On Sunday, the government of Austria has formally enacted a nationwide lockdown policy that aimed to forbid persons who still haven’t had their COVID-19 vaccine jabs from leaving their homes, with minimal exceptions for some essential activities like grocery shopping.
Austria still has two million unvaccinated residents aged 12 years old and up. The new lockdown policy effectively puts them under segregation, a patent violation of their Constitutional rights and freedoms.
The Alpine country has joined the ranks of the United States, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and Australia regarding the enactment of directives punishing individuals declining to be administered with the experimental COVID-19 shots. Yet, remarkably, Austria has one of the lowest recorded vaccination rates in Western Europe. Thirty-five percent of its total population are still yet to have their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
“We do not take this step lightly,” Austrian Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg pointed out during a press conference announcing the nationwide lockdown policy for the Alpine country’s unvaccinated individuals on November 14. “It’s our job as the government of Austria to protect the people.”
A significant component of the “protective measure” Schallenberg talked about referred to fines that can amount to 1,450 euros ($1,660) that the government will impose on violators. The Chancellor also emphasized that the nationwide lockdown will initially be implemented for ten days.
Moreover, police operatives will be going on regular patrols to check if the people outside their homes have already been administered with the COVID-19 vaccine, which is said to be tainted with questionable ingredients and obtained approval from health regulators through fraudulent means.
Austrian Health Minister Wolfgang Mückstein related that they would evaluate if the national lockdown policy after the initial ten-day period has elapsed. However, he did not elaborate on what criteria will be used for their evaluation or how long the extension will take.
It is not surprising that Austria’s nationwide lockdown aimed to put unvaccinated individuals under segregation has drawn flak from several people since it was announced on Sunday. Conservative commentator and author Tim Young shared that the move is reminiscent of “the whole [H]itler thing” a few years back.
Swedish journalist Peter Imanuelsen pointed out that the national lockdown policy would be unthinkable if it had been announced a year ago. “It is happening,” he shared. Trump ally and Brexit advocate Nigel Farage stressed that the policy primarily aims to divide the Austrian nation, pitting the vaccinated and unvaccinated against one another. “Dark times for freedom and liberty,” Farage observed.
In a recent statement, the leader of Austria’s opposition Freedom Party Herbert Kickl, expressed his disapproval of the nationwide lockdown policy and likened it to the “imprisonment” of two million people who haven’t done anything wrong.
Additionally, Kickl, who is staunchly anti-vaccination, also stressed that they would fight the policy with “all parliamentary and legal means” to stop the “genetic engineering experiment” done through the administration of experimental COVID-19 jabs.
