From 22 to 23 June 2001 — three months before 9/11, five months before the anthrax letters — thirteen former senior US officials sat at an oval table in a briefing room at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington and played thirteen days of a smallpox outbreak in thirteen hours. The exercise was called Dark Winter.
On 8 December 2020 the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina published its 7th Ad-hoc Statement on the coronavirus pandemic, titled “Using the Holidays and the Turn of the Year for a Hard Lockdown.” It demanded, in concrete terms: suspension of compulsory schooling from 14 December 2020, closure of all shops not serving basic supply needs from 24 December, reduction of social contacts to “a very narrowly limited circle,” home office as the rule, suspension of group activities in sport and culture.
On 24 April 2026, in the early afternoon, Germany’s Paul-Ehrlich-Institut (PEI) — the federal agency for vaccines and biomedical medicines — posts from its official X account @PEI_Germany a card marking the end of European Immunisation Week. On the card: a cartoon family — mother, child, teenager, adult, elderly woman, male nurse in headscarf. Above it, in friendly green, with an exclamation mark:
On 25 February 2026, the VII Civil Senate of Germany’s Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH), presided by Judge Pamp, with judges Halfmeier, Graßnack, Borris and Dr Hannamann, issued a decision that, in the broadcasters whose entire funding mechanics it directly affects, has to this day never been reported. Case number: VII ZB 29/24. Matter: enforcement by Bavarian Broadcasting (Bayerischer Rundfunk, BR) against an individual fee debtor in Allgäu over unpaid broadcasting fees. Outcome: the enforcement is declared inadmissible, the creditor — the BR — bears the costs. Both lower courts, the local court of Kaufbeuren and the 4th Civil Chamber of the regional court of Kempten, had ruled the opposite way. The Federal Court overturned them both.
On April 23, 2026, the Bundestag Enquete Commission “Processing the Covid Pandemic and Lessons for Future Pandemic Events” convened in public session. Block subject: Critical Infrastructures (KRITIS) and the role of the Bundeswehr in pandemic situations. Expert witness: Stephan Kohn, former senior official at the Federal Interior Ministry (BMI), author of the 80-page internal evaluation of May 2020 that assessed the then-current Covid policy as a false alarm — a paper that has since served as a case study, depending on whom you ask, of either bureaucratic dissent or bureaucratic discipline.
