Check-mating the 'Fact-Checkers', Wolfgang Wodarg Edition

Written by an engineer, today's read offers a critique of legacy media gaslighting of one of the world's most insightful public health warriors--which is to say: the fourth estate is a gov't branch

Back to Germany, sort of. While the end-of-year always brings a slow-down in activity on my part (due to the end-of-term coinciding with it), here’s something I found quite interesting as of late: a summary cross-reading of renowned expert (apparently the real thing) Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, former MEP, whose courage in 2009-10 helped to defuse the ‘Swine Flu Pandemic’. The below piece was written by Karsten Montag, went live on 9 Dec. 2022, and I thought you’d find it interesting. As always, translation and emphases are mine, followed by a few bottom lines.

Fact-Checkers vs. Wodarg: Who was right in the end?

In March 2020, more than ten fact-checks by major media appeared within a week, trying to prove that Wolfgang Wodarg was spreading dangerous misinformation about the Corona crisis. The leader of the pack at the time was Karl Lauterbach. Wodarg’s reputation was destroyed by the unanimous fact-checks, and since then he has been regarded as an unserious outsider by mainstream society. Multipolar has now, more than two years later, subjected Wodarg's statements and those of the fact-checkers to a review.

The physician and long-time SPD health politician Wolfgang Wodarg had already warned in a newspaper article at the end of February 2020 against ‘scaremongering’ around Sars-Cov-2. On Multipolar, his critical text found more than 100,000 readers in the first week of March. On 10 March, [state broadcaster] ZDF broadcasted a video with a similar tone, in which Wodarg spoke at length. But one day later, the WHO declared the event a ‘pandemic’—and the mood turned. When Wodarg finally reached an audience of millions through various interviews on Youtube in the second week of March and massively questioned government policy shortly before the first lockdown was announced, the fact-checkers became active.

Karl Lauterbach kicked things off with a tweet on 16 March 2020, a Monday:

I hate to say this, but it has to be: the former SPD colleague Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, whom I actually esteem, is talking sheer nonsense about Covid-19. All over Europe, doctors are fighting for the lives of the sick. Wodarg’s position is irresponsible FakeNews.

Immediately afterwards, the fact checks appeared in rapid succession from Tuesday to Saturday:

• RBB, 17 March: ‘Geldgier und Panikmache?’ (Tamy Daum)

• Correctiv, 18 March: ‘Coronavirus: Warum die Aussagen von Wolfgang Wodarg wenig mit Wissenschaft zu tun haben’ (Frederik Richter, Bianca Hoffmann)

• WELT, 19 March: ‘Warum dieser Mann die Epidemie kleinredet’ (Nike Heinen)

• MDR, 19 March: „Sind die Maßnahmen gegen Corona übertrieben?“

• BR, 19 March: ‘Corona-Virus: Arzt setzt viele falsche Behauptungen in die Welt’ (Jan Kerckhoff, Susanne Delonge)

• SWR, 19 March: ‘Wird Corona überschätzt?’ (Veronika Simon)

• Stern, 19 March: ‘Wolfgang Wodargs steile Thesen im Faktencheck’ (Rachel Boßmeyer, Jan Ludwig)

• Spiegel, 20 March: ‘Die gefährlichen Falschinformationen des Wolfgang Wodarg’ (Julia Merlot)

• Tagesspiegel, 20 March: ‘Wolfgang Wodarg verbreitet Thesen, die wichtige Tatsachen ignorieren’ (Nina Breher, Sascha Karberg, Selina Bettendorf, Richard Friebe)

• NZZ, 21 March: ‘Welche Fakten der Corona-Verharmloser Wolfgang Wodarg verkennt’ (Stephanie Lahrtz)

What all these fact checks have in common is that they neither refute nor even mention the core point of Wodarg’s criticism, that is, the lack of evidence from monitoring instruments for the spread of a threatening epidemic. Instead, they pick up on less important points and try, partly with questionable arguments, to paint a dramatic picture of the danger, which later did not prove to be true. In this way, numerous major media have not only dangerously narrowed the public debate space, but also spread misinformation that has massively promoted a disproportionate panic among the population and a division of society.

Wodarg’s Position in March 2020

Wodarg’s main criticism, which the fact-checkers concealed, was that there was no evidence of a critical situation in the established monitoring apparatus used to monitor the spread of acute respiratory illness in Germany in March 2020. The surveillance data are summarised in the weekly reports of the Influenza Working Group [Arbeitsgemeinschaft Influenza]. In fact, the rates of acute respiratory illnesses and the number of doctor visits due to such illnesses were mostly below the values of previous years at that time (and also in total in 2020 and 2021).

Also, the Euromomo tool he cited, which monitors (excess) mortality in Europe, did not show any strikingly high mortality rates in mid-March 2020. Therefore, he accused those responsible of not justifying the extreme restrictions on fundamental rights.

Furthermore, he criticised how PCR tests were used to determine mortality rates. He doubted the very high mortality rates mentioned at the time, as the test was mainly used on seriously ill people and thus the actual danger of the disease was overestimated. In addition, it was unclear whether the test—which had not been validated—only identified SARS-CoV-2 or also other SARS viruses. Above all, however, without the mass use of the test, nothing in particular would have been noticed. Wodarg then:

We are not currently measuring the incidence of coronavirus disease, but the activity of specialists looking for it.

He assumed that SARS-CoV-2 was no more dangerous than flu viruses, since coronaviruses were nothing new and even a novel virus, SARS-CoV-1 [of 2003 infamy], had a predecessor that had previously spread worldwide. He accused the political leaders of relying too much on the assessment of virologists in their decision-making. He said that only by comparing epidemiological data—for example, hospital cases and deaths—from previous years could they determine whether one virus was more dangerous than others.

Based on his experience as a health politician and his involvement with the swine flu in 2009, Wodarg criticised the change in the definition of a pandemic by the WHO and noted that many experts with conflicts of interest were sitting on the responsible committee. The competent institutions in Germany were not critical, but delivered what the politicians wanted to hear. They wanted to acquire funds for their institutes and play an important role. In this context, Wodarg also used the pejorative term ‘Hofschranzen’ [which was used since the 16th century to denote particularly despicable sycophantic behaviour at court; in the pop-cultural terms of my teenage years, think Tim Roth’s performance as Archibald Cunningham in the 1995 motion picture ‘Rob Roy’, for which Mr. Roth received an Academy Award]

Lauterbach Counters: ‘Sheer Nonsense’

The then-MP Lauterbach [now Minister of Health] countered Wodarg’s statements in the aforementioned tweet, followed-up a little later in a short video message. In it, he said that Wodarg’s assessment that COVID-19 could possibly be comparable to a somewhat stronger flu was a ‘devious, completely wrong view of things’ [abwegige, vollkommen falsche Sicht der Dinge] and ‘sheer nonsense’. Lauterbach explained that the new virus functions and is structured differently than previous coronaviruses, is transmitted more easily, and claimed a fatality rate between .5-2% in Europe, i.e., at the very high end. In Italy, Lauterbach alleged, the mortality rate was as high as seven per cent. Lauterbach also did not address Wodarg’s central criticism that the proven monitoring instruments did not provide any indications for the spread of a dangerous respiratory disease.

It is thus a central question how high the mortality rate of COVID-19 actually was compared to influenza. It is clear from the context of Lauterbach’s remarks in his video message that he is referring to the infectious mortality rate. With an optimistic rate of .5%, he suspected that with eight million people infected by autumn 2020, there would be tens of thousands of victims—or 40,000 to be precise.

Problems in Determining Mortality Rates

In contrast to the determination of past mortality rates for influenza, government orders to categorise COVID-19 victims, mass diagnosis using PCR testing, and measures to control the spread of the disease have significantly affected the outcome of the COVID-19 death survey. Furthermore, the measures have distorted and affected the basis for estimating the number of infected persons. The resulting problem in comparing the case and infectious mortality rates of COVID-19 with the corresponding ratios of influenza is explained in detail in the appendix of this paper.

As shown there, the number of people who have died from COVID-19, various studies, and the evaluation of those who have died in hospital from acute respiratory illnesses indicate that the infection mortality rate of COVID-19 is about twice as high as that of seasonal influenza, possibly three times as high. This finding contradicts Wolfgang Wodarg’s view that COVID-19 disease would not have been detected in Germany without the PCR test. However, it also contradicts the statements of Karl Lauterbach, who had announced an infection mortality rate in Europe of up to 2%. Such a figure would have meant that COVID-19 would have been more than ten times deadlier than seasonal flu.

Apparently, the use of the PCR test mainly on seriously ill people at the beginning of the corona crisis led to the mortality rate being initially estimated much too high, something that renowned epidemiologist John Ioannidis already explained in detail in a warning commentary on 17 March 2020, i.e., even before the flood of fact-checks against Wodarg.

Legacy Media Sabotage a Debate

It is obvious that in mid-March 2020 a dispute was brewing between Wolfgang Wodarg and Karl Lauterbach on how to proceed in the Corona crisis with two proven experts on either side of the matter. A critical media would have been expected to present the arguments of the two opponents sufficiently and in due form, to refrain from a hasty assessment, thereby providing a public space for the debate. This would have enabled the population to form a picture of the pros and cons of the necessity and effectiveness of the measures discussed and ordered at the time. But this is exactly what did not happen. Instead, many influential media immediately and uncritically endorsed Lauterbac’s position.

[Here follows a detailed take-down of the ‘fact-checks’ listed and linked above, which I’ll spare you here for reasons of time and space.]

Adequacy and Effectiveness of the Measures

In his statements at the beginning of March 2020, Wolfgang Wodarg had warned against panicking and imposing measures that might have no or hardly any effect and cause more damage than the virus itself, solely on the basis of the test figures, which were available through the PCR test, in contrast to previous influenza waves, and the alleged novelty of SARS-CoV-2. Meanwhile, even Karl Lauterbach admitted that at least the closure of day-care centres in the first waves of Corona was not necessary from a medical point of view. As a result of the closure at that time, day-care centres with many children from socially disadvantaged families now have almost twice as much need for support, for example in language or motor skills, as before the pandemic, according to Federal Family Minister Lisa Paus.

On 22 November 2022, the Federal Administrative Court confirmed the ruling of the Bavarian Administrative Court that the lockdown measures in Bavaria during the first wave of the Corona pandemic had been disproportionate. Now Bavaria’s Health Minister Holetschek and Justice Minister Eisenreich told the press that rules for the repayment of fines would be worked out. [I don’t know why new rules would be needed for that, though, an angle left unexplored here.]

The question to what extent the restrictive measures to contain the disease in Germany have reduced or possibly even increased excess mortality will probably never be definitively clarified. The lack of scientific monitoring of the measures, as explicitly reproached by the expert commission convened by the Bundestag and Bundesrat [the upper house] in its report on the effectiveness of the corona policy on pages 8 and 27, has also contributed to this situation.

An indication that the restrictive measures had no or even negative effect on the course of COVID-19 is shown by the comparison of excess mortality in Germany and Sweden. In the Scandinavian country, as is well known, a large part of the restrictions imposed in Germany had been dispensed with. An evaluation of worldwide excess mortality in 2020 and 2021 published by the WHO comes to the conclusion that 73 more people per 100,000 inhabitants died in Germany in this period than would have been expected without COVID-19. In Sweden, on the other hand, only 66 more people died per 100,000 inhabitants.

Novel Coronavirus = Lack of Immunity?

Peter Doshi, co-editor of the renowned British Medical Journal, had already challenged the thesis in an article in September 2020 that there was no basic immunity against the pathogen in the population before the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2. In several antibody studies conducted worldwide with people who had no previous contact with the novel coronavirus, T-cell reactions could be detected in 25-50% of the test persons upon contact with the pathogen. This would at least explain why even the initial spread of COVID-19 was not exponential but wavelike. Yet, the ‘fact checkers’ who had evaluated Wolfgang Wodarg’s statements, the lack of basic immunity was presented as a fact in March 2020. [I find this a very weak ‘argument, but I’d concede that the point stands.]

More Deadly Virus Coming from the Lab?

Why COVID-19 was nevertheless more deadly than the seasonal flu could be explained the possible laboratory origin of the virus. As early as February 2021, the University of Hamburg published a study summarising the many indications of a laboratory accident in Wuhan.

A US Senate report published in October 2022, based on documents and emails from the Wuhan laboratory, concludes that SARS-CoV-2 was ‘most likely’ the result of a laboratory accident. The equipment and qualifications of the facility’s staff are said to have been inadequate to ensure safety standards for research on dangerous viruses.

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, chairman of the Lancet COVID-19 Commission for two years, had previously stated in June 2022:

I’m pretty convinced it came out of US lab biotechnology—not out of nature—just to mention after two years of intensive work on this (…) There’s enough evidence that it should be looked into and it’s not being investigated—not in the US, not anywhere. I think for real reasons, they [US officials] don’t want to look under the rug too much.

Since both the Chinese government and the US government, which both helped fund the so-called gain-of-function research in China on coronaviruses, deny the laboratory origin, it is questionable whether the actual origin of the pathogen can ever be definitively clarified.

Conclusion: Unsubstantiated Speculations, a Suppressed Debate, and Momentous Misjudgements in March 2020

For the first time in medical history, the mass application of the PCR test has made it possible to observe the course of a pandemic respiratory disease in near real time. Information that was previously only available months after a wave of influenza had subsided could be viewed after just a few days. Since there were no possibilities for comparison, no one was able to assess exactly how the new information, such as the mortality rate, which could be determined from the test results, was to be classified at all.

At the beginning of the Corona crisis, Wolfgang Wodarg wanted to prevent the responsible politicians from panicking and making hasty decisions that might later turn out to be medically unnecessary, ineffective, or even harmful. He pointed out that there were proven early warning tools that had previously been used for decades to assess the need for health policy measures in respiratory disease management. These instruments had not registered any particular signs of danger at the beginning of the spread of the coronavirus in Germany.

Doctors’ surgeries did not show an unusual rush of patients with acute respiratory symptoms for an influenza season and hospitals in Germany were not overloaded. In some cases, these data did not even note anything like this during subsequent peaks of the COVID-19 waves. Nevertheless, there was an increased death rate, especially among the elderly, compared to seasonal flu, as the coronavirus settled in the lower respiratory tract and caused increased pneumonia.

Unlike Wolfgang Wodarg, Karl Lauterbach did not question the initial mortality rates, which later turned out to be far too high. Many media outlets have failed to reflect the conflicting views in a factual and fair manner. Instead, the editors of the media houses have discredited Wodarg’s expertise and destroyed his reputation in the public eye with hastily cobbled together ‘fact checks’ that are technically inadequate and sometimes peppered with false arguments and personal attacks on the person.

It would be time for the responsible journalists to correct their contributions at the time on the basis of the information that is now available and to apologise for their improper defamation of Wodarg’s position.

About the Author

Karsten Montag is an engineer by training and published extensively on these matters in German media; he’s also the co-author, with physician Günther Kampf, of the paper ‘Acute lower respiratory tract infections accounted for 56.2% of hospitalized COVID-19 cases in Germany during the first three waves’, which appeared in the International Journal of Epidemiology, 51, no. 3 (June 2022), 1032-3, https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyac059.

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Bottom Lines

When was the last time legacy media apologised for this kind of misinformation and character assassination? It’s probably a better idea to wait for Godot, rather than for an apology by those pencil-pushers…

What’s even more telling, I think, is the fact that these legacy media outlets are seemingly uniform in their ‘assessment’ of Dr. Wodarg and his claims; much like in US or in the UK, there’s a plurality of media whose statements are virtually identical.

We note, further, the excessive double standards involved: Dr. Wodarg’s character is assassinated while the chief instigator of this kind of online-and-offline mobbing, Karl Lauterbach, is rewarded for his service.

Finally, let’s not forget that the currently ongoing negotiations of the WHO’s pandemic treaty and the international health regulations propose to crack down even harder on the kind of ‘misinformation’ spread, allegedly, by the likes of Dr. Wodarg. This should not happen, but I deem it likely to happen, as the powers that be want that to happen—and the fourth estate is no longer.