Madison Area Lyme Support Group

Governments around the world say they are following ‘The Science’ with their draconian measures to stem the spread of the virus. But the science around Covid-19 is bitterly contested. Many experts have serious doubts about the effectiveness of the measures, and argue that our outside fears of Covid-19 are not justified. Knut Wittkowski is one such expert who has long argued for a change of course. For 20 years, Wittkowski was the head of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at The Rockefeller University’s Center for Clinical and Translational Science. spiked spoke to him to find out more about the pandemic. (See link for article)

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**Comment**

It’s now May 16 and Wittkowski hasn’t changed his tune. He still states the following:

• COVID-19 isn’t severe unless you have age-related severe comorbidities.
• He states the “epidemic” is over in China, South Korean and substantially down in most of Europe – and even UK numbers are substantially declining.
• He reminds us there was ONE reason given for the initial lockdown: to prevent hospital overload, but most hospitals never experienced overload – only NY experienced a slight increase.
• He still feels the lock-down in fact made things worse because it prolonged the “epidemic” putting the elderly in nursing homes at risk because you can’t lock them down forever.
• He states the other dangers of locking down: suicides, domestic violence and other social consequences leading to death. Fear keeps people away from needed care at hospitals also leading to death.
• Deaths in Germany won’t even show up as a blip in the hospital stats.
• Studies show we have at least 25% who are immune. We are quickly getting to the needed 50% for herd immunity.
• He states the feared “second spike or wave” is an invention to “justify a policy that politicians are afraid of reversing.”
• He states we should NOT be practicing social distancing.
• He states people should be asking the government to justify what it’s doing. 
• He states the reason we got this all wrong was that governments do not have open discussion to hear different voices and they decided to listen to the singular voice of Neil Ferguson, who has a history of odd predictions without justification.
• He states as was seen in Wuhan and South Korea, if you do nothing, the “epidemic” is over in 3 weeks. The virus, as viruses do, just simply runs its course.
• To those who state they are “following the science.” he states they are following “scientists on their side that depend on government funding.”
• Scientists depending on government funding has developed over the past 40 years.
• The German scientists speaking out against COVID-19 mismanagement are all retired and independent.
• He states Sweden did the right thing. Politicians admitted they should have isolated nursing homes to protect the elderly.
• 20,000 deaths could have been prevented in NY because the government told nursing homes if they did not take hospital patients they would lose their funding. This imported the virus right into the nursing homes.
• He says there was no reason to shut down schools,and ruin the economy.
• He states all of this data was available toward the end of March to those who wanted to hear it.
• He states that data presented by CDC director Robert Redfield should have had people jumping to their feet. There were 3 spikes in the 2019-2020 flu season: late December (influenza B), late January (influenza A), and then early March (COVID-19). For this last peak to happen patients had to go through a 7 day incubation period and then have symptoms. Then in early April (4 weeks later) infections were already down. At his point the government should have stated it had been overly cautious, but they didn’t want to admit their error and now there are 30 million unemployed in the US and companies going bankrupt.

Best quote:

“I frankly still cannot fully understand how our governments can be so stupid.” Knut Wittkowski