Germany’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic was based on political objectives and the government implemented countermeasures that often contradicted scientific evidence, according to documents leaked by a former employee of Germany’s public health agency.

Germany’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic was based on political objectives and the government implemented countermeasures that often contradicted scientific evidence and the opinion of the government’s own scientists, according to documents leaked by a former employee of Germany’s public health agency, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI).

An unnamed whistleblower released the “RKI Files” to investigative journalist Aya Velázquez, who on July 23 published the unredacted files – totalling 3,865 pages – in their entirety on Substack. The RKI is Germany’s equivalent to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in the US.

According to the German newspaper Schwäbische Zeitung, the RKI Files “contain explosive details” about “child vaccinations and ‘resistance from the population,’” and show “that the RKI took a much more differentiated view of Corona policy than those responsible for politics and most of the media led the population to believe.”

“A whistleblower, a former employee of the RKI, approached me and passed on the data set to me” for reasons of “conscience,” Velázquez wrote on Substack.

According to the files, German regulators sought to skip Phase 3 trials of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine and “go straight into broad application.”

Other revelations include evidence of policymakers targeting and “nudging” children, and knowledge by policymakers and scientists that the Covid-19 vaccines were ineffective and led to severe adverse events.

Despite this knowledge – and for political reasons – government officials pursued measures rewarding the vaccinated and punishing the unvaccinated.

The RKI Files also reveal that policymakers and scientists sought to publicly ignore evidence of a “flattening curve” early in the pandemic and evidence that masks and mass testing would not be useful in preventing infection.

Although some have questioned the legitimacy of documents contained within the RKI Files, the Robert Koch Institute, in an announcement carried by German news programme Tagesschau addressing the publication of unredacted documents, did not confirm or deny the legitimacy of the documents themselves or their contents:

“The Robert Koch Institute has criticised the publication of unredacted minutes of the RKI crisis team on the Covid pandemic. The RKI expressly condemns the unlawful publication of personal data and trade and business secrets of third parties in these data sets and, in particular, any infringement of third-party rights.”

Other German mainstream news media outlets, including the mass-circulation Bild and Zeit newspapers, also reported on the release of the files.

The RKI Files mirror findings from the United Kingdom’s “Lockdown Files” and admissions last month by Dr Anthony Fauci during congressional testimony that widespread masking and social distancing measures were enacted despite a lack of scientific evidence.

Widespread “vaccination of children” and policies barring the unvaccinated from many public spaces — for which the RKI “provided supposedly scientific legitimacy” – weren’t based on “rational, scientific considerations” but on “political decisions,” Velázquez wrote.

Stefan Homburg, PhD, professor of public finance at the University of Hannover in Germany, was part of a team that worked with the whistleblower to release the unredacted RKI Files. He told The Defender the documents show decisions were made “exclusively by politicians” and that “RKI did not support these measures.”

“We have now clear evidence that the general public was deliberately deceived,” Dutch lawyer Meike Terhorst told The Defender. “Politicians made the decisions, not health authorities.”

Dr Christof Plothe, a member of the World Council for Health steering committee, told The Defender the files “show that it was never science that initiated ineffective and harmful masking, traumatizing social distancing and lockdowns, or that introduced a novel gene therapy labelled a ‘vaccine’ … It was politicians that demanded the measures.”

Germany’s pandemic-era Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach figures prominently in the documents. Plothe said Lauterbach has “never worked with patients and is a pure lobbyist of Pharma.”

In March 2023, Lauterbach admitted that Covid-19 vaccine adverse events are prevalent and victims are being ignored.

German toxicologist Helmut Sterz, previously a researcher for major pharmaceutical companies — including Pfizer – told The Defender the documents show that pandemic decisions “were made by those who are responsible for the creation of this ‘pandemic’” and that “Real experts ‘disappeared’ from the public debate.”

Germany enacted among the strictest set of Covid-19 restrictions in Europe, according to the Oxford University Covid-19 Government Response Tracker.

“The measures that the German people were subjected to, besides mask mandates and social distancing rules, [include] a ‘lockdown of the unvaccinated’ that banned people from [public places] … Compulsory vaccination was imposed on military members and all people working in the health sector,” Plothe said.

Pfizer was in discussions with the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to “skip the Phase III trials” for the Covid-19 vaccine “and go straight into widespread use,” documents from an April 15, 2020, RKI meeting show.

“Normally, you plan 12-18 months from the start of Phase I. EMA and Pfizer are considering whether to skip Phase III trials and go straight into broad use. If the regulators decide that, then it can go faster than 12-18 months,” the document says.

Minutes from an April 27, 2020, RKI meeting state, “There will be several vaccines that have been developed and tested in a fast-track process. Relevant data will only be collected post-marketing.”

According to German medical magazine Aertzeblatt, RKI documents from January and February 2021, after the first Covid-19 vaccines were introduced and administered, reveal discussions questioning the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, stating it was “less perfect” and its “Ecology needs to be discussed.”

A January 29, 2021 document (page 135), for instance, states that “STIKO [RKI’s Standing Committee on Vaccination] recommends vaccine only for <65-year-olds, as there is a lack of evidence for >65-year-olds, very wide confidence intervals, too uncertain, as two highly effective RNA vaccines are available.”

According to German magazine Tichys Einblick, the documents show that as early as the beginning of 2021,” the RKI knew about serious side effects of vaccinations, for example from AstraZeneca. Nevertheless, shortly afterwards, practically all important top politicians were publicly vaccinated with precisely this shot.”

These admissions came despite public rhetoric at the time stating that the shots would protect against both the spread of and infection from COVID-19.

• The Defender report