Following on from our previous list, here are ten more expert voices, drowned out or disregarded by the mainstream narrative, offering their take on the coronavirus outbreak.
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Dr. Sunetra Gupta et al. are an Oxford-based research team constructing an epidemiological model for the coronavirus outbreak, their paper has yet to be peer-reviewed, but the abstract is available online.
Dr Gupta is a Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at the University of Oxford with an interest in infectious disease agents that are responsible for malaria, HIV, influenza and bacterial meningitis. She is a recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Scientific Medal by the Zoological Society of London and the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award for her scientific research.
What they say:
Importantly, the results we present here suggest the ongoing epidemics in the UK and Italy started at least a month before the first reported death and have already led to the accumulation of significant levels of herd immunity in both countries. There is an inverse relationship between the proportion currently immune and the fraction of the population vulnerable to severe disease.
– Fundamental principles of epidemic spread highlight the immediate need for large-scale serological surveys to assess the stage of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic, 24th March 2020
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The research presents a very different view of the epidemic to the modelling at Imperial College London […] “I’m surprised that there has been such unqualified acceptance of the Imperial model”, Dr Gupta said.
[…]The Oxford results would mean the country had already acquired substantial her immunity through the unrecognised spread of covid19 over more than two months.
Although some experts have shed doubt on the strength and length of the human immune response to the virus, Prof Gupta said the emerging evidence made her confident that humanity would build up herd immunity against Covid19
– “Coronavirus may have infected halt the population”, Financial Times, 24th March 2020
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Dr Karin Mölling is a German virologist whose research focused on retroviruses, particularly human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). She was a full professor and director of the Institute of Medical Virology at the University of Zurich from 1993 until her retirement in 2008 and received multiple honours and awards for her work.
What she says:
You are now told every morning how many SARS-Corona 2 deaths there are. But they don’t tell you how many people already are infected with influenza this winter and how many deaths it has caused.
This winter, the flu is not severe, but around 80,000 are infected. You don’t get these numbers at all. Something similar occurred two years ago. This is not put into the right context.
[…]Every week a person dies in Berlin from multi-resistant germs. That adds up to 35,000 a year in Germany. This is not mentioned at all. I believe that we have had situations like this several times and that the measures are now being taken too far.
I am of the opinion that maybe one should not do so much against young people having parties together and infecting each other. We have to build immunity somehow. How can that be possible without contacts? The younger ones handle the infection much better. But we have to protect the elderly, and protect them in a way that can be scrutinized; is it reasonable what we are doing now, to stretch out the epidemic in a way that almost paralyzes the entire world economy?
[…]The Robert Koch Institute provides the figures. Then you sit there as a listener or spectator: 20 dead again, how terrible! Do you know when I would start to panic? If there are 20,000. Then we get close to what went on completely quietly two years ago.
The 2018 influenza epidemic, with 25,000 deaths, never disconcerted the press. The clinics had to deal with an additional 60,000 patients, which was no problem in the clinics either!
[…]That is the main fear: the disease is presented as a terrible disease. The disease per se is like the flu in a normal winter. It is even weaker in the first week.
– Interview on Anti-Empire.com, 23rd March 2020
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Dr Anders Tegnell is a Swedish physician and civil servant who has been State Epidemiologist of the Public Health Agency of Sweden since 2013. Dr Tegnell graduated from medical school in 1985, specialising in infectious disease. He later obtained a PhD in Medical Science from Linköping University in 2003 and an MSc in 2004.
What he says:
“All measures that we take must be feasible over a longer period of time.” Otherwise, the population will lose acceptance of the entire corona strategy.
Older people or people with previous health problems should be isolated as much as possible. So no visits to children or grandchildren, no journeys by public transport, if possible no shopping. That is the one rule. The other is: Anyone with symptoms should stay at home immediately, even with the slightest cough.
“If you follow these two rules, you don’t need any further measures, the effect of which is only very marginal anyway,”
– “The World Stands Still…Except for Sweden”, Zeit.de, 24th March 2020
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Dr Pablo Goldschmidt is an Argentine-French virologist specializing in tropical diseases, and Professor of Molecular Pharmacology at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris. He is a graduate of the Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry of the University of Buenos Aires and Faculty of Medicine of the Hospital Center of Pitié-Salpetrière, Paris.
He currently resides in France, where he has worked for almost 40 years as a researcher in clinical laboratories developing diagnostic technology.
What he says:
The ill-founded opinions expressed by international experts, replicated by the media and social networks repeat the unnecessary panic that we have previously experienced. The coronavirus identified in China in 2019 caused nothing less than a strong cold or flu, with no difference so far with cold or flu as we know , ”
[…]Respiratory viral conditions are numerous and are caused by several viral families and species, among which the respiratory syncytial virus (especially in infants), influenza (influenza), human metapneumoviruses, adenoviruses, rhinoviruses, and various coronaviruses, already described years ago. It is striking that earlier this year global health alerts have been triggered as a result of infections by a coronavirus detected in China, COVID-19, knowing that each year there are 3 million newborns who die in the world of pneumonia and 50,000 adults in the United States for the same cause, without alarms being issued.
[…]Our planet is the victim of a new sociological phenomenon, scientific-media harassment , triggered by experts only on the basis of laboratory molecular diagnostic analysis results. Communiqués issued from China and Geneva were replicated, without being confronted from a critical point of view and, above all, without stressing that coronaviruses have always infected humans and always caused diarrhoea and what people call a banal cold or common cold. Absurd forecasts were extrapolated, as in 2009 with the H1N1 influenza virus.
[…]There is no evidence to show that the 2019 coronavirus is more lethal than respiratory adenoviruses, influenza viruses, coronaviruses from previous years, or rhinoviruses responsible for the common cold.
– Interview on Clarin.com, 9th March 2020
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Dr Eran Bendavid and Dr Jay Bhattacharya are professors of medicine and public health at Stanford University.
What they say:
The latter rate is misleading because of selection bias in testing. The degree of bias is uncertain because available data are limited. But it could make the difference between an epidemic that kills 20,000 and one that kills two million.
[…]A universal quarantine may not be worth the costs it imposes on the economy, community and individual mental and physical health. We should undertake immediate steps to evaluate the empirical basis of the current lockdowns.
“Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say?”, Wall Street Journal, 24th March 2020
