Today I want to
draw your attention to a German doctor who has been calmly suggesting that governments
have been panicked into extreme measures by their failure to understand the
specifics of statistical measurement and reporting.
My first
reaction was that the guy was a right-wing denialist – like Brazil’s
right-wing President Bolsonaro - but his style seems a bit
too professional for that – and indeed, when I checked on Wikipedia, it was to
discover that he is not
only mainstream SDP but is currently the Deputy-Head of the German Delegation
to the Council of Europe
Dr Wolfgang Wodarg
is a lung specialist (pulmonologist) and starts his presentation (subtitled in
English) by explaining there are 100 types of virus - which are constantly
changing. He quotes research from Glasgow which looked at some ten viruses in which
Coronavirus was always present – although only some 7-15% of viruses he says
are of the Coronavirus strain.
Wutan, he
points out, is China’s largest laboratory for the testing for viruses and has,
therefore, a large number of medical researchers who found this strain on about
50 people they were testing. This was duly put into the global data base and
picked up in Berlin who did a test and passed the results to WHO for some sort
of certification…..
At this point
the explanation got a bit cryptic and seemed to suggest a contrast between how the
WHO handles validation requests from pharmaceutical companies, on the one hand,
and research institutes on the other. Basically Wodarg seems to argue that WHO
registered the new strain very easily….without actually knowing how dangerous
the new strain was….That requires epidemiological data going back some years – whether
for the general population, for those presenting with symptoms let alone for
those in hospitals or in critical care. The percentage of those with the virus
will start at about 8% but move up to almost 100% for those critically ill…
I think he says Germany would normally expect
2-3,000 deaths a year from flu and this should be borne in mind in all the current
focus on the death rate
He faults the
virologists for creating something sensational – which first impressed the
Chinese authorities…...and then got picked up by the global media
Wodarg’s
arguments – available on his blog - have
caused quite a storm in Germany apparently – although I have not been able to
check that discussion out so far. I am a sceptic by nature and very much enjoy books such as
those of Ben Goldacre
If he is
correct, of course this would massively boost the cause of the “Denialists” – which must be
a thought worrying some experts….
One thing does, however, puzzle me – why Wodarg
does not simply argue that we should be keeping the number of deaths in
perspective. In other words be deducting from the gross number presented in the news
reports the 0.1% of deaths expected from flu…
Instead he
seems to be denying there is an issue
The doctor does, however, seem one of these “outsiders” I have discussed quite recently in these posts
with one foot in the medical camp and another in the political.
People who
straddle different worlds are able to resist groupthink – and it is significant
that, at the end of the youtube presentation, he quotes from my favourite fairy
story – “The Emperor who had no clothes”.
Update; Germany is apparently experiencing a low and flattening death rate at 0.3% (compared to both Italy's 9% and UK's 4.6%) according to this article - although Monday we were being told that some regional authorities were being slow in returning their statistics!
But the UK seems still to be farting about as two blogs from opposite ends of the political spectrum indicate first from Boffy and today on Richard North’s site
And this article shows how much of an outlier the UK has become
Update; Germany is apparently experiencing a low and flattening death rate at 0.3% (compared to both Italy's 9% and UK's 4.6%) according to this article - although Monday we were being told that some regional authorities were being slow in returning their statistics!
But the UK seems still to be farting about as two blogs from opposite ends of the political spectrum indicate first from Boffy and today on Richard North’s site
And this article shows how much of an outlier the UK has become
The pic is the last painting done by Egon Schiele a few days
before he and his wife succumbed to the Spanish Flu in 1918. He was 28
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