Yet their voice isn’t being heard.
First, here is a 10′ video by Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, a German epidemologist. Here is the tl,dw from the YT video description.
The corona hype is not based on any extraordinary public health danger. However, it causes considerable damage to our freedom and personal rights through frivolous and unjustified quarantine measures and restrictions. The images in the media are frightening and the traffic in China’s cities seems to be regulated by the clinical thermometer. Evidence-based epidemiological assessment is drowning in the mainstream of fear mongers in labs, media, and ministries.
Dr. Wodarg’s website provides other quotes, from other experts who share his assessment.
Another contrarian take comes from John P.A. Ioannidis. He is professor of medicine, epidemiology and population health, biomedical data science and statistics at Stanford University, and co-director of Stanford’s Meta-Research Innovation Center.
Prof Ioannidis published an opinion piece in STAT on March 17th (archive 1, archive 2). Here are a few excerpts.
The current coronavirus disease, Covid-19, has been called a once-in-a-century pandemic. But it may also be a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco.
[…]
The data collected so far on how many people are infected and how the epidemic is evolving are utterly unreliable. Given the limited testing to date, some deaths and probably the vast majority of infections due to SARS-CoV-2 are being missed. We don’t know if we are failing to capture infections by a factor of three or 300. Three months after the outbreak emerged, most countries, including the U.S., lack the ability to test a large number of people and no countries have reliable data on the prevalence of the virus in a representative random sample of the general population.
[…]
Projecting the Diamond Princess mortality rate onto the age structure of the U.S. population, the death rate among people infected with Covid-19 would be 0.125%. But since this estimate is based on extremely thin data — there were just seven deaths among the 700 infected passengers and crew — the real death rate could stretch from five times lower (0.025%) to five times higher (0.625%)
[…]
A population-wide case fatality rate of 0.05% is lower than seasonal influenza. If that is the true rate, locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies.
Here is now a perspective from the Swiss Propaganda Research organization (archived), and a few excerpts:
According to the latest data of the Italian National Health Institute ISS, the average age of the positively-tested deceased in Italy is currently about 81 years. 10% of the deceased are over 90 years old. 90% of the deceased are over 70 years old.
The Italian Institute of Health moreover distinguishes between those who died from the coronavirus and those who died with the coronavirus. In many cases it is not yet clear whether the persons died from the virus or from their pre-existing chronic diseases or from a combination of both.
The two Italians deceased under 40 years of age (both 39 years old) were a cancer patient and a diabetes patient with additional complications. In these cases, too, the exact cause of death was not yet clear (i.e. if from the virus or from their pre-existing diseases).
Northern Italy has one of the oldest populations and the worst air quality in Europe, which has already led to an increased number of respiratory diseases and deaths in the past and is likely an additional risk factor in the current epidemic.
South Korea, for instance, has experienced a much milder course than Italy and has already passed the peak of the epidemic. In South Korea, only about 70 deaths with a positive test result have been reported so far. As in Italy, those affected were mostly high-risk patients.
According to press reports, some Swiss emergency units are already overloaded simply because of the large number of people who want to be tested. This points to an additional psychological and logistical component of the current situation.
The mortality profile remains puzzling from a virological point of view because, in contrast to influenza viruses, children are spared and men are affected about twice as often as women. On the other hand, this profile corresponds to natural mortality, which is close to zero for children and almost twice as high for 75-year-old men as for women of the same age.
Italian immunology professor Sergio Romagnani from the University of Florence comes to the conclusion in a study on 3000 people that 50 to 75% of the test-positive people of all ages remain completely symptom-free – significantly more than previously assumed.
According to the latest European monitoring report, overall mortality in all countries (including Italy) and in all age groups remains within or even below the normal range so far.
To conclude, here is yet another contrarian take (in Italian), by Dr. Stefano Montanari, scientific director of the Nanodiagnostics laboratory in Modena (a full biography is available on his own website).
This is a small sample of contradictory viewpoints; however, and as always when the legacy media gives the false impression of a scientific consensus, there are many many more.
To further help putting things in perspective, let us conclude by reminding ourselves that medical error, according to a study by researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine, is the 3rd leading cause of death in the USA, where it is responsible for 250’000 deaths every year in that country alone (archived).