© Emre Caylak/Al JazeeraMarius Mioc promoting his book 'Covid, The Lie of The Century'. Widespread distrust of authorities has left immunisation rates lagging behind other European nations.
"This is not a real pandemic, but hysteria, and it is driven by politics and the want to make money."
Despite having previously sold his books about Romania's 1989 revolution against the former Communist regime in local bookshops, Mioc found retailers did not want to stock his latest work, which was first published in 2020 and costs 45 RON (just more than $10). That, he says, is all part of the conspiracy.
In Romania, which has among the lowest spending on healthcare in Europe and a health system that is consistently ranked the worst in the European Union, doctors are bracing for a surge of the fast-spreading Omicron variant.
Head of the communicable disease centre, Adriana Pistol, recently warned a peak of 25,000 daily cases was soon possible - a significant jump from the current 1,800 or so cases per day now in the country of 20 million.
Numbers in some Western European countries may be higher, but so too are their populations.
Comment: Numers are higher in other countries in the West because much more money has been wasted on widespread, faulty, testing.
Romania's is the EU's second-least vaccinated nation, after its neighbour, Bulgaria.
Comment: According to Wikipedia, 21.7% in Bulgaria have received one dose of a Covid jab, meaning 71.8% are jab-free.
© Emre Caylak/Al JazeeraRomanian protesters tried to force their way into parliament during a demonstration in Bucharest on December 21 against proposals for a mandatory COVID-19 health pass
Approximately 60 percent of those over 65 or living with chronic diseases remain unvaccinated.
Comment: Overall, the vaccination rate in Romanian is 33%. It's rather curious that, to represent the data, Al Jazeera chose to focus on the age and comorbidities, rather than plainly state the vaccination rate. However, as is clear throughout the article, the journalist is heavily invested in pushing the official narrative, and in turn distorts and misrepresents the facts.
Less than 41 percent of the adult population as a whole have received two jabs as other parts of the world have moved onto third and, in Israel's case, fourth shots.
The resulting low level of immunity had grave consequences late last year, with almost 11,000 people killed during a devastating fourth wave of infections that peaked in early November.
However, with reasons for opposing vaccines ranging from concerns about possible side effects to the belief that the entire pandemic is a hoax, there is no easy path to tackling the problem.
"There is no single ideology against vaccination, there are a lot of threads of people who have their reason to oppose and fear," said Andrei Tiut, a political analyst and senior researcher for the GlobalFocus Centre.
According to experts at the Bucharest-based think-tank, a government communication campaign has been missing and there has been a lack of access to reliable information.
Comment: The 'communication campaign' in the UK has been widely condemned as a exercise in fearmongering and psychological "torture": Life Inside The Fear Factory: How The Government Keeps us on High Alert
That is coupled with widespread mistrust of the authorities - trust in parliament is lower than 12 percent according to recent polls.
Filling the void is misinformation, often more palatable than the truth or offering hope in the form of "miracle cures", that is widely shared among the country's unregulated media.
Fear of a return to the strict social controls in place during the times of former leader Nicolae Ceausescu has also fuelled suspicion towards the pandemic.
© Emre Caylak/Al JazeeraA protester holding a sign that says, 'COVID = an epidemic of laboratory tests. If you test a million men with a 98 percent accuracy test, you will find 2,000 pregnant men'
For Jonathan and Jonathan, 18 and 19, first-year students at Bucharest University, the main issues around vaccination is one of personal choice. They believe measures such as COVID passports, often put in place to encourage people to get vaccinated, are an infringement on their freedom.
"We are masters of what we put in our own systems and we are not sure COVID vaccines really work," said the elder Jonathan, claiming the jabs are still experimental.
"I am not an anti-vaxxer, I just believe in freedom. Thirty-two years ago, liberty was born here with the revolution, and now liberty is in danger."
The two students often wear Communist-era overcoats to remind people "where we came from and where we seem to be desperately trying to head back to," says the 19-year-old.
While they share a deep cynicism about the motivations of the government when it comes to efforts to tackle the COVID pandemic, they, like many other unvaccinated Romanians who spoke with Al Jazeera, trust instead what they read online, and particularly the word of widely discredited and controversial figures who they believe are being silenced for telling the truth.
Comment: Again, the journalist is misrepresenting the situation. Because there's no evidence that these students blindly believe what they read online; they know they can't trust mainstream news outlets and so they've had to resort to sourcing their information online, and, using their critical thinking skills, they reach a reasonable conclusion; that this has occurred is evidenced in their previous answers.
Among the most frequently cited is Didier Raoult, a renowned French scientist and virologist who gained a cult following when he claimed the drug hydroxychloroquine - usually used to treat auto-immune issues - was 100 percent effective in treating COVID.
Despite extensive scientific studies into the drug, however, it has not been shown to be helpful in fighting the virus and in fact risks dangerous side effects, such as a drop in blood pressure.
"I am not quite sure about the vaccine and for myself, I don't give a f**k because I am young and healthy and physically strong. COVID is the least of my problems - I'm a student, I have all kinds of problems," said the younger Jonathan.
"Why would I protect from something, when I am not sure protecting from it is the right way to fight it?"
'The public are naturally suspicious'
Oana Popescu-Zamfir, director of the GlobalFocus Centre, said that many people believe the government is self-serving and does not work in the public interest due to a strong history of corruption in Romania.
"So when they try to convince the public to do something, they are naturally suspicious," she said.
Romania's government has been plagued by corruption since the revolution that deposed the former Communist leadership in 1989. A series of corruption scandals in recent years means there is a strong awareness among the public that positions of power can be abused.
Comment: Corruption has overwhelmed governments in the West, too, from fraud and profiteering to pedophile rings, and yet the propaganda media have convinced the public that the government is, for the most part, working in their best interests.
The result, said Popescu-Zamfir, is that people have become comfortable with the idea that they are not being told the truth by the authorities.
"What they do know is that [the truth is] probably not what the government says," she said.
© Emre Caylak/Al JazeeraFar-right politician Diana Sosoaca, centre, was among the several thousand protesters who rallied in Bucharest on December 21
Journalists, priests, members of parliament and even doctors - all positions that are usually considered to carry a certain level of public responsibility - are among the heroes of the cause.
Two of the most divisive, far-right politicians Diana Sosoaca and George Simion, recently protested inside parliament with a banner that read "freedom without the certificate".
They posted images to their social media accounts saying they had successfully delayed a debate about mandatory COVID passports for employees, however, no such topic was set to be discussed that day.
For COVID-deniers like Mioc, the mistrust runs so deep that he questions all global leaders and institutions. In his book, he claims the virus is a hoax first invented to quash the year-long Hong Kong protests and that global leaders, originally duped by the lie, are now perpetuating it to save face rather than admitting they were mistaken.
"Everything else is just propaganda," he says.
Comment: It's telling that those countries that suffered under pathocracy within living memory are best able to see through the insidious propaganda of today:
- Political Ponerology And The Rise Of Totalitarianism In The West
- Russians more concerned about lockdowns than coronavirus, study reveals
- 73% of Bosnians reject Covid jabs, ignore lockdown & quarantine restrictions
- HUGE protests erupt across Europe against Covid vaccine mandates & lockdowns
Also check out SOTT radio's: MindMatters: Interview with Rod Dreher: How to Survive the Coming Soft Totalitarianism