Maurice de Hond, July 8, 2026
Data analyst, social geographer, science methodologist and pollster
Same for six years, ignored for six years
Finally, Maurice de Hond got the podium that he had been systematically denied for more than six years. The interrogation offered him the opportunity to explain his scientifically substantiated criticism of the RIVM line - up to and including the recent interrogation of Jaap van Dissel - in detail. No loose opinions, but a careful structure, based on international studies and peer-reviewed articles that he has been collecting and explaining on his website for years. What followed was a shocking confirmation of how deep the institutional denial ran and how great its consequences were.
The denial of aerosols and the failing models
The core of De Hond's story was the persistent denial of aerogenic (aerosol) transmission by the RIVM. He substantiated how that denial had caused concrete, avoidable damage:
- insufficient ventilation in nursing homes, resulting in unnecessary deaths, perhaps several thousand;
- schools that received ventilation money but were given the message that it was hardly useful;
- a largely pointless 1.5-metre rule, which caused enormous socio-economic damage;
- nonsensical bans on outdoor gatherings and demonstrations;
- While spread mainly occurred at indoor superspread events, most other restrictive measures were therefore of relatively little use.
De Hond did not spare the RIVM models of Wallinga and others. They consistently assumed the most negative scenario — both when declaring lockdowns and postponing relaxations. They were often “black box” models: parameters and assumptions were not made public, making serious scientific debate impossible.
Obvious errors piled up:
- an IFR that is too high (more than 1% until well into 2020, while it was around 0.23% [on the order of a severe flu, ed.]),
- no distinction between age groups (factor 100 difference between 70+ and younger),
- ignoring seasonality
- and later a complete misunderstanding of the much milder Omikron variant.
Het resultaat: zinloze, schadelijke maatregelen terwijl de werkelijke IC-belasting begin 2022 zelfs maar fractie was van het meest "gunstige"(!) RIVM-scenario.
The silence of science and closed circuits
De Hond's account of his own contacts with his extensive network in politics, media and science was shocking. He spoke regularly with Rutte, Hoekstra, OMT members, chairmen of security regions and senior officials. In May 2020, he had a conversation with a RIVM professor who completely agreed with him — but “she did not get through to the top of the RIVM”. He also had contact with other Dutch scientists: almost all of them agreed with him in private, but... no one dared to say that publicly. The fear of damage to reputation and career was too great. The Dog understood that — he had experienced firsthand how you immediately became an outcast as soon as you deviated from the official narrative.
He further illustrated the unscientific attitude with shoddy work at renowned institutes, such as the UMC Utrecht research into vaccination effectiveness that completely ignored the Healthy Vaccinee Effect, and similar mistakes at NIVEL. “I would have given a student a 1 for that,” he noted drily as a former university lecturer.
The bogus science of RIVM, NIVEL, UMCU and numerous OMT and university professors was thus firmly put into place.
The deadly mix: missing assessment framework and Rule of Rescue
De Hond, even prior to the interrogation, rarely explicitly discussed disproportionality or cost-benefit analyses. That doesn't make his story any less convincing. Because even without an objective assessment framework with hard qaly calculations, the bases for the measures were completely nonsensical.
De Hond toonde aan dat het argument "we volgen de wetenschap" geen stand hield….
Structure versus culture
De Hond argued for a more broadly composed OMT, but did not address the possible question of whether a fundamentally different advisory structure (several separate bodies per discipline) would not be more effective.
He concluded with an important warning: you can adjust the organization, processes and structures all you want, but it only helps if the people who work in it have a truly open attitude towards new scientific insights. It was precisely that openness that was completely lacking.
News?
The interrogation yielded little news for the Corona policy critics — De Hond had been telling this story in detail for years.
Voor de buitenwereld zou het een bevestiging kunnen zijn, van hoe een eenzame, goed gedocumenteerde en wetenschappelijk onderbouwde stem jarenlang tegen een gesloten instituut heeft moeten vechten voor de waarheid. Maar een eerste reactie in bijv. De Volkskrant geeft blijk van het tegendeel: "De Hond gebruikt grote woorden" wordt daar eenvoudigweg geschreven: media weigeren nog steeds in te zien dat het Coronabeleid grotendeels op wetenschappelijk broddelwerk en dus drijfzand was gebaseerd.
The Tragedy
The interrogation remained a scientifically well-developed, yet powerless, rebellion against the tunnel vision of the core of the Cabinet and the OMT/RIVM.
The tragedy is deep: Apart from the complete absence of a broad assessment framework in the form of a cost/benefit analysis, intelligent people, almost certainly with the best intentions, took the most far-reaching fundamental rights and mega-costly medical, socially and economically expensive measures. And all based on incorrect data and bogus science that they sold as logical consequences of indisputable truth and science.
While the correct figures and international studies on causality have long been available...
Maurice de Hond also could not get through this bastion of vested interests, opinions and tunnel vision, despite his thorough scientific research and his very extensive network...
Mona Keijzer, July 8, 2026
State Secretary for Economic Affairs and Climate Policy
The powerless rebellion of common sense
Mona Keijzer opened her interrogation with a clear defensive statement: she explicitly emphasized that she is not a virus denier and is well aware that the coronavirus could have serious consequences. That preamble was necessary because she had received quite a few threats and insults due to her critical attitude at the time. Her testimony subsequently became a moving reconstruction of a powerless State Secretary who viewed the disproportionality and social disruption with dismay, continued to fight internally, but ultimately had no effect whatsoever.
The trap of the cabinet quartet
During the first two months of the crisis, Keijzer was still able to justify the strict measures due to the great unfamiliarity of the virus. However, as of May 2020, she felt the switch should have been turned. The opposite happened.
The leading quartet — Mark Rutte, Hugo de Jonge, Ferd Grapperhaus and Dick Schoof — determined the complete road map based on OMT advice. Although numerous external advisors and agencies came along (CPB, SCP, trade unions, youth organizations and many others), this did not change the final decisions. The quartet was caught in a self-reinforcing trap of OMT advice, Torentjesoverleg, Catshuisberaad, MCCb, council of ministers and weekly press conference. The OMT — with Jaap van Dissel as figurehead — provided the medical advice, which was then translated almost one-on-one into policy without there being a serious counterbalance. It was a closed circuit: same figures, same models, same conclusions.
No matter how much other ministers in the Council of Ministers insisted on paying attention to non-medical damage and even long-term medical consequences, to no avail. With every increasing R-value or ICU occupancy, stricter measures inevitably followed.
Keijzer repeatedly referred to the Swedish model — no lockdown, but a ban on mass events, otherwise largely open. Afterwards, Sweden turned out to have done no worse. But it remained undiscussed. And that was precisely her weakness: she had no detailed alternative plan, no calculation of her own, no concrete counter-proposal that could force the quartet to make a different decision. She harped on the Swedish example as proof that things could be done differently, but did not take it further than a reference. In a machine that ran on OMT reports and RIVM graphs, this was impossible.
What she did do, and where her role did have significance, was translating the ever-changing measures to SMEs. Together with her officials at EZK — who were also deeply frustrated about the neglect of socio-economic interests — she repeatedly tried to emphasize what was still possible within the restrictions. How could hairdressers, shops, restaurants and gyms open with creative protocols? Which industries could continue to operate under what conditions? She was the bridge builder between The Hague policy and the entrepreneur who did not want to see his business go bankrupt. But that role also had its limits: the more nonsensical the rules became, the more difficult it was to explain them.
De lockdown van december 2020 en de avondklok in januari 2021 waren grote morele en constitutionele pijnpunten. Ministers spraken er onderling over — "alles was bespreekbaar" — maar de koers veranderde niet. De maatregelen werden niet alleen strenger, maar ook steeds willekeuriger: jojoënde bezoekersaantallen (750, dan 100, dan 50, dan weer 250) zonder serieuze onderbouwing. Sportschool open, sportschool dicht. Terras wel, binnen niet. Het was als een voortdenderende trein die, aangemoedigd door een via dagelijkse persconferenties en RIVM-dashboards extreem bang gemaakte Tweede Kamer en bevolking, bevangen door de Rule of Rescue1, continued to reach a dead end.
The missing assessment framework
Keijzer painfully illustrates how the intuitive sense of disproportionality always loses out to the moral blackmail of overflowing ICU beds, as long as there is no objective numerical weighting framework. When asked by the committee how the weighing of interests was made in concrete terms, it was largely unable to answer: there was in fact no material weighing up. People could talk about adverse consequences, but that never led to adjustments in the medical line.
De ironie is groot: juist op haar eigen ministerie lagen de harde cijfers al in maart 2020 klaar. Econometristen van EZK en Financiën maakten een maatschappelijke kosten-batenanalyse van de "intelligente lockdown". Uitkomst: ongeveer 100.000 gewonnen Qaly's tegenover minimaal 620.000 verloren gezonde levensjaren door psychische schade, uitgestelde zorg en economische neergang — los van de financiële kosten. De avondklok leverde volgens een globale analyse mogelijk 400 gezonde levensjaren op, maar kostte er circa 250.000.
Die rekensom kwam echter nooit op tafel. Minister Eric Wiebes typeerde de analyse in juli 2021 als irrelevant voor de politieke realiteit. Zoals Het Parool schreef naar aanleiding van de via WOB geopenbaarde stukken: "Veel invloed op het coronabeleid heeft de kosten-batenanalyse niet gehad. De druk op de zorg is en was leidend. Ook voor Eric Wiebes. Volgens ingewijden wogen voor hem de kille cijfers niet op tegen een doemscenario waarbij een 60-plusser met corona door gebrek aan bedden buiten het ziekenhuis zou komen te overlijden. Dat zou de samenleving niet accepteren veronderstelde de minister."
Daar zat de morele breuklijn: één zichtbare IC-dode woog zwaarder dan 1.000 onzichtbare slachtoffers van uitgestelde zorg, psychische aftakeling en economische vernietiging. Niet omdat dat rationeel klopte, maar omdat het eerste een schrikbeeld was dat de krantenkoppen en talkshowtafels domineerde, en het tweede "slechts" een statistiek.
Whistleblowing
The committee asked Keijzer firmly about the alleged inconsistency: why agree with 'Access for Testing' (TvT) via the Field Labs, but reject the Corona Access Ticket (CTB/3G) in principle?
Her defense was clear. TV was a pragmatic instrument: it created opportunities to open businesses when the 1.5 meter rule still applied. A bridge to normality under the given restrictions. The CTB was of a different order. Once the 1.5 meter distance was deemed unnecessary, the CTB was left as a purely ideological instrument — a division of society that mainly served to enforce vaccination. There was no longer any practical emergency measure. It was discrimination as a policy instrument.
She had already discussed resigning with Wopke Hoekstra and Mark Rutte in August and September 2020, because she could no longer reconcile the entire policy with her conscience. Due to the disappearance or collapse of others — Kaag, Bijleveld, Van Ark — she was repeatedly persuaded to stay. But at the CTB the size was definitely full.
She deliberately did not opt for a silent exit with a neat explanation. She came out as a whistleblower through De Telegraaf - with the knowledge that she would not survive this politically. Rutte fired her almost immediately.
It was political suicide, but for her the only way to maintain integrity. Her less courageous colleagues remained seated and swallowed their doubts.
The bill
Keijzer toonde hoe de obsessie van vier mannen om het virus koste wat kost "kapot te slaan" de maatschappij ondermijnde en het wantrouwen in de overheid verder voedde. Tijdens het verhoor werd ze zichtbaar geëmotioneerd bij de herinnering aan begrafenissen waar nabestaanden niet bij mochten zijn — families die hun doden in eenzaamheid moesten wegbrengen, achter gesloten kerkdeuren, terwijl het beleid dat dit voorschreef onwrikbaar voort denderde. De tranen bleven net aan weg.
Het was de machteloze opstand van het gezonde verstand en de morele intuïtie tegen de illusoire RIVM-modellen en de harde cijfers over de IC's, die via het LCSP werden "uitverkocht" aan mensen die er eigenlijk geen enkele baat meer bij hadden (dixit Armand Girbes2). A State Secretary without a detailed counter plan, armed with little more than a reference to Sweden and a deep sense of injustice. Fought like a lion, you could still taste the anger and sadness in the interrogation; but proved too light to win the battle against the macho men without hard cost/benefit figures. But: she kept her conscience.
The question that remains is how many ministers felt the same — and remained silent...
The President of the Commission does not allow her to have the last word.
Maar ze neemt het toch: "Ik vind het heel jammer om het te moeten zeggen, maar de democratische rechtsstaat heeft gefaald."
Her tragedy summarized in one sentence, a tragedy for which she was partly responsible for 1.5 years.
Sources:
1 Orr & Wolff (2014), Reconciling cost-effectiveness with the rule of rescue: the institutional division of moral labour.
Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy (end of March 2020). Social cost/benefit analysis SCBA COVID-19 measures, version 1 and 2. (Prediction: approx. 100,000 life years gained vs. approx. 620,000 life years lost due to lockdown policy.) Min EZK Maatsch Cost Benefit Analysis 1 and 2.pdf
Background article/FAQ upon publication of EZK cost/benefit analysis and the Rule of Rescue.
2 Interview Armand Girbes, de Balie, 2025, professor and intensivist at the VU MC [the Amsterdam colleague of OMT member Diederik Gommers]. He (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaBXRGChtPw&ab_channel=DeBalie ) werd met de gevolgen van het uitgangspunt [geen enkele Corona patiënt mag dood gaan aan Corona] en het LCPS geconfronteerd en gaf als professionele praktijkobservatie dat gedurende 2 jaar het LCPS circa 75% van "zijn" IC-capaciteit claimde voor mensen die normaal nooit op een IC terecht zouden komen en ook nu (2025) niet zullen komen omdat hun vooruitzichten gewoon al te slecht waren/zijn. Rond de 50% van deze patiënten stierf dan ook binnen enkele dagen of weken op de IC, wat uitzonderlijk hoog is
Beautifully described again. If you follow the reactions on social media, you will also see the most aggressive reactions here. Never on the content, always ad hominem. Tellingly, Maurice and Mona get to the heart of the matter, and that hurts. Unfortunately, this also means that the arguments are often not heard at all by the 'other side'. Does the survey mean that we are heading for discussions on the margins instead of fundamental insights and changes?
Are those reactions from “officials”?
Or from “ordinary” angry citizens?
Van allebei! Ook banken en crowdfundingplatforms bemoeien zich ermee. Ik ken mensen die hun bankrekening dreigen kwijt te raken en/of al het geld al kwijt zijn. Bijvoorbeeld de mensen die de zaak tegen de qrcode gestart zijn. Het is een harde en nare boodschap maar meneer van der Zanden u zult het grotere plaatje moeten bekijken. Mona Keizer en ook Maurice hebben gedacht dat ze gesprekken hadden met o.a. Rutte maar dat lijkt zo. Iedereen met een arbeidsconflict vanwege een narcistische (of erger of een combinatie) leidinggevende meestal ook nog uitgerust met een vlotte babbel weet wat ik bedoel. Overigens zal een psychiater of centrum waar men onderzoek doet naar stoornissen de diagnoses moeten stellen want daar ben ik niet op afstand voor bevoegd. Het virus was niet alleen in Nederland! Europese leiders hebben druk uitgeoefend op een arts die in zuid-Afrika vaststelde dat omicron milder was om te zeggen dat het NIET milder was. Er is bewijs genoeg!
Nursing homes are now also partly uninhabitable due to poor ventilation. The residents of poorly insulated rooms on the top floor will have a particularly difficult time in the coming weeks due to the heat. I know many personal stories that show that people refuse to tackle heat stress, which can sometimes have fatal consequences. While, for example, installing good air conditioning solves the problem. But finances, building regulations or noise pollution are then used as arguments. That is why family members of the elderly sometimes choose to (illegally) install air conditioning themselves. Good ventilation therefore prevents deaths in winter and summer.
For the heat, a fan of €25 is often more than enough...
I experience that in some rooms it remains 27, 28 sometimes 30 degrees at night and 35 plus degrees during the day with the curtains always closed. A fan mainly provides 'cooling' in terms of sensation.
In combination with ice, this can temporarily provide some cooling in a small space, but is not recommended because the humidity will then increase drastically.
A detail that has generally caused little fuss:
When vaccinating against the flu, people consciously start in September or October before the flu season starts.
In this way, the most effective possible resistance can be built up two to four weeks afterwards, the reasoning goes. And vaccinating when many people are sick with the flu, a vaccination can make the elderly or sick even sicker if they are infected with a flu virus at that time or shortly afterwards.
But with Covid, vaccination was started at the beginning of January 2021, precisely when there was a very high risk of infection.
This (partly) explains the counterproductive effect of the syringes and why the first two weeks after the vaccination was given were not taken into account when calculating effectiveness.
In fact; in some studies they were classified as unvaccinated.
This way you can calculate a high effectiveness even with hot air.
Dag Jan, weer een fijne samenvatting van wat ‘critici’ allang wisten maar door velen nog steeds ontkend wordt.
Het is nog veel erger dan wat hier geschetst wordt!
In Duitsland worden de pijnlijke vragen wél gesteld en in de US wordt inmiddels stevig de noodklok geluid over de bijzondere bijwerkingen van de vaccinaties.
Hopelijk daalt het inzicht bij de dames en heren medici en politici en journalisten ook in, dat zou in Nederland tot een nieuwe “verlichting” leiden, en waarschijnlijk toch nog tot iets goeds.