exponential growth in patient numbers across all disease and age groups in Finland. The trend is strikingly linear on a log scale, with no sign of any slowdown since 2020. No health system can take this for long. It’s just a matter of time.”

His wastewater analyses are particularly revealing. Finnish SARS-CoV-2 wastewater levels in late 2025 reached comparable magnitudes to the first Omicron peak in early 2022, despite the absence of emergency declarations or mass testing. This pattern defines the current hyperendemic phase of the pandemic: SARS-CoV-2 maintains a high baseline level of circulation, punctuated by repeated waves that continuously seed new cases of long COVID and downstream complications. The United States shows the same structure, but with far poorer visibility. The PMC’s estimate of 732,000 daily infections and climbing aligns closely with this interpretation.

It must be stated: hyperendemic does not mean stable or benign. It means persistent high transmission with recurrent surges, ensuring a steady accumulation of chronic disease.

Conclusion: The COVID pandemic is a class event

Six years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the evidence is no longer ambiguous. The continued spread of SARS-CoV-2, the mass emergence of Long COVID, and the steady accumulation of chronic disease and excess death expose a social order that has treated mass infection as an acceptable cost of doing business. The pandemic was never merely a medical emergency. It has always been a class event, shaped by decisions that subordinate human life to profit, market stability, and geopolitical agendas.

As David North has stated, “The pandemic revealed, with terrible clarity, the incompatibility of capitalism with the most basic requirements of public health.”

That incompatibility now defines the present phase of the crisis. Governments have dismantled surveillance, narrowed definitions of COVID death and promoted the fiction of a post-pandemic “normal,” even as millions remain chronically ill and excess mortality persists. This is not a failure of knowledge, but of political will.

The social distribution of harm makes this unmistakable. COVID infections, deaths and long-term disability have fallen disproportionately on the working class, while the wealthy insulated themselves through remote work, private healthcare and the ability to avoid exposure. Life expectancy losses, elevated mortality from cardiovascular and respiratory disease and the burden of Long COVID have tracked closely with income, occupation and access to care. The virus exploited pre-existing inequality, and policy amplified it.

The decay of public health institutions must be understood in this light. The erosion of data systems, the undercounting of COVID-related deaths through misattribution to pneumonia and cardiac causes, and the abandonment of mitigation are not technical errors awaiting correction. They are expressions of a social system that no longer even pretends to place collective well-being above private accumulation. Where data remain robust, as in Finland, the scale of ongoing harm becomes visible. Where they do not, it is merely concealed.

The lessons of the pandemic point inexorably toward the need for an independent response by the working class. The defense and reconstruction of public health—universal access to care, clean air, paid sick leave, transparent surveillance and sustained scientific investment—cannot be entrusted to institutions that have already demonstrated their allegiance to profit over life. A socialist reorganization of society is not an abstraction, but a practical necessity if humanity is to confront a pandemic that has not ended but been politically obscured. The fight for public health is inseparable from the fight for social equality, and it must be taken up consciously and internationally.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/12/30/nppi-d30.html

 

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

(GUSNOTE: THIS INFORMATION HAS NOT BEEN VERIFIED BY GUS...]

In the official version of events, Operation Talla was the crown jewel of British policing during the COVID-19 pandemic—a coordinated, compassionate, and transparent national response praised for safeguarding officers and the public alike. Awards were handed out. Media praised the leadership. Senior officials like Assistant Chief Constable Owen Weatherill were lauded for “service excellence.”

But beneath the polished PR campaign, a newly unearthed set of Freedom of Information (FOI) disclosures suggests something far more troubling: a deliberate effort by UK police leadership to suppress dissent, discredit citizens raising vaccine injury concerns, and manage public perception at the expense of truth and accountability.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/policing-the-narrative-operation-talla-and-the-suppression-of-covid-era-dissent-in-the-uk-ed84333b

 

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Operation Talla - Unconstitutional and Unlawful

 

BY IAIN DAVIS

  

On the 20th December 2021 a group of concerned citizens presented evidence to the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) alleging “serious indictable offences arising from the manufacture, promotion, and administration of the COVID-19 vaccines.”

As a consequence of Operation Talla, those allegations were not investigated by the MPS. Many similar allegations submitted to other police forces around the country were not investigated either, for the same reason. 

The evidence given to the police, in December 2021, comprised of more than 400 victim, witness, qualified expert and industry whistleblower statements. The evidence provided included detailed scientific analyses and multiple documentary exhibits.

 

The concerned citizens were given the Crime Reference Number CRN-6029679/21 by the Metropolitan Police. Upon issuing the CRN the police were duty bound to investigate the allegation of criminality. 

The police have to take any reported crime “seriously.” The police must conduct an impartial preliminary criminal investigation to establish if there are any possible “further lines of enquiry.” Following this process, the police may decide that “they are unable to take any further action,” but they have to investigate the allegation first. 

The police act under the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996 [CPIA]. Their CPIA code of practice clearly states: 

[A] criminal investigation is an investigation conducted by police officers with a view to it being ascertained whether a person should be charged with an offence, or whether a person charged with an offence is guilty of it. This will include [. . .] investigations whose purpose is to ascertain whether a crime has been committed, with a view to the possible institution of criminal proceedings.

The word “investigate” means to try to find out the facts—in this case, appertaining to an allegation of widespread, institutional criminality. The police’s “criminal investigation” must include, but is not limited to, seeking to get more information relevant to the allegation. The word “proceedings,” in this context, refers to the court proceedings that may spring from the police’s initial “criminal investigation.” 

Therefore, in order to investigate the allegations of systematic institutional criminality relating to the government’s vaccine rollout and its Covid-19 policy response, the police had a legal and a lawful duty to try to get more information from some, if not all, of the more than 400 alleged victims, witnesses, qualified experts and whistleblowers. 

So far, due to orders received under Operation Talla, the UK police has not contacted any of them and, according merely to police assertions, no “criminal investigation” has been undertaken. 

 

*****************************

In retrospect, while many expressed doubts at the time, we now all know that the jabs were neither safe nor effective. The evidence clearly shows that countless lives have been ruined and many lives have been lost as a direct result of the jabs—the so-called “vaccines.” 

These jabs were injected into people across the nation to allegedly combat an illness that had “low mortality” and was not, therefore, designated by the scientific establishments and the UK health authorities as a “High Consequence Infectious Disease” (HCID). The jabs had not completed clinical trials and were issued under emergency authorisation absent any formal risk assessment. There were, quite obviously, foreseeable serious consequences for public health presented by the jabs. 

The British public was not told this information and could not, therefore, give their informed consent to be jabbed. The apparent withholding of these facts from the jabbed—among many more medical and scientific reasons for reservation—suggested that a number of extremely serious State Crimes Against Democracy (SCADS) were possibly committed. 

Such SCADS could include “false representation,” a crime under the s.2 of the Fraud Act 2006; a “failure to disclose information,” in contravention of s.3 of the Fraud Act 2006, misconduct in public office, gross negligence manslaughter, corporate manslaughter, and more. The first, but not the only, formal report of these suspected SCADs to the police was CRN-6029679/21. Safe to say, the Metropolitan Police had a very large investigation on their hands just to establish if “further lines of enquiry” were warranted. 

Having issued the CRN, in accordance with the CPIA, the police were required to undertake a “criminal investigation” to “ascertain whether a crime has been committed.” They evidently did not. 

British people’s lives potentially could have been protected or saved had the police fulfilled their statutory obligations under the CPIA. The evidence overwhelmingly indicates that the police did not adhere to the CPIA because, apparently at the highest government level, they were ordered to ignore it. 

 

*****************************

Between submission of the evidence relating to CRN-6029679/21 and the summer of 2022, the concerned citizens who submitted the evidence, and their equally concerned supporters, had a well-grounded expectation that a full criminal police investigation would be conducted. Therefore, with a moral and entirely lawful purpose, they campaigned against the jab rollout on that basis and tried to alert their fellow citizens to their justifiable and lawful concerns. 

This opened the door for the state’s official “gatekeepers of information and news”—the mainstream media (MSM)—to perform their role as state propagandists. We’ll use the comically misnamed “Independent” newspaper by way of typical example.

Fiercely attacking the campaigners by othering them as “anti-vaxxers,” The Independent alleged, without a shred of justifications, that the campaigners were “falsely claiming crimes are being committed.” A claim which the so-called journalist who wrote this propagandist junk could not possibly substantiate.

Utterly contradicting itself, The Independent reported that officers were “reviewing the documents” and that the police “assessment continues.” Yet somehow, the propagandists managed to spin this to falsely assert that campaigners’ allegations of criminality were conclusively false. 

The primary goal of the MSM propaganda was to convince the unsuspecting British people that there was nothing to see here. Thus, deceiving them into taking unnecessary, untested, evidently dangerous experimental drugs, as unlawfully demanded by the state. 

By asserting without cause that the campaigners activities were unjustified and were organised using social media, the secondary objective was to provide some sort of spurious rationale for the rollout of censorship legislation in the UK. This has now duly arrived in the form of the Online Safety Act (OSA).

 

*****************************

As it began to dawn on the concerned British citizens that their formal submission of a huge body of evidence to the police—indicating suspected state crimes—was not being properly investigated, they started to try to figure out what was going on. 

Led by Ian Clayton, assisted by Mark Sexton, Moira Brown, and others, what they discovered is perhaps the clearest and most damning evidence of state crimes we, the British people, have ever had in our possession. It factually establishes that the UK state acted unconstitutionally and unlawfully. 

Operation Talla proves that we are actually oppressed by Establishment diktat and that we are not ruled—as falsely and deceptively claimed by the UK government—under the constitutional rule of law. 

It doesn’t matter whether you think the original concerns about the jabs were warranted or not. The established fact is that a significant number of British people reported serious allegations of institutional criminality to the police and officers were ordered by their commanders not to investigate those allegations. 

Those orders were issued by the Operation Talla strategic command structure. 

 

*****************************

The UN’s World Health Organisation declared an alleged global pandemic on 11th March 2020. By then, the Operation Talla command system had already been established. 

According to the National Police Chief’s Council (NPCC), Operation Talla was a strategic command initiative that covered the “entire UK police service.” 

While preparations for possible emergencies are sensible, it is nonetheless notable that the NPCC claims Operation Talla was launched “in response to a critical incident unlike any other in living memory.” It appears, however, that Operation Talla went live months prior to that “critical incident” purportedly occurring. 

The NPCC adds:

The objectives of Operation Talla sought to preserve life, maintain law and order, and prevent crime; all while maintaining the core policing service during a period of uncertainty, and; assisting colleagues in the NHS as they fought the worst effects of this pandemic.

This is a wholly disingenuous statement. By denying the investigation of suspected criminality, Operation Talla put lives at unnecessary risk, eschewed any concept of law and order, transformed the core policing service into the unlawful enforcers of oppression, and heaped further and avoidable burdens on the NHS.

 

Realising what was happening, the concerned researchers sent FOI requests to police services across the UK. While most refused to comply or stymied these lawful and legal requests, eventually Police Scotland provided a directive from Assistant Chief Constable (ACC) Alan Speirs. 

Subsequent FOIs confirmed that ACC Speirs issued his directive to fellow officers “on the advice of the National Police Chiefs' Council and the UK Gold Command.” That “UK Gold Command” structure manifested as Operation Talla. 

In his Directive, Speirs alleged that emergency service workers, or staff and volunteers at jab centres had been intimidated, harassed, or assaulted by campaigners. There doesn’t appear to be much, if any, evidence to support this claim.

David Stewart and Jessica Colins, who in good humour took to wearing very silly, pretend police uniforms—complete with flashing blue lights on top of their obviously joke police helmets—attended protests at vaccine centres and elsewhere. Farcically, they were convicted and fined for impersonating police officers. There are no specific details on any other convictions for harassment or assault, or any other criminal offences, directly related to any of the protests at any vaccine centre.

During lawful civil protests—especially when anger and despair is running high—there is always the chance that some individuals might stray into committing unlawful acts. This is why, as reported by The Independent, the peaceable and lawful concerned citizens stressed the need for their fellow campaigners to be polite, be respectful, be calm and never abuse anyone or even use bad language. 

It certainly was not the conduct of the Jab centre protesters that should cause anyone in the UK any alarm. The same cannot be said for Operation Talla. 

The Speirs Directive , dated 25th January 2022, revealed some jaw dropping information:

[We are] aware of individuals attending at police stations or calling police to [. . .] report what they believe to be criminal offences. [. . .] The Metropolitan Police Service [MPS] received a complaint and a number of documents on 20 December 2021. 

The first thing to note is that this was not a “complaint.” It was an allegation of extremely serious criminal offenses backed up by a wealth of evidence. In compliance with the CPIA, the allegations necessitated that the police conduct a “criminal investigation.” 

The Speirs Directive continued:

The MPS provided the complainers with a crime reference number [CRN-6029679/21] and is reviewing the content of the documents. However, the MPS has been clear that nothing has been found to suggest any offences or grounds for an investigation, and that no such investigation is taking place.

None of the hundreds of people who submitted evidence had been contacted by the MPS. Instead the MPS was seemingly restricting itself to merely “reviewing” the documentary exhibits. 

Despite the volume of statement, scientific and documentary evidence provided—triggering a “criminal investigation” just to decide if further action was warranted—Speirs appeared to confirm that “no such investigation” had been undertaken. Speirs then spelled out why the CPIA was evidently ignored: 

The National Police Chiefs’ Council [NPCC] has also said that it does not believe any of the papers which have been “served” to date have any legal standing [this referred to campaigners serving what they thought to be legal notices to people at jab centres]. Should any officer or member of staff be approached or contacted by people requesting assistance in line with any of the above, then these requests should be rejected. [Emphasis added]

Absent a proper, impartial “criminal investigation,” what the police believes, thinks or imagines a situation to be is completely irrelevant. It is not within the jurisdiction of the NPCC or the police to arbitrarily pronounce that documents served have no “legal standing.” Only if the evidence uncovered by a police investigation is subsequently judged by the courts to prove that the papers have no “legal standing” does that become a legal, and lawful, fact. 

In the context of Operation Talla and the Speirs Directive, consider what Speirs orders regarding “any of the above” means. 

CRN-6029679/21 had been drawn to the attention of the NPCC and the UK Gold Command Structure embodied within Operation Talla. As Operation Talla held command across the “entire UK police service,” and seeing as Speirs was acting under advice from Operation Talla Gold Command, the Speirs Directive clearly evidences that police forces across the whole of UK were ordered not to investigate “any” such allegations of state criminality. 

Speirs then directed officers to what they should do, instead of investigate incredibly serious criminal allegations that were lawfully reported to them by the public: 

A SID entry [record made in the Police National Computer (PNC)] should be submitted and marked for the attention of Operation Norden, and Operation Talla should be informed via a CVI entry [Covid-related encounter]. [. . .] None of the type of behaviour outlined above should be considered as protest activity and could in fact constitute criminal activity. [Emphasis added]

It is ludicrous to suggest that Speirs would have been so bold were he not confident that he had the full backing of the NPCC. In keeping with Operation Talla, Speirs ordered that “none” of the behaviour “outlined above” should be tolerated. This included British citizens “attending at police stations” to “report what they believe to be criminal offences.” 

By instructing police officers to merely make a SID/CVI entry, these serious criminal allegations were unjustly recorded by the police as a “non-crime entries.” Simultaneously, police officers were encouraged to view the reporting of such suspected crimes, by the public, as potential “criminal activity.” 

There is little doubt what impact Operation Talla had on rank-and-file police officers. From January 2022, at the latest, police officers believed that they should “reject” and not record any reported crimes related to the jabs or the government’s Covid-19 response and were under clear instruction “not to deal with this matter.” 

But Operation Talla has been in force either since January 2020 or March 2020, depending on which version of the state’s account you consider credible. 

Flabbergasted by the Speirs Directive exposure, the campaigners, led by former lawyer Ian Clayton, used FOI requests to try to glean more information about Operation Talla from the NPCC. At the time of writing, most of those legally required responses have not been forthcoming and are “long overdue.”

*****************************

In the summer of 2023, at the UK government’s Covid-19 inquiry, then chair of the NPCC, Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt, gave testimony. He stated that he had overall lead—Gold Command—of Operation Talla and attested: 

[Operation Talla] was established in March 2020, with a formal commencement briefing to all Chiefs on 10 March 2020. [. . .] Operation Talla was run at a national level and had application for all forces in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Hewitt further testified to the inquiry: 

I took the lead for – so I was what we would call the gold commander for Operation Talla. I pulled all the chief constables together in the early – very early March, and had the discussion to say: this is going to require national co-ordination.

It was Martin Hewitt, serving as head of the NPCC, who nominally set up Operation Talla. Seeing as this national level police command operation wasn’t supposedly established until March 2020, it is, as yet, inexplicable why King’s Council, representing the NPCC, Rory Phillips, told the inquiry: 

Police Scotland established a formal response to the pandemic at a very early stage, with the setting up of Operation Talla in January 2020.

It was not Police Scotland that set up Operation Talla, it was the NPCC under Martin Hewitt’s leadership. Police Scotland could not have been acting under Operation Talla in January 2020 if, as Hewitt maintained, the reported “national co-ordination” of police services across the UK didn’t commence until “early March” 2020. The government appointed Covid-19 inquiry panel accepted these contradictions without question. 

But this anomaly is far from the only reason to conclude that the official story we have been told about Operation Talla is highly dubious. 

We are given to believe that the sole focus of Operation Talla was merely “guidance.” Specifically, Operation Talla supposedly guided police officers to focus on the “four E’s”: engage with the public, explain the regulations, encourage compliance, and enforcethe Covid-19 regulations if necessary. 

The Speirs Directive, confirmed through FOI research to have been issued under Operation Talla, was not guidance. It was an order to police officers from a senior commander to reject, meaning refuse to investigate, the most serious crimes imaginable reported to the police by British citizens. 

As revealed by Operation Talla operatives at the Covid-19 inquiry—most notably Hewitt—and as is self evident from the Speirs Directive, the “four E’s” don’t even start to describe the true purpose of Operation Talla. 

 

*****************************

In September 2024, AC Martin Hewitt was appointed as the government’s new Border Security Commander. The government says it chose him because of “his ability to bring together policing, law enforcement, intelligence agencies and government bodies.” Apparently, Hewitt has “unique expertise,” and the governments says these were “most visibly demonstrated in managing the UK’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, coordinating policing efforts.” 

That is to say, Hewitt’s ability to “bring together policing, law enforcement, intelligence agencies and government bodies” was exemplified by his alleged leadershipof Operation Talla. 

Frankly, though he was then chair of the NPCC, the notion that Hewitt or the NPCC could run Operation Talla without the full approval of the government is ridiculous. 

This was openly acknowledged by Hewitt at the Covid-19 inquiry. He fully disclosed that Operation Talla was not a police-led initiative. It was a state operation from the start. He told the inquiry panel: 

[W]e brought Operation Talla together to ensure that we had consistency across the UK in terms of the way police forces were responding. [. . .] [Operation Talla’s] direct link was across into the Home Office team that were working and managing the response within the Home Office. So we developed very close working relationships with them. [. . .] [Operation Talla] worked very, very closely with the teams within the Home Office that were part of the crisis response infrastructure within the Home Office.

Hewitt was asked:

Operation Talla would then maybe feed or raise concerns to the Home Office as to what you were seeing on the ground?

Hewitt confirmed that Operation Talla transformed the police into an intelligence agency tasked with spying on the public. 

[Operation Talla] would do that directly. That was precisely the purpose of the close working [with the Home Office]. [. . .] I was running [Operation Talla] at a national level, but that operation was replicated in each one of the police forces where they themselves had their command and control structure. They would then feed into me at the centre, or my systems at the centre. We would then obviously link directly with the Home Office. [. . .] I would have to feed [intelligence] directly at a ministerial level as we worked through the pandemic.

This is why ACC Speirs told Police Scotland officers that “Operation Talla should be informed via a CVI entry.” These Covid-related encounter (CVI) reports were then fed by police officers across the UK to the Operation Talla “systems at the centre.” 

Clearly, the identities and the activities of the people who questioned the UK government’s Covid-19 response were then passed on to government departments and officials, and not just at the Home Office. 

Describing the Operation Talla working relationship with the Home Office as “incredibly strong,” Hewitt explained how, as head of Operation Talla, he was also involved in meetings with the Cabinet Office.

The Cabinet Office has executive responsibility for “coordinating the government’s response to crises.” As part of this work it oversees the National Security Council (NSC) and the Joint Intelligence Organisation (JIO). 

The JIO “leads on intelligence assessment and development of the UK intelligence community’s analytical capability.” Part of its remit is to “apply a national security lens to issues such as [. . .] health security.” Operation Talla brought together “policing, law enforcement, intelligence agencies and government bodies” for the purpose of controlling the British people and protecting the state. 

Hewitt explained more: 

[T]he interaction very directly with the Home Office was intense, and the teams working for me were pretty much always alongside the equivalent teams of officials in the Home Office. [. . .] [Operation Talla was] closely engaged with both the Home Secretary and the policing minister in a very regular pattern [. . .] to provide advice on the policing implications for whatever the government was choosing to do.

Operation Talla was evidently a national surveillance and containment operation. While using the police to gather and submit CVI reports, thereby identifying dissidents and their activities for the intelligence agencies, it also used policing as an unlawful sociopolitical control mechanism. 

Hewitt said: 

Everything that came out from the centre [Cabinet Office and the Home Office] went to every force, went to the Operation Talla in every force. Police officers were getting – any updated briefing that was required would happen at the beginning of their shift. [. . .] [Operation Talla] was being put through the normal briefing processes for officers.

Operation Talla was an unlawful and unconstitutional assault on the British people—and ordinary police officers—by the UK state. It was the kind of oppressive secret policing that we usually associate with historical regimes like the East German Stasi. 

As pointed out by Thom Aster: 

There was no parliamentary mandate, no judicial warrant, and no public consultation.

There is absolutely nothing to redeem any part Operation Talla. 

 

*****************************

In the UK, we have both a lawful, written codified constitution and a weaker legaluncodified imitation of it. Nevertheless, under both the lawful and the insipid legalalternative, there is one unshakeable principle that defines our supposedly “democratic” society: 

We are all equal before the law without exception. 

Neither the police nor the government are above the law. The concerned citizens who exposed Operation Talla have done the right thing. They have written to the appropriate authorities to raise their constitutional concerns. They have pursued justice as far as they can, all the way to judicial review. 

Operation Talla threw our constitutional rights and liberties into the black hole of unbridled state tyranny. British people were denied their right to justice and this was done to protect the state and enable it to continue to assert its unconstitutional and unlawful dictatorship. 

None of this has been exposed by the mainstream media and it never will, unless it is to deny or misrepresent everything reported here. The MSM serves the state and people really need to grasp that fact. 

We only know about Operation Talla thanks to Moira Brown, Ian Clayton, Mark Sexton, and the conscientious team of campaigners and activists who support them. They would not and will not passively allow the UK government to get away with its crimes. And they are evidently crimes. 

At every stage and at every turn politicians, civil servants, the police and the judiciary have denied, obfuscated or simply refused to respond the British citizens pursuing common law justice. The real Operation Talla is the Achilles’ heel of the entire apparatus of government. We are all equal under the law and we can hold the state to account. 

The concerned citizen’s diligent, painstaking efforts and dogged determination to secure justice is brave, principled, and honourable and stands in stark contrast to the deplorable conduct of the state. They deserve our support as they continue to try to alert all of us to what Operation Talla proves: the British government is unconstitutional and unlawful. 

We all deserve better. 

This struggle is not over, it has only just begun. But it is appropriate to leave the last words in this article to Ian Clayton: 

The path upon which we are all now walking, side by side, government and governed alike, is dangerously fragile. Institutions may believe they can exempt themselves from scrutiny, or bend principles to their own convenience. Citizens may believe they can simply endure, hoping that impropriety will correct itself. But both positions are unsustainable. 

The truth is unalterable: we are all one, all equal. No court, no regulator, no office of state can alter the fundamental fact of our equality as a species. 

When institutions pretend otherwise, they do not elevate themselves; they corrode the very ground upon which they too must stand. If the rule of law is mocked, it is mocked for all. If accountability collapses, it collapses for all. If trust in institutions is destroyed, those institutions will find they are no longer believed, no longer obeyed, no longer capable of command. 

Even courts, when stripped of the public’s confidence, are rendered powerless in real-world terms. 

We warn, therefore, that the integrity of the constitution is not a matter of academic concern. It is the condition upon which our shared life depends. And it is failing, here and now. If this trajectory is not reversed, we face not merely institutional scandal, but the dissolution of the bond between people and state. 

That dissolution will leave no one untouched.

https://iaindavis.substack.com/p/operation-talla-unconstitutional  

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