Today there was a large protest march in Vienna with around 10,000 attendees, most of them ignoring any kind of distance rules and not wearing masks.The police did pretty much nothing after announcing that not sticking to the rules would have severe consequences. In the end, the protesters could just leave and were basically escorted. There were also attacks on journalists and from what I’ve read so far the attackers could just leave and only complains were filed.
The attendees were a wild mix of COVID-deniers but according to the ORF also lots of folks from the right and far-right wing like FPÖ politicians, a group around Gottfried Küssel, a convicted neonazi, and Martin Sellner.
I simply don’t get why the police is handling these people so softly. They are actively endangering public health by the way they’re protesting. Heck, normal folks cannot go to restaurants, meet friends and family, and there you have a 10,000-people gathering in the heart of the Austrian capital and basically creating a super-spreader event.
Can we, as a society, please finally start acting like this kind of behavior is unacceptable? Yes, these lockdowns are getting really annoying and I’d lie if I’d say that the current state of affairs weren’t depressing but there will be a way out of this and their way isn’t the right one.
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