Sunday, 17 January 2021_Thousands of people including leaders and supporters of the far-right take to the streets of Vienna to protest against COVID restrictions.
This isn’t the first protest of its kind here in Austria and it comes as the country is in its third lockdown. That lockdown is expected to end on the 24th of January. With hardly any masks in sight and no distance between them, demonstrators only booed and whistled when asked by the police to observe the safety rules.
Many of the banners, signs and slogans repeated claims that the pandemic was part of a conspiracy in which the World Health Organization and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates were complicit.
These claims have been strongly refuted by experts who cite evidence-based data to prove that COVID is far more deadly and significantly more contagious than seasonal flu. In fact with the emergence of new variants, experts believe we are in the most dangerous time of the pandemic.
Demonstrators also shouted slogans against the government’s vaccination program that’s already well underway. With the rate of new infections still considered way too high, the government is expected to announce a further tightening of restrictions.
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