Covid-19

The World Economic Forum (WEF) and the “measures” (NPIs) During the Pandemic

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Our new study is published

For some time now, I have been conducting expert interviews documenting how various experts from science, the media, politics and civil society assess the pandemic, what factors they see at work, what their views are. Every now and then the idea comes up, that the World Economic Forum (WEF), which Prof. Klaus Schwab set up many years ago, could play a role.

I thought for a while about whether and how this theory could be tested. In the end, I came up with the idea that one could use the number of Young Global Leaders (YGL) that the WEF has trained over the years as a parameter and relate it to the intensity of “non-pharmaceutical interventions” (NPI), popularly and hereafter referred to as “measures”. This is what we, my colleague Johannes Klement and I, then did, at two points in time: at the beginning of the corona crisis, i.e. in March 2020, and at the second peak in the winter of 2020/2021. The study is now published in the peer-reviewed online journal “Cureus” and can be freely downloaded [1]. (Cureus is an interesting journal, by the way; our immunology survey was already published there [2]. It is a journal based in California and started by physicians who proceed without “conflict of interest” and very openly. It is peer-reviewed, usually with 3, at least 2 reviews.)

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Covid-19 Vaccinations Do More Harm Than Good

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Now We Have It in Black And White

In July, Mörl, Günther and Rockenfeller published a high-profile paper in the peer-reviewed online journal Frontiers in Medicine [1]. They compared the number of adverse events in the five pivotal trials of the Covid-19 vaccine with the number of adverse events in the control groups, as well as the number of severe Covid-19 cases in both groups, and calculated a harm-benefit ratio. If this is less than 1, then the vaccines do more good than harm. If it is greater than 1, they do more harm than good. Only two studies had a harm-benefit ratio smaller than 1, but very close to 1 (0.9 and 0.6). The authors point out that it would probably be reasonable to expect a harm-benefit ratio much smaller than 0.1, that is, ten more severe courses among control cases than among vaccinated people.

Clearly, this is not the case. In the BioNTech study, the ratio is actually very large at 25. This means that 25 times more serious side effects are registered in the vaccination group than in the control group. In the Moderna study, the ratio of 1.1 is about the same, but also far from favourable. They do not interpret the Sputnik pivotal study because the ratio there is negative, which is hardly credible.

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Modelling and Model Building

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…using the example of our study: “Identification of different factors associated with Covid-19 deaths in Europe during the first pandemic wave”

A large group of statistical techniques designed to explain past data and also to predict future data is statistical modelling. This means that for a given data set with very different variables, one finds a mathematical structure that represents this data set as well as possible, firstly in a purely formal way. This procedure can be used to examine the influence of different variables on an outcome variable. In the language of modelling, the variable that one wants to explain is the dependent variable or criterion or outcome variable, and the different variables that are supposed to contribute to the clarification of this one variable are several independent variables resp. predictors.

I use our recently published modelling study [1] as a concrete example. It was conceived by me, I calculated the first analyses, then my colleague Rainer J. Klement got involved, who as a physicist is much more nimble in dealing with such models than I am.

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Risk-Benefit Ratio of Covid-19 Vaccination

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Thoughts on Easter, the risk-benefit ratio of Covid-19 vaccination and key sources of information

No matter how you feel about Easter, whether you actively celebrate it as a Christian, with nostalgic memories of hunting for Easter eggs as a child, or whether you are a modern, science-oriented person who thinks Easter beliefs are superstitions: It is a holiday and should be celebrated. The arrival of spring was already celebrated in pre-Christian times. Christianity has given these ancient feasts a new face with the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. What was ever truly alive – that is, standing in the fullness of God – does not die. At best, it is transformed. Or rather, it is resurrected into new life. That is Easter, and that is what is to be celebrated.

We have received a small Easter present, I think, in that the German Bundestag has rejected compulsory vaccination by a large majority. You can find out here how the parliamentary groups voted: the majority of SPD and Greens voted in favour of compulsory vaccination, most representatives of CDU, AfD, FDP and Die Linke voted against it. I suggest you write to your MPs, either thanking them, or admonishing and reminding them again. You can filter the results to see the MPs who represent your constituency and how they voted, and then write an email. Maybe our MWGFD action helped; because we sent our exit strategy to all MPs. You can download it there and send it again to the MPs who voted for compulsory vaccination, perhaps with a few more personal words.

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Intensive Care Units, Compulsory Vaccination And More

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Let us begin with a little quiz. I recently found the following text on disastrous conditions in German intensive care units in a scientific journal. A survey among nurses is reported there, and the authors write:

Intensive care – care of the population in jeopardy

“When asked about a general dissatisfaction in the profession, 68 percent [of the intensive care nurses surveyed]responded with a “yes”. A worsening of working conditions in recent years was felt by 97 percent of the respondents.” 97% say that the workload has increased significantly, and working conditions have worsened considerably. 37% want to leave the profession, 34% want to reduce working hours. “The reasons for the poor working conditions mentioned by intensive care nurses are clear. They include the high workload, low esteem especially by hospital owners, poor care and staffing ratios, and mediocre pay.”

Prize question: what year is this text from?

It is from 2019 and refers to a survey from before [1]. Even then, on March 8, 2019, intensive care physician Karagianidis sounded the alarm and wrote that the care of the population was in jeopardy. And this is not because we have too little capacity, but because we treat our medical staff too poorly. In the same paper, Karagianidis and colleagues note: Germany has by far the highest intensive care bed capacity in Europe. The problems are structural, nurses are paid too little. The hospitals, especially the private ones, want (and need) to make profits and do so by cutting personnel costs. Employers give nurses too little appreciation in the form of adequate pay, flexible services, sufficient time, etc. It is worth looking at the graphs of the statistics in the original paper. They tell you everything you need to know.

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