Wednesday, 5 May 2021

One year of Covid-19 - Facts and analyses


Manfred Horst, MD, PhD, MBA, has spent most of his career in the pharmaceutical industry, most recently in the research & development department of Merck.


This is is an edition of an article published by The ConservativeWoman on 27 April 2021.
"The majority of people infected with the virus either develop no symptoms at all, or only mild ones from which they fully recover. Severe and potentially fatal forms mainly affect older individuals with pre-existing conditions. According to the World Health Organisation, the most common symptoms of Covid-19 are: fever, dry cough, fatigue.

Other symptoms that are less common and may affect some patients include: loss of taste or smell, nasal congestion, conjunctivitis (red eyes), sore throat, headache, muscle or joint pain, skin rash, nausea or vomiting, diarrhoea, chills or dizziness.

Symptoms of severe Covid‐19 disease include: shortness of breath, loss of appetite, confusion, persistent pain or pressure in the chest, high temperature.

Human beings have had to deal with a large number of continuously mutating respiratory viruses since time immemorial; the best known and most common types include influenza and parainfluenza viruses. As toddlers with permanently runny noses, we develop a basic immunity which is often put to the test in adulthood, especially during the common cold season. It undergoes further ‘training’ when it is exposed to newly mutated forms of these viruses.

Severe disease progressions – generally viral pneumonias – have been described for virtually all known types of viruses; they mainly affect older people who have pre-existing health conditions and a weakened immune system. In such patients – especially when they are bedridden – pneumonia is also very common.

What, then, makes SARS-CoV-2 so peculiar? ... In terms of patient characteristics (especially age and pre-existing conditions), severe Covid-19 is no different from the severe disease progressions caused by other respiratory viruses; this would tend to suggest that it is yet another, unexceptional representative of that same category. For the one type where we do have reasonable numbers, the influenza virus, recent scientific analysis indicates that Covid-19 is certainly not dissimilar... There is as yet no scientifically valid study which would demonstrate any specific long-term consequences of infection with this virus.

It may well be that this virus is particularly ‘contagious’, due to some particular biochemical and/or physiological properties. Here, too, we lack meaningful comparative data... Family members living in close quarters with sick individuals can remain asymptomatic and test-negative, however, and infections in an open-air environment are rare. Thus, we seem rather to be dealing with the typical infection dynamic of a common cold virus, and not with an epidemic which spreads like wildfire...

Many people already have basic immunity (or cross-immunity with other coronaviruses), just as most of us have some basic immunity to most of those constantly mutating respiratory viruses.

It may well be, though, that the only truly distinctive characteristic of this virus is the fact that mankind is chasing it with specific tests, declaring everyone who tests positive as an ‘infected person’ or a ‘case’. It may well be that a number of disturbing images and media reports have sent most of us – including nursing staff, doctors and scientists, politicians and leaders – into an entirely irrational panic and hysteria... We can theoretically repeat the same procedure every year (every winter – we are dealing with common cold viruses, after all), and with almost any freshly mutated rhinovirus, adenovirus, coronavirus, influenza or parainfluenza virus – if we care to trace one of them with specific testing...

The age distribution of ‘corona deaths’ (people who have died ‘of or with Covid-19’) is similar to that of the general population; in all European countries, the average age of death is 80 and over.

In 2020, some countries saw relative undermortality of up to 5 per cent, as compared to the mean of the previous five years, while others experienced a relative excess mortality of between 1 per cent and slightly over 10 per cent. The fact that the age distribution of those who died ‘of and with’ corona closely follows that of all-cause mortality in the general population raises the hypothesis that this particular cohort (group of people) is part of that normal, inevitable population mortality...

Most of us would like to avoid factors which can shorten our lives; we therefore need to try to find out what these factors are. That regular tobacco consumption falls into this category is something which we can now be certain of, for example.

Now, it is of course true that having reached a certain age, one has a remaining life expectancy which is higher than at birth: in Germany, for example, you may expect to live 16 more years at the age of 70, 9 more at 80, 4 more at 90, and 2 more at 100. Life insurance companies base their premiums on this kind of calculation. In a number of recently published academic articles, this remaining life expectancy of the living has simply been transferred to those who had died ‘of and with corona’, the resulting claim being that these people had lost around 12 years of their lives. In other words, they would have lived, on average, to well over 90 years if they had not been struck down by the virus. This claim is not really plausible in itself...

On the basis of their age distribution and their multimorbidity (the virtually universal presence of other serious diseases), we can assume that the cohort of people who died with a positive test for SARS-CoV-2 is part of the normal and inevitable mortality of the general population and cannot significantly alter the total amount of that mortality...

For most countries, serious statistical analyses do not demonstrate a significant increase in the number of deaths for the year 2020. In any case, any factually demonstrated local excess mortality might just as well have been the result of general fear and panic among the population (for example by discouraging those with serious conditions from seeking timely medical advice) as well as of failures and disorganisation in the healthcare system and in the treatment of other diseases – at the very least, this hypothesis would have to be examined...

The available PCR and antigen tests follow different and variable laboratory protocols. National or international standards do not exist. The tests detect the presence of virus fragments. A positive test does not prove infection with reproducing viruses. All laboratory tests have certain inherent error rates (sensitivity, specificity). These error rates, defined under ideal conditions, necessarily increase with improper and/or mass application. For the first time in medical history, we are tracking a specific respiratory infection pathogen with mass testing in the general population.

Everything hinges on the tests. Given the non-specific clinical and epidemiological characteristics of the SARS-CoV-2 infection, we might not have noticed much of a ‘pandemic’ without these laboratory diagnostics, even if we had continued to live our lives normally. A multitude of viruses constantly scurry across the mucous membranes of our respiratory tract; most of the time our immune system deals with them invisibly, not allowing them to multiply any further. A temporary weakening of our immune defences (e.g. when we catch a ‘cold’) or a particularly high exposure (intake of a high viral load) may lead to an inflammatory body reaction which translates into a running nose, a cough, hoarseness, fever and/or a general feeling of being unwell. Which specific virus (or viruses – so-called co-infections, e.g. with SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses at the same time, are not uncommon) is responsible for these symptoms had so far never been investigated in clinical practice, as any such knowledge would not have had any practical therapeutic consequences.

For more than a year now, we have been tracking the presence of fragments of one specific respiratory virus with mass laboratory testing, not only in sick people but also (and now primarily) in healthy individuals, declaring them to be ‘infected’ as soon as any one of these tests, following any one of many different lab protocols, detects or purports to detect any viral debris on their mucous membranes. Given the known seasonality of respiratory viruses, it is not surprising that we are seeing more ‘infected’ cases, hospitalisations and deaths in the cold season than in the summer; this would be no different for any other representative of these pathogens if we cared to test for them.

Perfectly healthy people are being quarantined because of their test results, under the assumption that they could infect and endanger others. Leaving aside the question of whether such an ‘asymptomatic infection’ with the virus really exists at all (though it should be noted here that all coercive government measures are based on this unproven assumption) the virus is now endemic anyway, that is to say it is constantly circulating – and mutating – in the population. This at least the mass testing has demonstrated for certain. Neither the isolation of clinically healthy people, nor any other government orders, can alter this fact.

Every hospitalisation, for whatever reason, is accompanied by one or (usually) several SARS-CoV-2 tests, and the patient is declared a ‘corona case’ as soon as the result is positive – sometimes even without such a positive test. After all, there are, in many countries, financial and other incentives for the admission and treatment of ‘corona patients’. Ultimately, all this quite naturally leads to a considerable number of ‘corona’ death certificates...

The mass testing as it is currently being practised is medically pointless. It only creates fear and anxiety in the population, while necessarily leading to the neglect of other, more important concerns in the healthcare system...

The medical therapy of a symptomatic Covid-19 infection is in principle identical to that of any other viral respiratory disease; the specific efficacy of pharmaceuticals recommended by some experts (hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, immunoglobulins) is controversial. Severe forms of infection leading to respiratory failure may necessitate oxygen therapy, as with all pneumonias.

The decision of governments to counter this newly mutated coronavirus not only medically, but socially and politically, was originally based on the desire to grant hospitals and intensive care units a few weeks to prepare for the expected epidemic rush of patients – to ‘flatten the curve’... Policy-makers and their scientific advisers have over the past year used various and shifting parameters (R-number, positivity rate, mortality, hospital and intensive care bed occupancy, case incidence, etc.) as well as various and shifting levels of these parameters.

Medical therapy of a symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection is precisely that – symptomatic. The pathogen cannot be eliminated pharmaceutically; antiviral therapies have – at least as yet – not been able to clearly prove efficacy. Ultimately, the human body has to come to grips with the virus by itself, and in the vast majority of cases it does. All we can do is to alleviate the signs of inflammation caused by this fight; this is as true of SARS-CoV-2 as it is of any other respiratory virus.

In the panic caused by the images and reports from Wuhan, we probably overshot the mark in treating severely ill and fragile people with intensive medical interventions such as artificial ventilation – regrettably violating one of the fundamental precepts of medicine, namely primum non nocere (first, do no harm).

Under the impact of the images and news from Wuhan (and subsequently from Bergamo), fuelled by a number of frightening epidemiological models, the political leaders of our societies opted for preventive measures to contain the spread of this particular respiratory virus to mitigate an expected onslaught on our hospitals. For a whole year, our healthcare systems have largely been switched into transmission prevention mode. Everywhere, one encounters protective suits, Covid corridors, disinfectants, testing stations, quarantine rooms, etc. Yet in spite of the substantial additional administrative and organisational burden caused by all this, the overall charge on doctors, emergency rooms, hospitals and intensive care units has not significantly increased – in fact, the very opposite has been shown to be the case in a number of countries and regions...

One should ask which parameters – and under what circumstances – are to be used to decide on the unconditional withdrawal of all these preventive, temporary emergency measures? The SARS CoV-2 virus and its mutated and constantly mutating descendants have been endemic for a while now. There will always be mutated respiratory viruses, new ones every year, posing variable levels of risks – risks however which in all likelihood will fundamentally remain controllable by medical means alone. Shall we accept this as a sufficient reason to declare a permanent state of societal emergency?...

The measures adopted by Western democracies to combat SARS-CoV-2 follow the initial example of the Chinese dictatorship – not their own pandemic plans or the original recommendations of the World Health Organisation. To date, no government has presented a documented cost/benefit analysis of its measures, let alone been guided by such an analysis in its decision-making. A clear, scientifically accepted proof of the effectiveness of any of the governmental measures does not exist. It is indisputable that these measures cause human and economic harm.

Let us consider the panoply of coercive measures imposed on the population in the course of last year’s pandemic, such as house arrests, bans on work, contact, sports and movement, masking requirements, etc. If these were medicines that required marketing authorisation, they would have to prove therapeutic efficacy and safety, or at least acceptable side-effect profiles, in relation to proven benefits.

Since practically all these measures were applied, for the first time in world history, to the healthy general population, they have been and continue to be enforced politically, without prior proof of efficacy, based on the dogma that interpersonal contact and therefore the potential exchange of viruses should be avoided or reduced to a minimum.

It should by now be obvious to everybody that neither the evolution over time in individual countries, nor any comparison between countries where different measures had been applied, show any effect whatsoever of government intervention on the course of the epidemic, especially on the most important parameter, mortality. If, as claimed, hundreds of thousands more people were to fall victim to the virus in the absence of tough restrictions, we would have had to see this happen in Europe last summer, and we would have had to see this happen over the course of the whole year in Sweden, in Belarus, in South Korea, in Japan and in Florida, as well as in a number of other US states.

In fact, the very opposite seems to be true: Countries (and periods) with hard lockdowns have shown and continue to show the highest mortality rates. The virus spreads according to its own laws, according to a clear seasonal rhythm in the temperate European climate zones – it is a common cold virus which doesn’t care about government guidelines... On the other hand, the enormous damage caused by the governments’ coercive measures is becoming increasingly clear, even if the majority of the Western population has yet to start feeling it personally...

Slowly but surely, investigations are getting under way to examine the direct and indirect consequences of government fear propaganda and media scaremongering, of forced house arrests, of social isolation and bans on work and sports, of curfews, school absences, anxiety-driven education, compulsory face coverings and other hygiene constraints. It seems highly unlikely that the side-effect profile of all these coercive measures will historically be deemed acceptable...

The SARS-CoV-2 vaccines were developed in record time, with many of the steps normally required by the regulatory authorities being omitted. The pivotal clinical trials demonstrate a preventive efficacy against common cold symptoms with a positive SARS CoV-2 test and show a trend – albeit not a statistically significant one – towards a reduction in severe cases with a positive test for SARS CoV-2. No preventive effect against mortality (death) has been demonstrated, nor are there apparently any plans to do so.

Vaccination of the whole of humanity is being described by many of our experts and politicians as the only possible way for a return to normal life. The (conditional) approval of vaccines developed in less than a year was carried out under high political pressure. Given the lack of the normally required safety studies (for example, animal toxicology) and given the extremely brief period of clinical observation, we can only hope that these products will not cause too many serious side-effects. Even though it is never possible to rule those out entirely for any new drug, the development steps normally required by regulatory authorities are based on medico-historical experience and have a well-reasoned purpose.

The ‘emergency approval’ of a new medical intervention may perhaps sometimes be justified by its clearly proven efficacy and the severity of the disease to be treated. Neither one of these factors applies to the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, however. The highly publicised efficacy of the products approved to date is a statistically significant reduction in common cold symptoms with a positive test compared with placebo (or, in the case of the AstraZeneca vaccine, oddly enough, also compared with a meningitis vaccination).

The fact that these vaccines succeed in clearly reducing the detectability of SARS-CoV-2 in individuals suffering from fever, cough or hoarseness is certainly an interesting biological result. From the patient’s point of view, this is irrelevant: he or she simply wants to have less fever, cough and hoarseness, no matter what is causing them. That is precisely what has not been shown in the clinical trials. The articles published in the world’s leading and, under normal circumstances, best medical journals (New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet) do not specify the absolute numbers of symptoms that occurred in the comparative groups. However, since most of these common cold symptoms are also listed as side-effects after vaccination, and occurred much more frequently in the respective vaccination groups than under placebo, as well as occurring much more frequently than the symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections chosen as the clinical endpoint, the conclusion surely has to be that PEOPLE IN THE VACCINATION GROUP BECAME ILL SIGNIFICANTLY MORE FREQUENTLY THAN THOSE I THE PLACEBO GROUP.

None of the clinical trials was able to demonstrate a statistically significant effect on the occurrence of severe forms of respiratory disease, as they happened too rarely... In fact, a truly relevant proof of efficacy of all these vaccines could be provided only through rigorously conducted mortality studies (i.e. the comparison of the absolute death rate between the vaccination and the placebo groups), or, at the very least, through a so-called combined endpoint trial (for example, hospitalisation and/or death). If this is a deadly virus, if the situation is truly urgent, this is what we would have (had) to ask the pharmaceutical companies to carry out, and this is what we would have (had) to ask the regulatory authorities to demand from them.

This is not even planned, however – in all likelihood for very good reasons. In the clinical vaccine studies published to date, a total of well over 100,000 subjects were included, but to date not a single Covid-19 death has apparently been recorded; in the not yet published trial of the J&J vaccine, a few ‘Covid-related’ deaths (single digit number) seem to have occurred. The disease is quite clearly not serious enough for well-designed clinical trials conclusively to demonstrate any effect on severe forms or death.

The vaccines have now largely been rolled out, and claims of efficacy abound, based on observational data. They seem in fact to be doing what they demonstrated in the randomised clinical trials – reducing the number of positively tested individuals (corona ‘cases’). Their side-effect profiles are being established as we go along. Whether these vaccines will have any significant positive effect on population morbidity and above all mortality remains to be seen...

As of now (April 2021), elementary freedoms and human rights are restricted or suspended for an unlimited period in almost all countries of the world. Elected and non-elected representatives of the people are currently conducting a – in some cases openly declared – ‘war’ against a common cold virus, forcing their infantilised populations into a permanent state of emergency. How and with what kind of outcome this war is to be won remains fundamentally open, even if some protagonists are planning and propagating a new, totalitarian normality after a ‘great reset’.

The measures taken by governments to protect a certain ‘at-risk group’ (ostensibly, at least) are impacting enormously on other groups, indeed on the entire population. The modern constitutional state is, in principle, barred from taking such action; it must not actively harm innocent people in an attempt to protect others. Even if we were dealing with a truly severe epidemic, with the plague itself: fundamental human rights are not to be bent, even if democratic majorities were to agree to their suspension or abolition."
If Doctor Horst is correct in his various analyses then the animals at the top of the the tree, and their captains in politics and the media, have been lying to us all along.

I suppose it's just possible that the Donald Trumps and the Boris Johnsons, either through laziness, genuine ignorance or extraordinary gullibility, trusted the draconian advice of their scientific and medical advisors way beyond the point where it was sensible to do so, but that's a big 'suppose.'

I'm of a mind to see them all in the same dock, charged with the same crimes. If some are found not guilty at trial's end, so be it. Just so long as the worst, those who determind that our world must be 'reset' to their own psychopathic prefences, and were prepared to go to genocidal lengths to achieve them, are found very guilty indeed.

THEY are at war with us.

A routine influenza virus was their WMD.

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