Covid: posthumous evaluation and looking to the future

This article is simply an attempt to re-read the health emergency critically, beyond the dominant narrative, to grasp its philosophical, sociological and spiritual implications.

The experience of the Covid pandemic, however recent, already lends itself to a posthumous reading who, free of prejudice and preconceptions, can assessing the actual facts happened. The hope is to overcome the mere obsessive media-institutional narrative and also draw on the new evidence, testimonies and documents that are emerging, often in contradiction with what has been dogmatically argued in the past.

This article, then, not intended as a prejudicial indictment towards institutions or the media system, but rather an attempt to 'sum up' in a more balanced and courageous way. The main objective is provide a new paradigm of philosophical, sociological and spiritual reflection:

Philosophicalbecause the handling of the pandemic called into question the principles of freedom, truth, democracy and control.
Sociologicalbecause it highlighted dramatic divisions in society, extreme polarisations and forms of marginalisation.
Spiritualfor every form of lie, unjust restriction and devastation (economic, social, moral) obscures the most authentic nature of the person, stifling his or her inner freedom and dignity.

In this spirit, it is proposed an 'a posteriori' analysis which, far from wishing to impose further dogma, invites readers to reflect autonomously on what has been experienced, so that the enormous accumulated experience serves to build a more conscious, free and respectful future of the human being in all its dimensions.

The (little) real danger of the virus and the fear narrative

Mortality data and the confusion between 'for' and 'with' Covid

Since early 2020 there has been a declared emergency on an almost exclusively media basis, with daily bulletins reporting numbers of 'infected' and 'dead'. However, various sources, including scientists, pointed out the inadequacy of classification criteria:

Many deaths were of people already suffering from serious previous illnesses combined with a very advanced age.
The indistinct use of the 'Covid' definition of death confused public opinion as to who was really dead because of of the virus and those who simply with the virus in his body.

Overestimation and 'tweaked' statistics

The figures repeated on TV created a climate of terror often not proportionate to the actual risks, especially for less vulnerable groups. The emphasis on the number of positive swabs (often massively repeated tests on the same people) has generated a perception of permanent contagion rather than an objective epidemiological picture. Today, after some time, much research indicates that the actual lethality of Covid, especially in healthy young individuals, was much lower than that touted.

In Italy, the daily scanning of data was led by Civil Protection chief Angelo Borrelli and ISS president Silvio Brusaferro, who in their 6 p.m. press conferences circulated a single number of 'Covid deaths', without distinguishing between deaths for e with the virus. Already in May 2020 Prof. Alberto Zangrillo (IRCCS San Raffaele) denounced the artificial inflation of those counts, an intuition confirmed by the ISS report of 5 October 2020: 97 % of the deceased had at least one serious comorbidity. At the regional level, the autopsy study by the University of Padua made public by Luca Zaia showed an average age of the dead of over 78 years, roughly in line with national life expectancy. While the RAI and Mediaset news headlined 'new record number of victims', the WHO (August 2020 guidelines) and the ministerial circular signed by Gianni Rezza broadened the definition of infected, including asymptomatic people, artificially raising both the number of infected and the number of deaths attributed to the virus. The epidemiologist John Ioannidis (Stanford) then calculated, in the Bulletin of the WHO (October 2020), a median global IFR (lethality rate per infection) of 0.23 %: a figure consistent with the ISS analysis of February 2022 that indicated an IFR of less than 0.01 % in Italians under 40. The same AIFA Position Paper 19/2021 (an official document drawn up by the Italian Medicines Agency) finally admitted that the classification based on the positive swab alone tended to considerably inflate the apparent lethality, fuelling a climate of fear that was not proportionate to the real risk, for everyone and in particular for the young and healthy population.

Restrictions and compression of fundamental freedoms

DPCM, lockdown and use of force

In Italy and many other countries, there has been recourse to exceptional measures (from lockdowns to curfews) that have drastically restricted constitutionally enshrined rights, such as the freedom of movementmeeting and even worship. The insistent use of decrees (DPCM), in fact bypassing parliamentary debateraised serious questions about the constitutional legitimacy of the measures taken.
At the same time, there was no shortage of episodes of violent repression of dissent, even at peaceful protests, triggering concerns about the erosion of democratic guarantees.

Social division and employment blackmail

The creation of a climate of suspicion towards anyone who questioned the official line divided public opinion into the 'virtuous' and the 'irresponsible'. Doctors, teachers, workers in general were forced to submit to a vaccination hastily described as 'salvific', on pain of suspension from work or loss of salary. This form of blackmail in disguise created extreme tensions in families, friendships and society, generating a stigma towards those not aligned with government directives.

When, on 8 March 2020, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte signed the first Prime Ministerial Decree armouring Lombardy, the measure was extended to the entire country within 24 hours without passing through Parliament; former constitutional judge Sabino Cassese spoke of the 'exauthorisation of the Chambers'. In the months that followed, Minister Roberto Speranza issued 19 DPCMs that, among other things, banned Easter services (the CEI protested on 26 April 2020) and introduced curfews such as the 10 p.m. curfew imposed by Mario Draghi in October 2021. Questions about legitimacy exploded when the police - 15 October 2021 - dispersed the Trieste dockers on a peaceful strike against the green pass with water cannons, and on 9 October 2020 charged the demonstrators in Piazza del Popolo: episodes denounced by Amnesty Italy as an 'excessive use of force' (report 2022). Other episodes of "persecution' of protesters by the police in many Italian cities.

The climate of division took shape with DL 44/2021, which made the vaccine compulsory for doctors and nurses: about 4,000 health workers, including anaesthetist Barbara Balanzoni and surgeon Paolo Melega, were suspended without pay. In December 2021, the Draghi government extended the obligation to teachers and the over-50s; Novara teacher Claudia Amadori lost her job by refusing the injection. With the 'reinforced' green pass (15 October 2021), Confindustria informed companies that they could suspend workers without a QR-code: FIAT Mirafiori furloughed hundreds of workers, while the police union COSAP reported over 6,000 officers relegated to office duties. This strategy of 'legal stigmatisation' - in the words of the jurist Ugo Mattei - split families and friendships, dividing Italians into 'virtuous' and 'unctuous' citizens, as shown by the SWG (an independent institute accredited by AGCOM and ESOMAR) polls of November 2021 that recorded a 37 % of those in favour of dismissing the unvaccinated.

Vaccine issue: trials, children and green passes

The mRNA 'vaccine' is not a traditional vaccine

From the outset, mRNA (and other viral vector) therapies were presented as 'vaccines' in the classical sense, only to discover that did not stop the contagion at all. The efficacy was, according to the manufacturers themselves, limited to reducing the severity of symptoms - which was also gradually reduced.

The definition of 'vaccine' has been modified both by regulatory bodies such as the US CDC and in Italian medical dictionaries, replacing traditional references to attenuated or inactivated microorganisms and the production of immunity with more generic formulations, such as the simple stimulation of immune response. This change allowed the inclusion of new mRNA therapies and, according to many observers, represented a strategic use of language to reshape public perception through a form of scientific neo-language.

The controversial vaccination of children

Particularly surprising and worrying was the push to vaccinate children en masse, despite:

Paediatric mortality rates close to zero.
A historical medical practice that teaches extreme caution in the administration of new drugs, especially to young children.
There is some evidence of cardiac adverse events even in the very young (myocarditis and pericarditis), hardly ever observed before.

Despite this, the media machine promoted the idea that children should protect their grandparents by vaccinating, despite the fact that it is now fully established that the vaccine did not prevent the transmission of the virus.

Green pass and social discrimination

The green pass, initially conceived to limit contagions, turned out to be a control tool which had no real scientific basis in reducing transmission. Many called it 'a pass' discriminatory, because:

It has excluded entire sections of the population from work and social life.
He created a dangerous precedent in terms of restricting rights on a health basis, which was alleged and later proved to be wrong.
It did not in fact stem the contagions, as the health authorities themselves later admitted.

In early press conferences Albert Bourla touted a '95 % efficacy', but already the Italian package leaflet of Comirnaty (AIC 049-202) warned that no data was available on the prevention of transmission and that the duration of immunity remained unknown. On 11 October 2022, in a hearing in Brussels, Pfizer Vice-President Janine Small confirmed that no pre-marketing tests had measured the ability to block infection. A FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) response by the AIFA (13 August 2024, dir. Carla Cantelmo) then put it in writing that 'no approved Covid-19 vaccine has been shown to prevent transmission of SARS-CoV-2' . At the same time, the EU contracts - which were only fully disclosed in 2023 - contain an indemnity clause that offloads any compensation for adverse effects onto the states, acknowledging the absence of guarantees regarding contagion and duration of protection.

The Italian paediatric campaign kicked off on 16 December 2021 with the 'Super-Green Open Day' at the Bambino Gesù: while Minister Speranza invited the youngest to 'protect their grandparents', the ISS counted just 12 Covid deaths under 12 since the start of the pandemic. Cases such as the death of Camilla Canepa (18 years old, post-AstraZeneca thrombosis) and the myocarditis of a 12 year old from Verona after Pfizer shattered confidence, but the vaccination plan remained unchanged.

On the civil liberties side, DL 105/2021 turned the green pass into a work requirement: over one million Italians were suspended or put on leave. On 7 January 2022, Mario Draghi admitted that 'with Omicron, the vaccine does not prevent contagion' - a semantically ambiguous formula that, instead of openly acknowledging the vaccine's failure even in its earlier variants, shifted the focus to Omicron alone, thus evading the responsibility to rectify earlier statements that had promised, or hinted at, a preventive immunity that had never actually been met. Subsequently, the TAR Lazio (judgement 3821/22) branded the university pass as a 'disproportionate' measure. This did not prevent the QR-code from becoming de facto, an instrument of health discrimination destined to mark a watershed between 'pure' and 'impure' citizens, with no real epidemiological benefit.*

Economic interest and occult powers: 'Follow the money'

Billion-dollar profits of pharmaceutical companies

The pandemic was a business opportunity colossal for the pharmaceutical giants: Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and others. Governments have signed secret contracts for the purchase of multiple doses, in a whirlwind of hundreds of billions of euro. Someone rightly recalled the 'follow the money' principle for understand who really gained from this crisis.

Opaque negotiations and lack of transparency

News emerged about hidden' mails between the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and the top management of several pharmaceutical companies, and censored contractual documents with blackened omissis. All this, also due to the repeated refusal to clarify, has fuelled legitimate suspicions about possible conflicts of interest and on the fact that political decisions could be driven not so much by public health requirements, but by logics of profit and, perhaps, control.

Global elites and social control: a 'dystopian' hypothesis

Some analysts regard the Covid emergency as a 'test' on a global scale to verify the ability to control populations:

Lockdown and restrictions as a dress rehearsal for an authoritarian 'digital' government.
Capillary surveillance with QR codes and health passes.
Centralisation of power in the hands of a few supranational bodies.

While such assumptions may appear extreme, history teaches us that authoritarian drifts often manifest themselves in times of crisis, when public opinion is more easily manipulated by fear, just as it is true that the digital medium allows power to exercise unprecedented control and impose social or disciplinary sanctions with unprecedented speed and thoroughness.

The same financial players always appear in the 'money trail'. Pfizer is controlled at the forefront by the giants of passive management: Vanguard (9.15 % of shares) and BlackRock (7.97 %), while State Street adds another 5 % tickergate. Modern replicates the pattern: Vanguard owns 8.9 % and BlackRock 6.6 % of the capital Investopedia. With Pfizer's share price tripling (between 2020 and August 2021), and Moderna growing by more than twenty times, the two giants - which together administer more than 15 trillion dollars - collected record dividends and billion-dollar capital gains.

Philanthropy-business has also hit the jackpot: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which entered BioNTech with $55 million in 2019, sold in 2021 when the stock was at its peak, realising about 15 times the initial investment Clark County Today. On the European side, the 21.5 billion agreement between Brussels and Pfizer is now at the centre of the 'Pfizergate' litigation: the New York Times sued the Commission to obtain the Confidential SMS exchanged by Ursula von der Leyen with CEO Albert Bourla during the negotiations.

Italy, in addition to the 19.1 billion in public spending already burnt by September 2021, has fed a further string of winners. The Immuni app bears the signature of Bending Spoonssupported by the family-offices H14 (Fininvest-Berlusconi), NUO Capital (Hong Kong conglomerate Pao/Cheng) and StarTIP (Tamburi Investment Partners). The national Green Pass platform was instead entrusted to Sogei - now in the blizzard for piloted IT procurement - which issued more than 50 million certificates in one month.

Behind the scenes, BlackRock extends its grip on the Italian economy: it holds significant stakes (3-10 %) in Enel, Eni, Intesa Sanpaolo, Leonardo, Stellantis, Poste, Terna, Unicredit and dozens of other blue-chips, worth more than EUR 25 billion. BlackRock itself talks at the World Economic Forum about the standards of digital identity who see the health pass as the 'building block' for future control platforms.

In summary, following the money leads to a integrated ecosystem of pharmaceutical companies, hyper-concentrated investment funds, 'philanthropic' foundations and surveillance tech companies: a network that has made gigantic profits from the emergency and, at the same time, has pioneered unprecedented mechanisms of digital governance on citizens.*

Consequences and new evidence: sudden deaths and late corrections

Adverse effects and undisclosed data

Over time, many adverse events have come to light: myocarditis, pericarditis, thrombosis, increases in sudden illnesses (especially among athletes). Several independent studies report an increase in cardiovascular diseases among vaccinated subjects, in higher percentages than predicted by pre-authorisation studies.
The further problem is the lack of transparency of pharmacovigilance systems: late reports, pressure on health professionals to minimise the phenomenon, lists of side effects published months late.

Self-denial by regulators and governments

International drug agencies themselves, as well as governments, have in fact corrected over time initial statements, admitting that 'vaccines' do not prevent virus transmission and that the green pass was not a means of containment. These admissions came belatedlywhen by then the population had suffered months (or years) of restrictions based on assumptions that turned out to be unfounded

The AIFA Report No. 9/2022 lists a total of 27 023 reports: in addition to the 893 myocarditis-pericarditis appear 2 147 cases of chronic asthenia, 1 311 paresthesias of the legs and 586 motor neuropathiesdisorders that 14 % of those affected describe as 'unresolved' six months later. The functional impairment is also reflected in sports performance: In the Belgian study of 42 runners published in Health Science Reports, the BNT162b2 booster (the booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine) resulted in an average drop of 2.7 % in VO₂ max, with ≥ 8.6 % in one out of five athletes after just three weeks, i.e. a noticeable reduction in the ability to utilise oxygen during physical exertion, indicating a deterioration in endurance and cardiovascular performance, which is particularly relevant for those who practise sport at a competitive or intensive level.

On the immunological side, research appearing in Immunity & Ageing (September 2024) documents that the repetition of mRNA calls shifts the response towards IgG4 antibodies that are ineffective in recruiting cellular immunity and reduces NK-cell activity, i.e. those 'natural killer' cells that are essential for destroying infected or tumour cells, at the risk of weakening the body's ability to react to new infections or to monitor cellular abnormalitiesThis strongly presumes an increased susceptibility to other infections. Consistently, a BiomedCentral meta-review (October 2023) found an increase in herpes-virus reactivations (VZV, EBV, CMV) after vaccination, a trend confirmed by the subsequent study in Clinical & Experimental Medicine, which recorded a doubling of cases of shingles within 14 days from the third booster in cancer patients.

Meanwhile, the PRAC-EMA (Risk Assessment Committee for Pharmacovigilance of the EMA - European Medicines Agency), on 9 July 2021, mandated that myocarditis and pericarditis be added to the package leaflets of Comirnaty and Spikevax, while the AIFA - with FOIA letter of 13 August 2024 - recognised that no Covid vaccine 'has an indication of preventing transmission of SARS-CoV-2" . Even the Undersecretary for Health Andrea Costa admitted on Radio 24 (14 March 2022) that the green pass 'no longer made sense, because the vaccine does not stop infections". In the light of these data - from the disabling symptoms to the immune changes, and even the institutional self-denials themselves - a far more onerous balance sheet emerges than envisaged in the pre-authorisation studies, with permanent effects that have yet to be fully quantified and an urgent need for transparency that remains largely unfulfilled.

The philosophical, sociological and spiritual impact

Philosophy of power and freedom

The pandemic showed how, in situations of fear, one can easily sacrificing freedom on the altar of security. The measures taken have raised ethical issues of enormous scope:

To what extent can the state restrict fundamental rights in the name of public health?
What role does the citizen play in critically examining authority?

Social division and polarisation

'Vax vs. No-Vax': this dichotomy has fragmented society into hostile camps, capable of fuelling hatred, insults and discrimination. It has been social engineeringcreating two factions to prevent a peaceful debate and to stifle anyone who asked transparency and pluralism. The result was a torn social fabricstill in need of recomposition and truth.

Spiritual wounds: lies, injustice and the suffocation of humanity

On a spiritual level, lies and manipulation generate distrust, bitterness, disorientation. The devastation experienced, rather than 'sanitary', was psychological, moral, economic, relational. Many lost their sense of community, felt betrayed by institutions, or were forced to choose between their work and their conscience.
The spiritual dimension, based on the search for truth and inner freedom, was overwhelmed by rhetoric of power who have ignored the sacred value of the person, reducing them to a 'collector of orders'.

When the premier Mario Draghi proclaimed in a press conference (22 July 2021) 'if you don't get vaccinated, you get sick and die... or you die', he enacted the classic political philosophy dilemma between fear and freedom. A few months later, in a Senate hearing (7 October 2021) the philosopher Giorgio Agamben denounced the green pass as an 'instrument of legal discrimination, worse than the Soviet Union', while Massimo Cacciari signed the 'Appeal of 100 intellectuals' against health apartheid, targeted by talk-shows and colleagues such as Umberto Galimberti. In the wake of that climate, the virologist-influencer Roberto Burioni tweeted (19 November 2021) that 'a selective lockdown for the unvaccinated would be the rational choice', amplifying the Vax/No-Vax polarisation that has split families and friendship groups.

Discrimination was embodied in concrete administrative acts: the FNOMCeO, the National Federation of the Orders of Surgeons and Dentists (circular of 24 December 2021), suspended thousands of 'renegade' white coats; the Lazio Region of Nicola Zingaretti created databases on the over-80 unvaccinated to 'convince them one by one'. On a symbolic level even Pope Francis called the vaccine 'a great light and an act of love' (video message 18 August 2021) Vatican Newsimplicitly delegitimising those who, out of conscience, harboured misgivings. Spiritual wounds emerge in the stories of suspended doctors (see the Bologna case, TAR March 2022), forced to choose between income and principles, and of citizens branded as 'anointers' on social networks and in bars.

Thus, under the impetus of emergency language - from Burioni's 'locked up like rats' (tweet 24 February 2021) to the papal invitation to 'collaborate' - the pandemic has confirmed the lesson of the philosophy of power: in the absence of critical vigilance, security becomes a picklock for suspending rights, generating hatred and suffocating the spiritual dimension of man, reduced to a mere obedient cog in a perennial emergency.

Towards a new paradigm

Lessons to be learned

If there is a positive aspect to this crisis, it is the awareness that:

Institutions and the media go critically monitoredespecially in emergency situations.
La democratic participation (parliamentary and popular) must never be suspended or circumvented: in emergencies it must be strengthened, not weakened.
Science is not an untouchable dogma, but a method that is nourished by continuous comparison and verification.

Recovering dialogue and truth

To overcome divisions and wounds, it is necessary:

Promoting a open debate with authoritative alternative voices (scientists, jurists, philosophers) initially censored or demonised.
Pretend transparency on public contracts, mortality statistics and drug studies.
Incentivising the independent researchnot conditioned by commercial or political interests.

Spirituality of Freedom and Responsibility

True freedom is responsible and not unrelated to the common good. However, the common good can never justify the lie or the systematic suppression of rights. It is in the rediscovery of the human dignitydialogue and respect for the truth that may arise a new approachin which future crises do not become a pretext for manipulating the masses, but an opportunity for genuine growth.

On the practical ground, some signs of a turnaround are already visible: the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into Pandemic Management (established in the Chamber of Deputies on 20 April 2023) has started the acquisition of vaccine contracts and internal chats at the CTS; the Lazio Regional Administrative Court, with its sentence 3821/2022, has defined the university green-pass as 'disproportionate', paving the way for dozens of appeals; the Bergamo Public Prosecutor's Office has been investigating since November 2023 on the omissions of the first lockdown; meanwhile, the European Doctors for Covid Ethics network has launched an open-data platform that allows, for the first time, the cross-analysis between vaccine batches and reports of adverse reactions. These are still timid and strongly opposed signs, but already enough to show that democratic control and open science can regain ground when civil society, independent research and the judiciary walk in the same direction.

Conclusions

The Covid season, reread through the filter of distance and in the light of increasingly detailed evidence, calls for a radical rethinking of the relationship between state, science, media and citizen. We have dramatically discovered that the public health can be bent to the logic of profit and controland that fundamental freedoms become surprisingly negotiable when fear becomes the system.

Today, public prosecutors and commissions of enquiry are probing long-secreted documents, also fighting against media silence, while a constellation of doctors, lawyers and independent data-analysts, also with little media voice, piece together mosaics of truths that have remained in the shadows. It is still a fragile process, but sufficient to demonstrate that transparency and participation are not utopiasbut rights to be exercised on a daily basis.

The task ahead of us is twofold: stitch the social fabric torn by Vax/No-Vax hatred and armour institutions against future authoritarian shortcuts. It means demanding, as of now, that every state of emergency be counter-balanced by stronger guarantees than ordinary ones; it means bringing science back into dialogue with methodical dissent, not imposed silence; it means, above all, restoring person-centrednesswhose dignity can never be subordinated to a political or economic calculation.

In retrospect, the historical narrative becomes more lucid, but we must be willing to look at it. Let us cultivate vigilance, dialogue and memory: only in this way will we turn this crisis into a concrete step forward, in defence of truth, freedom and shared responsibility.