There are not too few corona deniers and they are found mainly among religious and esoteric fundamentalists. Russian orthodoxy is a case in part, but it can be generalized by looking at the behavior of Islamists, evangelicals and / or Orthodox Jews, who share the belief, like esoteric ecologists, that the epidemic is a signal from God or nature for the deadly sins from which God-believing people will be exempted, that they will be the last survivors of humanity after the Corona Armaggedon and that science, vaccinations and medicine are not needed in the first place, but belief in God or belief in the self-healing powers of nature and one’s own immune system. The latter also involves social darwinism, selection of the best, the survival of the fittest, euthanasia through selection, elimination of the aging population and the „Methusalem complex“ (Frank Schirrmacher), as well as the overpopulation, leaving a God-wanted and naturally wanted humanity.

In Afghanistan, it should also be known that the Taliban refuse vaccinations, be they polio vaccinations, as an encroachment on God’s work, especially since they murdered and assasinated WHO doctors because of the polio vaccinations. The Afghan government is already counting on 110,000 Covid deaths and under Taliban rule, this is likely to take on genocidal traits. Similar to how the South Tyroleans under Andreas Hofer and his Christian fundamentalist hate preacher Hasplinger fought Napolean’s smallpox vaccinations as opposed to Bavaria as an encroachment on God’s will
These Alpine Taliban are still idealized as heroic icons in South Tyrol.

It is interesting that not only radical right-wing populists like Trump or Bolsonaro were and still are Corona deniers as still in the case of Brazil, but also left-wing populists like Mexico’s Obrador, who propagates prayer cards with images of Mary as his guardian angel in order to speak to the deeply devout Catholic majority population.

The Russian constitutional reform under Putin, which, like Orban in Hungary, wants to establish the conservative-reactionary-orthodox canon of values, is too narrow a special consideration, but the interesting question is if there can be a broad religious revival movement that politicizes itself or through compliant right-wing populists or left-wing populists like Obrador and becomes mass power, also with regard to a democratic-secular or despotic-secular state. An indicator for this is if such groups still hold mass events or plea for them, as do many secular hedonists or esoteric vaccine opponents, or even substantial parts of the economy speak out against epidemic measures, since they don´t want to lose their own businesses or economists and politicians and see the economy and growth ideology at risk.

At the same time, however, one must also see that the Robert Koch Institute and the WHO in the case of swine flu, SARS and MERS have spread unjustified panic with horror scenarios that has never come true. Jakob Augstein rightly pointed out that virologists tend to be totalitarian in their approach because they tend to support total isolated and worst-case scenarios and. know no borders, insofar as they are not controlled politically, but some politicians could be interested in the state of emergency or to carry out a kind of state coup through the back door.

It is now also the new conspiracy theory that the Corona emergency in reality would be a coup de etat because of a looming financial crisis which interested groups want to prevent or to hide and enrich themselves by state stimulus programs and billions of subsidies and by the way prevent that the population can protest or have mass meetings or demonstrations. The fact that the Fed is now hiring Blackrock, the world’s largest financial administrator, makes such theories even more credible.

So there is no need to develop false belief in virologists, so-called experts, but to remain critical and reflective – conversely, however, dubious self-proclaimed alternative experts, as they are now becoming inflationary on social media, are not to be believed unconditionally . We recommend the report of Aspekte magazine on ZDF, which sees the Coronacrisis in terms of individual rights, civil rights, democracy and freedom, as well as questions about the state, administration and bureaucracy from Parkinson to Kafkas „The Castle“/“Das Schloss ”. Jakob Augstein’s dictum that the lockdown restrictions should be maintained until April 19, in order to get a fair picture of the development and then to discuss specifically further measures or their relaxation, makes sense. No blank checks, but no carelessness either.

https://www.zdf.de/kultur/aspekte/aspekte—on-tour-vom-27-maerz-2020-100.html