Last week’s high­ly unusu­al (for Texas) weath­er led to me get­ting some use out of var­i­ous emer­gency pre­cau­tions. For the most part every­thing went smooth­ly, with no seri­ous prob­lems. The pow­er was out for 75 hours, but the water nev­er stopped work­ing. I did learn a few things which will help me pre­pare for the next emer­gency sit­u­a­tion, though.

1. Have at least a few days worth of food that does­n’t taste ter­ri­ble when eat­en cold. Just a few weeks before the storm I’d replaced two cas­es of Main­stay Emer­gency Food Rations with freeze dried food from Moun­tain House. The freeze dried food lasts six times as long, and tastes bet­ter as well. How­ev­er, if weath­er con­di­tions keep you from going out­side to boil water, freeze dried food rehy­drat­ed with cold water tastes ter­ri­ble. I end­ed up a order­ing a few days worth of the Main­stay food just for sit­u­a­tions where freez­ing rain pre­vents use of the grill.

2. Make sure you know where all your emer­gency equip­ment is, even if you’re sure you won’t need it. It took me a day to fig­ure out where my warm wool cap had got­ten to, and my sleep­ing bag had gone miss­ing entire­ly dur­ing a pre­vi­ous move. The lack of a sleep­ing bag was the biggest source of dis­com­fort, as even warm blan­kets just aren’t as com­fort­able for sleep­ing in the cold. Iron­i­cal­ly, some of the equip­ment that I had expect­ed to need (my Kata­dyn water fil­ter and AN/PVS-14) remained unused.

3. Make sure you have a way to pow­er all the elec­tron­ics you’ll need. I used a Volta­ic 19.2Ah bat­tery pack and 10W solar pan­el to keep my Kin­dle, iPad Mini, and a cou­ple of neigh­bors’ cell phones charged. How­ev­er, I had­n’t thought to buy adapter cables to use it with my fif­teen year old hand­held radios. I had to use them very con­ser­v­a­tive­ly so that I would­n’t be out of pow­er if I real­ly need­ed one. My HF radio was use­less as it sim­ply can’t be run from the bat­tery pack. That was some­what embar­rass­ing as I have a huge, awk­ward HF field anten­na that I keep around for just this sort of situation.

4. Be pre­pared for flood­ing from burst pipes. This was­n’t a prob­lem in my apart­ment com­plex (built in the 1970s), but the neigh­bor­ing com­plex (owned by the same com­pa­ny) is one of those mod­ern big ugly box type com­plex­es and their fire sprin­kler pipes burst and flood­ed most the build­ing. A good ground cloth and tent would prob­a­bly be suf­fi­cient for camp­ing out in a flood­ed apart­ment, or else out­side the build­ing if the water is too deep.

5. If you dri­ve, buy tire chains and learn how to put them on. There were an awful lot of aban­doned mini­vans on the sides of Austin roads due to unpre­pared dri­vers. Chains are so cheap that there’s real­ly no rea­son not to have a set in your vehicle.

This is the view from my apart­ment this morn­ing. The pow­er has been out for almost sev­en hours, so I’m wish­ing I’d bought that heavy duty portable solar pow­er sys­tem I was read­ing about a few weeks ago. I’m about ready for some of that glob­al warm­ing they keep promis­ing us, but unfor­tu­nate­ly the com­ing ice age seems to be win­ning this week.

In my study of com­mu­nist soci­eties, I came to the con­clu­sion that the pur­pose of com­mu­nist pro­pa­gan­da was not to per­suade or con­vince, not to inform, but to humil­i­ate; and there­fore, the less it cor­re­spond­ed to real­i­ty the bet­ter. When peo­ple are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvi­ous lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies them­selves, they lose once and for all their sense of pro­bity. To assent to obvi­ous lies is in some small way to become evil one­self. One’s stand­ing to resist any­thing is thus erod­ed, and even destroyed. A soci­ety of emas­cu­lat­ed liars is easy to control.

Theodore Dal­rym­ple

YouTube has cen­sored two more videos from Jour­ney­man Pic­tures’ Per­spec­tives on the Pan­dem­ic series. One of them is a more recent inter­view with Dr. Knut Wit­tkows­ki, who was fea­tured in a pre­vi­ous cen­sored video:

The sec­ond is an inter­view with Dr. John Ioan­ni­dis, who wrote an arti­cle back when the cur­rent mass hys­te­ria was just get­ting start­ed warn­ing against mak­ing deci­sions on unre­li­able data. In that arti­cle he includ­ed an esti­mate of the true dan­ger of COVID-19 based on the expe­ri­ence of the cruise ship Dia­mond Princess. Although it was, as he acknowl­edge, a crude esti­mate based on lim­it­ed data, his esti­mate that COVID-19 was around five times less dan­ger­ous to five times more dan­ger­ous than the aver­age flu sea­son has been born out by a vari­ety of more recent larg­er stud­ies using anti­body test­ing. Since he was proved right, it’s hard­ly sur­pris­ing that our rulers don’t want him heard.

Last month Dr. Knut Wit­tkows­ki gave an inter­view to a doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ing group called Jour­ney­man Pic­tures as part of their Per­spec­tives on the Pan­dem­ic series. As he was say­ing things that our rulers don’t want said, I expect­ed the inter­view to be cen­sored even­tu­al­ly and made a back­up copy. That’s now hap­pened, so I’m mak­ing the video avail­able here.

A few days ago Doc­tors Erick­son and Mas­si­hi gave an inter­view on COVID-19 in their part of Cal­i­for­nia. I’d watched it on YouTube and real­ized that they were telling the reporters things that the reporters real­ly did­n’t want to hear, and there­fore it was like­ly that if our rulers noticed the video it would be banned. Sure enough, it was. Since I expect­ed this, I’d made a copy which I’m includ­ing here. For some rea­son the YouTube video down­loader rotat­ed it 90 degrees, but since the video isn’t impor­tant I decid­ed to leave it unal­tered. It’s a fair­ly long inter­view, but well worth lis­ten­ing to the whole thing.

The ini­tial job­less claims for the US from the last mon­th’s worth of data are over 22 mil­lion. That’s over 8% of the entire adult pop­u­la­tion of the coun­try forced out of their jobs by the gov­ern­ment in just a month! I expect the gov­ern­ment will be chang­ing the way they cal­cu­late unem­ploy­ment again to keep the offi­cial num­ber down. There aren’t any recent bank­rupt­cy num­bers avail­able, but cer­tain­ly many of those peo­ple worked for small busi­ness­es that won’t sur­vive. Every­one likes to focus on huge cor­po­ra­tions, but the vast major­i­ty of busi­ness­es in the US are small inde­pen­dent com­pa­nies that lack the cor­po­ra­tions’ abil­i­ty to bribe politi­cians for a bailout.

Peo­ple have been talk­ing about how this could be as bad as the Great Depres­sion, but I think that’s incred­i­bly opti­mistic. The Great Depres­sion was caused by the gov­ern­ment of a sin­gle coun­try (albeit a very large and wealthy one) med­dling in the econ­o­my. What we’re see­ing now is most of the world’s gov­ern­ments active­ly try­ing to destroy the econ­o­my, coun­tries not falling to mass hys­te­ria being rel­a­tive­ly few and poor—Sweden is the most promi­nent case of sane behav­ior, but although Swe­den is a wealthy and high­ly indus­tri­al­ized coun­try, it has a pop­u­la­tion small­er than many cities. This delib­er­ate world-wide attempt to crip­ple our civ­i­liza­tion using mass hys­te­ria as an excuse is unprece­dent­ed. What do our rulers think is going to hap­pen when hun­dreds of mil­lions of des­per­ate peo­ple all over the world can’t afford food or shelter?

As it turns out, some­body did ask the ques­tion about whether US COVID-19 death totals were accu­rate. The word­ing of the ques­tion makes it clear that the reporter was wor­ried that they weren’t being inflat­ed, but at least it was asked. From the tran­script of a White House press briefing:

There are oth­er coun­tries that if you had a pre-exist­ing con­di­tion and let’s say the virus caused you to go to the ICU and then have a heart or kid­ney prob­lem — some coun­tries are record­ing that as a heart issue or a kid­ney issue and not a COVID-19 death.

Right now, we’re still record­ing it, and we’ll — I mean, the great thing about hav­ing forms that come in and a form that has the abil­i­ty to mark it as COVID-19 infec­tion — the intent is, right now, that those — if some­one dies with COVID-19, we are count­ing that as a COVID-19 death.

Dr. Deb­o­rah Birx

No, I can’t imag­ine if some­one comes in with coro­n­avirus, goes to an ICU, and they have an under­ly­ing heart con­di­tion and they die — they’re going to say, “Cause of death: heart attack.” I — I can­not see that — that hap­pen­ing. So I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.

Dr. Antho­ny Fauci

I came across a series of videos from Prof. Dr. Suchar­it Bhak­di, a Ger­man infec­tious dis­ease expert. He’s ask­ing ques­tions that few peo­ple are ask­ing and nobody is answer­ing. YouTube hates it when peo­ple do that, so I decid­ed to copy the Eng­lish sub­ti­tles (the videos are in Ger­man) in case of cen­sor­ship. The first video is an inter­view, so I’ve added iden­ti­fiers of who is talk­ing. Oth­er­wise, the sub­ti­tles are repro­duced here exactly–from the occa­sion­al mis­spellings and odd word choic­es, the trans­la­tor was prob­a­bly a Ger­man who speaks Eng­lish as a sec­ond language.

Coro­na virus Covid-19- hype and hys­te­ria? Demys­ti­fi­ca­tion of the nightmare!

Inter­view­er: Prof. Dr. Suchar­it Bhak­di, you are infec­tious dis­ease specialist

Inter­view­er: You are one of the most high­ly cit­ed med­ical research sci­en­tists of Germany.

Inter­view­er: Today, we will talk about the Coro­na Virus

Inter­view­er: This virus spreads fear over the whole world.

Inter­view­er: in Ger­many, a state of emer­gency impos­es extreme restrictions

Inter­view­er: What are Coro­na viruses?

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: These virus­es co-exist with humans and ani­mals around the globe.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: The virus­es are the cause of very com­mon, minor dis­eases of the res­pi­ra­to­ry tract.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Very often, infec­tions remain sub­clin­i­cal with­out symptoms.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Severe cours­es occur almost exclu­sive­ly in elder­ly patients with oth­er under­ly­ing ill­ness­es, in par­tic­u­lar of lung and heart.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Now, how­ev­er, a new mem­ber is on stage spread­ing fear around the world.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Why?

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: The new COVID-19 orig­i­nat­ed in Chi­na and spread rapidly.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: It appeared to be accom­pa­nied by an unex­pect­ed­ly high num­ber of deaths.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Alarm­ing reports fol­lowed from North­ern Italy that con­curred with the Chi­nese experience.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: It must, how­ev­er, be point­ed out

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: that the large major­i­ty of oth­er out­breaks in oth­er parts of the world appeared to dis­play low­er appar­ent mor­tal­i­ty rates

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: and such high num­bers of 4, 5 or 6% were not reached.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: For exam­ple in South Korea

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: the appar­ent mor­tal­i­ty rate was 1%.

Inter­view­er: Why “APPARENT” mor­tal­i­ty rate?

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: When patients con­cur­rent­ly have oth­er illnesses,

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: an infec­tious agent must not be held solely

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: respon­si­ble for a lethal outcome.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: This hap­pens for COVID-19, but such a con­clu­sion is false and gives rise to the danger

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: that oth­er impor­tant fac­tors are overlooked.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Dif­fer­ent mor­tal­i­ty rates may well be due to dif­fer­ent local situations.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: For example,

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: what does North­ern Italy have in com­mon with China

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Answer:

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Hor­rif­ic air pollution

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: The high­est in the world

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: North­ern Italy is the Chi­na of Europe.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: The lungs of inhab­i­tants there have been chron­i­cal­ly injured over decades

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: and for this sim­ple rea­son the sit­u­a­tion may not be com­pa­ra­ble to elsewhere.

Inter­view­er: What about Germany

Inter­view­er: – the virus has also spread to us.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Yes.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: It is spread­ing in Germany.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: One most impor­tant con­se­quence being that we now have suf­fi­cient data to gauge the true dan­ger of the virus in our country.

Inter­view­er: Which is what the ger­man experts and politi­cians have done.

Inter­view­er: The high­est alert lev­el has been proclaimed

Inter­view­er: and extreme pre­ven­tive mea­sures have been installed in the des­per­ate attempt to retard spread of the virus.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Yes, and this is the incred­i­ble tragedy.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Because all these adopt­ed mea­sures are actu­al­ly senseless.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Namely,

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: the press­ing ques­tions are answered.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: The first one:

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Does the virus gen­er­al­ly cause more seri­ous ill­ness also in young people

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: and kill patients who have no con­cur­ring illness?

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: This would make them dif­fer­ent from oth­er every­day Coro­na virus­es of the world.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: The answer is clear­ly: NO!

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: We have 10 000 infec­tions report­ed (18.03.2020)

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: 99,5 % have no or only mild symptoms

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Here, we already see

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: that it is false

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: and dangerous

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: to talk about of 10 000 “patients”!

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: They are not seri­ous­ly ill.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: “Infec­tion” is not iden­ti­cal with “dis­ease”.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Of 10 000 infect­ed people

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: only 50–60 were sev­er­ly ill.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: And 30 died

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: to the present day.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: In 30 days.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: So we have a appar­ent mor­tal­i­ty rate of 1 COVID-19 pos­i­tive case per day.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Up to now.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: The loom­ing worst case scenario

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: that must be pre­vent­ed accord­ing to the authorities:

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Then we would have 1.000 000 cases

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: and maybe 3.000 death

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: in 100 days.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: This would mean 30 deaths a day.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: The aim is to pre­vent this “worst case scenario”

Inter­view­er: All cur­rent emer­gency mea­sures aim to slow down virus spread to save lives.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Yes.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: But, we are look­ing already at the worst case szenario — with 30 death a day.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: 30 death a day may sound like very much.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Keep in mind that every day, 2200 over 65-year old depart from us, here in Germany

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Keep in mind that many of these car­ry com­mon Coro­na virus­es. How many are not known, so let us just assume 1% (which is sure­ly too low).

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: This would trans­late to 22 a day.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: And these die every day.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: The only dif­fer­ence is that we do not talk about “Coro­na-deaths”.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Because we know that these virus­es are nor­mal­ly not the major cause of death

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: So, what we are doing in the moment is to pre­vent that these 22 are replaced by 30 COVID-19 pos­i­tive patients.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: This is what is happening.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: We are afraid, that 1.000 000 infec­tions with the new virus will lead to 30 deaths a day over the next 100 days.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: But we do not real­ize that 20, or 30 or 40 or 100 patients pos­i­tive for nor­mal Coro­na virus­es are already dying every day.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: To avoid that COVID-19 enters the scene instead of the oth­er Coro­na virus­es, extreme mea­sures are installed.

Inter­view­er: So, what do you think about all these measures?

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: They are grotesque, absurd and very dangerous.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Our elder­ly cit­i­zens have every right to make efforts not to belong to the 2200 that dai­ly embark on their last journey.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Social con­tacts and social events, the­ater and music, trav­el and hol­i­day recre­ation, sports and hob­bies, etc., etc. all help to pro­long their stay on earth.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: The life expectan­cy of mil­lions is being shortened.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: The hor­ri­fy­ing impact on world econ­o­my threat­ens the exis­tence of count­less people.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: The con­se­quences on med­ical care are profound.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: Already, ser­vices to patients who are in need are reduced, oper­a­tions can­celled, prac­tices emp­ty, hos­pi­tal per­son­nel dwindling.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: All this will impact pro­found­ly on our whole society.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: I can only say:

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di: All these mea­sures are lead­ing to self-destruc­tion and col­lec­tive sui­cide because of noth­ing but a spook.

Prof. Dr. Suchar­it Bhak­di — Coro­na-Nach­trag 1_ Belast­barkeit des Gesundheitssystems

I would like to address two ques­tions that reach us every day

First, does the rapid rise of dai­ly infec­tions not under­line the con­cern that our health sys­tem is going to col­lapse if noth­ing is undertaken?

The pre­dic­tions are based on extrapolations

that assume that 5% of the patients will require arti­fi­cial ven­ti­la­tion that can only be per­formed in inten­sive care units.

My reply:

The fatal error in these cal­cu­la­tions is that infec­tions are equat­ed with ill­ness and patients.

The fact is that an infec­tion is just the entry and mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of a virus in the body.

Ill­ness need not fol­low. Only if it does are we allowed to speak about patients who might require med­ical therapy.

In the case of coro­na virus­es, 90% of infec­tions will run mild or total­ly asymp­to­matic course. There are no patients.

This is evi­dent in all sta­tis­tics avail­able to the public.

Now, if you real­ize that only 10 % of infec­tions will gen­er­ate patients,

this must be con­sid­ered in the esti­mates, which will nat­u­ral­ly be reduced by 90% (at least).

This means that all cal­cu­la­tions should be divid­ed by 10.

And when you do that, it becomes appar­ent that our health sys­tem as it stands, is in no dan­ger of being overburdened.

Prof. Dr. Suchar­it Bhak­di — Coro­na-Krise Nach­trag 2 — Schreck­ensszenario Italien

What about Italy?

A few days ago, 600 peo­ple report­ed­ly died of Corona.

Are we not in dan­ger of expe­ri­enc­ing the same if we do not install pre­ven­tive measures?

My answer:

It is known that the virus spreads very rapidly,

per­haps because it is rather harm­less and healthy infect­ed indi­vid­u­als there­fore dis­trib­ute it unknow­ing­ly in the polulation.

This means: I get infect­ed and go around and infect you.

And you nev­er real­ize this.

It is there­fore all impor­tant that we dif­fer­en­ti­ate between cause and coincidence.

One can­not say that just because the virus is detect­ed, it is the cause.

But this is what is hap­pen­ing in Italy, unfor­tu­nate­ly also in Ger­many, in Spain, and around the globe.

This leads to the cat­a­stroph­ic present sit­u­a­tion world­wide that is almost hopeless.

A few days ago,

the first Coro­na death was reg­is­tered in Schleswig-Holstein.

A 78 year old patient with ter­mi­nal stage oesoph­a­gus car­ci­no­ma died in the pal­lia­tive unit of a hospital.

He was test­ed for Coro­na a few days before his death. A pos­i­tive diag­no­sis was report­ed thereafter.

Imme­di­ate­ly, he entered the Ger­man list of Coro­na dead, num­ber 52.

I do not know what is hap­pen­ing in Italy.

To dif­fer­en­ti­ate between true cause and triv­ial coin­ci­dence, one would need data.

Data on the back­ground and the cause of death, and the pos­si­ble par­tic­i­pa­tion of the virus.

These we do not have.

But to say that because the virus is detect­ed, it is the cause of death, is utter­ly unsci­en­tif­ic and unacceptable.

And then to imple­ment mea­sures aimed at min­i­miz­ing risk of the dead­ly virus spread­ing from the dead is sim­ply devoid of reason.

This is what leads to the ter­ri­fiy­ing scenes in Italy that are so eager­ly spread by the media.

If we con­tin­ue in this spir­it and on these lines

you and I will, now and in the future, not be able to approach and be near to your dear­est who lie mor­tal­ly ill in the hos­pi­tal and long to see you before they depart.

Can you live with this inhu­man thought?

I think that the time has come for you to sit back and think seri­ous­ly about the entire situation.

Why don’t you demand that the ques­tions raised here are objec­tive­ly and hon­est­ly dis­cussed in an open man­ner, trans­par­ent to all.

All the best to you.

Coro­na-Krise_ Offen­er Brief an die Bun­deskan­z­lerin von Prof. Suchar­it Bhakdi

Open let­ter to the Chan­cel­lor of Germany

Dear Fel­low Citizens

I am a med­ical micro­bi­ol­o­gist and infec­tious dis­ease epi­demi­ol­o­gist who served for 22 years as chair­man of the Insti­tute of Med­ical Micro­bi­ol­o­gy and Hygiene, Mainz University.

My life has been devot­ed to research­ing the patho­gen­e­sis, diag­no­sis and ther­a­py of infec­tious diseases.

Nine days ago, I uploaded the first video to address the COVID-19 debate that is rag­ing worldwide.

My intent was to chan­nel the heat­ed dis­cus­sions back and down to a sound, sci­en­tif­ic basis — for the sake of the entire com­mu­ni­ty in this country.

I share no polit­i­cal agen­da. I per­sue no per­son­al inter­est and no inter­est of any third party.

The only rea­son for this video is the oblig­a­tion to serve sci­ence and our community.

The deci­sive ques­tion is: Do we know enough to jus­ti­fy the mas­sive mea­sures that vio­late human rights in our free demo­c­ra­t­ic society?

With all their pre­dictable consequences.

And if so

on which data are these deci­sions based and which strate­gies have been construed?

I have now writ­ten an open let­ter to the Chan­cel­lor of Ger­many, address­ing the most press­ing 5 open questions.

In this, my last video, I will explain the rea­sons under­ly­ing these ques­tions that are of vital impor­tance to us.

My first ques­tion con­cerns statistics.

In our field, it has always been ele­men­tary to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between infec­tion (entry and mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of an infec­tious agent) and dis­ease or ill­ness (appearence of clin­i­cal symptoms).

In the case of coro­na, this would be cough and per­haps fever.

In oth­er words: a new infec­tion, diag­nosed by a lab­o­ra­to­ry test, MUST NOT be equat­ed with ill­ness or with patient who requires med­ical treatment.

It is claimed that 5% of infect­ed indi­vid­u­als will end up in ICUs and require arti­fi­cial ventilation.

The ensu­ing prog­no­sis is awe­some and pre­dicts that Ger­many’s health sys­tem will be dri­ven to its utter limits.

My first ques­tion to the Chan­cel­lor: Did your pro­jec­tions dif­fer­en­ti­ate between not or only slight­ly affect­ed indi­vid­u­als and gen­uine, sev­er­ly ill and hos­pi­tal­ized COVID-19 patients?

Dear fel­low citizens:

The implic­it dan­ger of equat­ing infec­tions with patient num­bers must be obvi­ous. The dai­ly num­bers of reg­is­tered infec­tions is indeed exponential.

BUT — They can­not serve as a reli­able basis for any cal­cu­la­tions on the pos­si­ble bur­den on med­ical care.

Rather, we need num­bers of gen­uine, clin­i­cal­ly rel­e­vant COVID-19 cas­es in order to arrive at any sen­si­ble prediction.

The sec­ond ques­tion relates to the true dan­ger of the virus.

Imple­men­ta­tion of the cur­rent dra­con­ian mea­sures that so extreme­ly restrict fun­da­men­tal rights can only be jus­ti­fied if there is rea­son to fear that a tru­ly, excep­tion­al­ly dan­ger­ous virus is threat­en­ing us.

Do any sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly sound data exist to sup­port this con­tention for COVID-19?

I assert that the answer is simply:

NO!

To gauge the true dan­ger of the virus: what is the type of data we need?

Here are com­mon Coro­na virus­es that we live with every day.

Here is COVID-19

What we need are — say — 10.000 patients, all with res­pi­ra­to­ry track dis­ease that are infect­ed with com­mon Coro­na viruses

And 10.000 infect­ed with COVID-19.

All real­ly with res­pi­ra­to­ry track dis­ease, noth­ing else.

Then, we need to ask how many die in this goup and how many in that.

If the mor­tal­i­ty is simi­ar in both, then clear­ly they are sim­i­lar­ly dan­ger­ous or less dangerous.

If the num­ber here is high­er, than obvi­ous­ly the virus is more dangerous.

If the num­ber is much, much, much high­er, than obvi­ous­ly the virus is much, much, much more dangerous.

You will ask me, has there been such a study?

And I answer: No

Until March, 19^th 2020

When the first study ever appeared from our French col­leagues that addressed this cen­tral question.

What do you think they reported?

The mor­tal­i­ty in both groups was sim­i­lar. COVID-19 did not dif­fer in dan­ger­ous­ness from its every­day relatives.

My sec­ond ques­tion to the Chancellor:

How many patients with estab­lished, gen­uine COVID-19 patients are cur­rent­ly being treat­ed in ICUs and how does the num­ber com­pare with patients infect­ed with every­day Coro­na viruses.

Are these data being con­sid­ered in present and future pre­ven­tion strategies?

And have the data of our French col­leagues received atten­tion in this all impor­tant context?

Dear fel­low citizens:

I say not

that COVID-19 is as triv­ial as every­day Coro­na virus­es. But I do assert that noth­ing points to the prob­a­bil­i­ty that it is much, much more dangerous

like for instance its alarm­ing pre­de­ces­sors SARS and MERS that were real­ly deadly.

or like the flu virus that plagued the world two years ago that was 50 or 100 times more dead­ly than annu­al flu viruses

which this year have caused around 300 deaths. Two years ago, we were hor­ri­fied at more than 20.000 flu deaths in Germany.

And yet, no stin­gent pre­ven­tive mea­sures were imple­ment­ed at all, and this was cor­rect and reasonable.

Because our health sys­tem is equipped to deal with such emer­gen­cies and we have real­ly good doc­tors and helpers that imme­di­ate­ly stand up to mas­ter such situations.

There is no rea­son to panic.

Now imag­ine: that COVID-19 will and has actu­al­ly already been exposed as a virus with per­haps some­what but nev­er ever extreme­ly high­er dead­ly poten­cy than every­day Coro­na viruses:

Then, dear fel­low cit­i­zens — incred­i­ble but true — the frame­work for all pre­ven­tive mea­sures instant­ly col­laps­es like a house of cards.

My third ques­tion relates to the spread of the virus in the gen­er­al, healthy population.

We urgent­ly need to know whether the virus has already spread to the gen­er­al population.

Because, should this be the case, any attemps to halt its fur­ther spread would obvi­ous­ly be senseless.

My ques­tion to the Chan­cel­lor: Has any attempt been ini­ti­at­ed to answer this question?

Dear fel­low cit­i­zens, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive inves­ti­ga­tion of our com­mu­ni­ty could be per­formed with­in 1 or 2 weeks — and we would then know.…

My fourth ques­tion relates to the true mor­tal­i­ty rates of the virus with spe­cial ref­er­ence to Italy and Spain.

In my con­vic­tion, the ter­ri­ble error made in the entire world is that when­ev­er the virus is detect­ed in a deceased, it is auto­mat­i­cal­ly assigned as the cause of death and enters the awe­ful list of the Corona-dead.

This vio­lates a basic prin­ci­ple in med­i­cine: it sim­ply MUST be estab­lished that a patient dies BECAUSE OF and not sim­ple WITH a virus.

This is explic­it­ly stat­ed in the Ger­man med­ical guide­lines which are how­ev­er not heed­ed in the case of COVID-19.

Hence, my ques­tion to the Chancellor:

Has Ger­many sim­ply fol­lowed the glob­al trend of unsci­en­tif­i­cal­ly cat­e­go­riz­ing and defin­ing COVID-relat­ed deaths?

And does Ger­many intend to con­tin­ue break­ing the estab­lished rules?

How, then, can you ever hope to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between virus as the cause of death and virus acci­den­tal­ly present at death.

My last ques­tion queries the com­pa­ra­bil­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion in Italy and Germany.

Because: the ter­ri­ble reports from Italy — and in these days also from Spain — are fre­quent­ly extrap­o­lat­ed to warn of the pos­si­ble, sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion that threat­ens this country.

How­ev­er, the true sig­nif­i­cance of COVID-19 in Italy can sim­ply not be assessed.

In addi­tion to the prob­lems we have addressed above, addi­tion­al fac­tors such as hor­rif­ic air pol­lu­tion in North Italy and the ail­ing Ital­ian health sys­tem may be play­ing unpre­dictable roles.

And now

dear fel­low citizens

I sub­mit a new thoght for your consideration:

We know that the virus is extreme­ly infectious.

Reflect: The virus has prob­a­bly already spread far beyond your esti­mates. It may be present in a con­sid­er­able part of the healthy Ital­ian, Span­ish and also Ger­man population.

How prob­a­ble is it that when bed-rid­den elder­ly patients are vis­it­ed by their beloved and friends, the virus is passed on to them — as are oth­er every­day Corona-viruses?

When, then the patients enter the hos­pi­tal, the virus is imme­di­ate­ly detect­ed. Or if they suc­cumb to their true dis­ease at home the virus is sought and found post mortem.

A triv­ial event, but with unde­scrib­able con­se­quence because of false interpretation.

I say once again: the sim­ple and triv­ial pres­ence of the virus must nev­er ever qual­i­fy it to enter the reg­is­ter of COVID-deaths.

My dear fel­low cit­i­zens, the reports from Italy, as sad and depress­ing as they are, can­not and must not become the basis for our own mea­sures in Germany.

Thus, my last ques­tion to the Chancellor:

What efforts are being made to inform our soci­ety about these basic dif­fer­ences between the sit­u­a­tions in Italy and Germany.

And to tell our peo­ple that they need have no fear that a sim­i­lar sce­nario threat­ens this country?

Dear fel­low citizens

it is my sole intent to draw dawn the heat­ed dis­cus­sion to a sen­si­ble basis so that the sit­u­a­tion can hope­ful­ly soon return to the des­per­ate­ly need­ed normality.

I do not stand alone.

Many of my col­leagues in this coun­try have open­ly voiced their sim­i­lar opinion.

And one of the most reknowned and acknowl­edged experts in the field in Stan­ford, Prof. Ioan­ni­dis, has done the same.

The most impo­rant ques­tion to be imme­di­ate­ly answered is: Can the present imple­men­ta­tion of mea­sures that cur­tail essen­tial ele­ments of human rights be legal­ly justified?

Fel­low citizens:

Erro­neous beliefs in med­i­cine have caused unde­scrib­able suf­fer­ing to count­less inhab­i­tants on this earth.

Robert Koch opened the door to mod­ern med­i­cine when he demon­strat­ed that a spe­cif­ic dis­ease — tuber­cu­lo­sis- had a spe­cif­ic cause: the bacterium.

Since then, sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly based knowl­edge has con­tin­ued to replace belief in medicine.

Let us strive to fol­low in the path of progress

and assem­ble knowl­edge and truth in a col­lec­tive effort to mas­ter this ter­ri­ble crisis.

His open let­ter was post­ed to a shar­ing site with an expi­ra­tion date, so I made a copy. It’s a PDF file, and in German.

Prof. Dr. Bhak­di men­tions Italy’s death rate report­ing. The Tele­graph, a British paper, report­ed that the sci­en­tif­ic advi­sor to Italy’s min­is­ter of health admit­ted that Italy is gross­ly inflat­ing the num­ber of deaths, and the true num­ber is only 12% of what’s been report­ed. We’ve seen evi­dence of this hap­pen­ing here in the US, although it’s not clear how com­mon it is. Nat­u­ral­ly the main­stream media is too busy enjoy­ing the mass hys­te­ria they’ve cre­at­ed to ask any ques­tions about the practice.

One thing we can be sure of. Once this blows over, and tens of mil­lions of peo­ple are unem­ployed in the midst of a Greater Depres­sion, the gov­ern­ments will insist that their Bear Patrol saved mil­lions of lives. If irrefutable evi­dence comes out (and can’t be sup­pressed by the media) that SARS-CoV­‑2 was nev­er as dan­ger­ous as the hys­ter­i­cal fear-mon­gers want­ed us to believe, they’ll fall back on the Iraqi WMD approach of “every­one was fooled, we could­n’t pos­si­bly have known any different.”

I’ve been play­ing Cities: Sky­lines lately–it’s a city build­ing game along the lines of the old Sim­C­i­ty series. It’s a very com­pli­cat­ed game and does­n’t have any tuto­ri­als, so I spent some time watch­ing YouTube videos to learn how to play it. I noticed that the peo­ple mak­ing the videos always use a mod called Traf­fic Man­ag­er: Pres­i­dent Edi­tion to keep their traf­fic flow­ing smooth­ly. I decid­ed to play with­out mods until I got a city to the final pop­u­la­tion mile­stone, and in doing so learned why that mod is so popular.

Here’s an illus­tra­tion of a busy inter­sec­tion with a vanil­la Cities: Sky­lines traf­fic light. It’s a good thing there are no col­li­sions in this game, or every­body would be dead. The game’s traf­fic lights have no sep­a­rate left turn lights, so cars are try­ing to turn through oppos­ing traf­fic from the oppo­site direc­tion, and pedes­tri­ans pay no atten­tion to the lights and just cross at will, fur­ther block­ing things up. The lights also can’t be syn­chro­nized with each oth­er, so things like the ubiq­ui­tous dia­mond inter­change with two sets of traf­fic lights don’t work correctly.

I found that to com­pen­sate for this in the un-mod­ded game, busy inter­sec­tions need­ed to have only one light and no pedes­tri­ans, or no lights at all. The first thing I tried was the sin­gle-point urban inter­change, shown above. It most­ly works, although the light phas­es are wrong. There’s a pedes­tri­an bridge just out of sight to the right, keep­ing them from clog­ging it up. I found that to get inter­changes to real­ly work well I had to use some­thing which does­n’t actu­al­ly exist in the real world: the dou­ble crossover merg­ing inter­change. Since fan­cy new inter­changes are gen­er­al­ly made by retro­fitting an exist­ing one, it’s not sur­pris­ing none of these have actu­al­ly been built. They work great in vanil­la Cities: Sky­lines, though, where that’s not a con­cern and avoid­ing lights is vital.

A dou­ble crossover merg­ing inter­change in Cities: Skylines.