Thursday April 2nd 2020
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The corona crisis is turning public life in Germany upside down – too little is known about Sars-CoV-2 to combat it effectively. In these times of uncertainty, some experts are causing a stir with steep theses – but how durable are they?
There is now a state of emergency in Germany – for fear of the coronavirus pandemic. The big worry: Too many people seriously ill with Covid-19 could overload the health system and cause it to collapse. The reason for this is the exponential growth of the reported infections since the end of February. Drastic measures such as the ban on contact that came into force at the end of March are now to curb the spread of the virus.
The radical interventions in the freedom rights of the citizens also make it clear how helpless the governments in Germany and other countries are towards the wave of infections. Little is known about many aspects of the virus: How deadly is it really? What is the number of unreported cases among infected people? How exactly and above all where is it transmitted?
Because many things are still uncertain, the nation is now hanging on the lips of people who are familiar with viruses: Above all, the virologist Christian Drosten from the Berlin Charité, who brings the population up to date in a daily NDR podcast. His colleagues like Hendrik Streeck from the University Hospital Bonn and Alexander Kekulé are now regular guests in the big talk shows and news programs.
Was the virus there much earlier?
There are also experts who drew attention to themselves early on with very controversial theses about the coronavirus pandemic – and not only got millions of clicks on YouTube videos in which they expressed themselves or were questioned, but also a lot of criticism. The two best known are pulmonologist and SPD politician Wolfgang Wodarg and emeritus professor of medical microbiology Sucharit Bhakdi.
Wodarg calls the corona crisis “hype”. The hospitals would be burdened “by the many questions and by the panic, but not by new cases of illness”. “Reckless and unjustified quarantine measures and prohibition regulations” are in force. In interviews, he also believed that the Sars-CoV-2 virus might not be that new. It was impossible to know “whether these viruses were not already present in Beijing or in Italy”. One could “never look for it and never looked for it”.
In one of his videos, Bhakdi claimed that Sars-CoV-2 was “not fundamentally” more dangerous than other pathogens in the virus family. “99 percent of people have no or only mild symptoms.” With regard to government measures to curb the virus, Bhakdi said: “I find it grotesque, exuberant and directly dangerous.”
How are these statements to be assessed? Is the corona crisis really “hype”, as Wodarg believes? Frankfurt virologist Martin Stürmer considers the approach to be appropriate in the current situation. “If we are not careful now, we will get conditions in the intensive care units, such as some in Italy. Then doctors would have to decide who should give a bed in the intensive care unit and who should not.” Reports from northern Italy also show that people in hospitals in Bergamo or Brescia do not die from panic or open questions, but in many cases from Covid-19.
Striker also has doubts about Wodarg’s assessment that the virus had existed in China years before the first cases of illness. “At most a few months before the discovery in December” the virus first appeared, the virologist estimates. “If this virus had already been present in Italy or China, you would have recognized those who are negative for the known respiratory pathogens and would have looked for the new pathogen – as in December in China,” says Stephan Becker from the institute for virology at the University of Marburg.
It is not Wodarg’s only steep thesis. The former medical officer, who said he was responsible for deciding whether to cancel events, also expressed doubts about the tests for the corona virus. The Corona test developed in Germany was “not even validated”. He may be able to respond positively to many viruses, not just the new Sars-CoV-2. Wodarg suggests that there is hype about the corona virus so that researchers can make money with the tests.
“Misleading information”
Thereupon Virologist Drosten from the Charité intervened himself and took a position in the NDR podcast – after all, he and his team had developed this test. The test is also positive for other viruses, said the virologist, but this information is misleading, because these viruses only appear in bats or no longer exist – such as the old Sars virus from 2002. “This test does not respond to any other human coronavirus and against no other human cold virus. ” And Drosten made it clear: “We don’t earn a cent, on the contrary: we pay a lot on it.”
Bhakdi also leans out of the window with his statements that the Sars-CoV-2 is “not in principle” more dangerous than other pathogens of the virus family, since 99 percent of the people have no or only slight symptoms. This is because he contradicts research results that match worldwide without specifying sources – such as the World Health Organization (WHO). Renowned institutions such as the German Robert Koch Institute repeatedly emphasize that by far not everyone is infected with the Sars-CoV-2 virus. For those who fall ill, 80 percent show mild to moderate symptoms.
In the meantime, Bhakdi seems to have adapted his type of criticism – in an open letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel, also read in a YouTube video, he focuses primarily on addressing critical points and asking questions. However, many of them are not new – for example, after a random sample of the healthy population to find out how widespread the virus is. In a recent study, the virologist Streeck, for example, collected data in the Heinsberg district, which was severely affected by Covid-19 cases, to determine the number of unreported infections. Another study on more than 100,000 subjects is supposed to reveal how many people in Germany are already immune to Covid-19.
How can critics like Wodarg and Bhakdi now be assessed? If the facts are so unclear to non-experts, it is easy to make bold claims – such as allegedly low risk of the virus. However, they do not reflect the state of knowledge and, with their opposing positions, are more likely to increase uncertainty among the population. The doctor and medical journalist Dr. Christoph Specht puts it this way to ntv.de: “Half-truths are worse than lies. Because they make it very difficult for the layperson to assess what is right and what is not.”
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