First session of German Coronavirus Inquiry

[Below is my translation of a report by RT Deutsch of the first session of an inquiry currently underway in Germany investigating the justifications and impacts of Germany’s corona-crisis measures. The first hearing was an interview of Dr Wolfgang Wodarg, who played an instrumental role in exposing the fraudulent nature of the swine-flu pandemic declared by the WHO in 2009. While RT’s report is fairly thorough and true to the hearing, being in a very neutral style it fails to convey the passion Wodarg brings to the table.]

Wolfgang Wodarg – Hearing

Swine flu and the role of the WHO

Wolfgang Wodarg introduced himself as a lung specialist and epidemiologist who was responsible for preventing and handling epidemics as head of a health department for several years.

Wodarg said it was the 2005 bird flu that initially made him aware of irregularities in connection with seasonal respiratory diseases. At that time, he continued, the media disseminated images of dead birds alongside the WHO prediction of 30 million human deaths. In response to his inquiries, the WHO failed to provide him with the actual data supporting this estimate, instead giving him advertising material [on Tamiflu] from a vaccine manufacturer, and this from a WHO employee who shortly thereafter moved to the vaccine department of the pharmaceutical company Novartis.

According to Wodarg, institutions and individuals played a role in creating and assessing situations “based on a handful of cases”. They are still active in the current “pandemic”. Back then, cases were gathered through “searching” and disseminated through the media, and then used to set the agenda.

“Thanks to this drama that they created in Mexico, the CDC got involved, and then the first cases were diagnosed in the USA. And that’s how it got on the radar.”

It was a modus operandi he observed during the bird-flu event and even before, during SARS 2002/2003, which, he said, led to the “Pandemic Preparedness” process established by the WHO; after all, a dangerous pathogen could emerge at any moment. Plans were drawn up on this basis and partly secret contracts were concluded between states and the vaccination industry, even though this involved public money, reported Wodarg. The contracts are triggered when the WHO declares the highest pandemic level. Wodarg pointed out that the definition of a pandemic was changed without explanation.* Up until 2009, not one of the influenza outbreaks recorded since the 1930s met the pandemic criteria. Since then, every influenza outbreak fulfils the WHO definition of a pandemic.

Wodarg argued that these contracts have effectively created a market for the vaccine industry, which uses different strategies employing new technologies such as bioreactors and adjuvants. It is fundamentally problematic to use vaccines on healthy individuals, and for this reason vaccination should be a personal choice. In the past, vaccines were manufactured or controlled by the state, whereas today they have been privatised by the vaccine industry and possible harms socialised, in that the state is held liable: in Germany’s case, through its healthcare offices.

The growing fusion between economics and politics, for example Donald Rumsfeld acting as CEO of a vaccine manufacturer and later as a minister in the George W. Bush government, plays an important role, continued Wodarg. The scientific basis for proofs of effectiveness and approvals in the case of vaccines against the swine flu has thus become opaque. On balance, Wodarg stated, the development has caused more harm than good.

In contrast to national parliaments, the Council of Europe had a decisive impact on explaining developments concerning the swine flu, in particular due to its composition of government and opposition parties from its 47 member states. The finding determined that it had been a fake pandemic made possible by the WHO’s redefinition of “pandemic”. The WHO itself, continued Wodarg, is bound by various conditionalities and acts non-transparently. This information went around the globe and was the cause of scandal in many countries.

Since the end of the 1990s, the WHO has become increasingly under-financed, such that today roughly 80% of its budget consists of conditional monies that are primarily of an economic character, added Wodarg.

Who monitors?

The important thing to be aware of, is who monitors disease outbreaks.  Epidemiologists concern themselves with symptoms, cases, frequency, location and causal chains, virologists with taxonomic and molecular sequences. Earlier, cultivating viruses played a role, whereas today it’s about sequencing and, consequently, the development of tests for finding these molecules and gene parts.

And yet discovered molecules cannot diagnose disease. Moreover, there is the problem of false positives. Such tests are fundamentally unsuited for assessing infection.

Wodarg recounts an anecdote that reveals what else can go wrong with these tests:

“I received an email from friends in the USA. It said that they went to a test and had to wait for an hour. That was too long for them, so they left. Next day they received a letter telling them they had tested positive.”

Obviously, carrying out test procedures and the tests themselves are problematic due to their extreme sensitivity and possible contamination.

Furthermore, there’s the problem of what one looks for with the test, and what one ignores. It has in the meantime become clear that there have been earlier discoveries of SARS-CoV-2. [In other words, the SARS-CoV-2 virus is deemed ‘new’ because we started looking for it.]

Tests, in particular the globally marketed Drosten test, are scientifically interesting but clinically irrelevant. You find what you look for, asserted Wodarg. But whatever you discover says nothing about what is taking place in a person’s biology, nor about the sought for and constantly changing viruses. Such tests are only clinically relevant when there are specific medicines for specific viruses.

In the end, it is the entire field of diagnosis, medical measures and medication that plays a role in such disease outbreaks, not to mention country-specific and social factors such as access to and organisation of the healthcare bodies. For example, images disseminated by the media of “white tents” in the USA were in fact nothing unusual.

The same applies to the images from northern Italy. There too there are specific factors to take into account and carefully analyse, for example demographics and the condition of healthcare and nursing home facilities, as well as the effects of the panic triggered by the lockdown and media reports, leading to personnel shortages and erroneous treatments due to knee-jerk reactions.

Vaccines and tests

It is well known that there can be no evidence-based claim about  the benefits of vaccines against constantly changing pathogens. On the other hand, they do represent annual business in the case of seasonal infectious diseases such as influenza.

Studies have demonstrated similar disease occurrence in vaccinated and non-vaccinated people. Vaccinated people become infected by other pathogens that “fall through the cracks”.

All of this information must be known to the responsible German authorities such as the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) and the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI).

The planned RNA vaccines constitute a technology that moves the bioreactor used to manufacture the vaccine into the human body itself, with the body being genetically modified by the vaccine. Germ-line mutations that might result from the complexity of living systems with recursive processes are prohibited in Europe but cannot be ruled out, meaning that a sufficiently long period testing this sort of vaccine, running to several years, would be required.

“It’s a wonderful business model. I don’t even have to produce the vaccine any more. I give you this easily manufactured RNA, inject you with it, and then you produce the vaccine yourself. No more chicken eggs, no more bioreactors; you are the bioreactor. Excellent! And this is a new product, so there’s a patent, which makes it even more expensive, so I earn even more. On the economic front, that’s the idea. Wonderful!”

Asked whether there is any medical justification for this, Wodarg answered:

“No. It is irresponsible to use this as a reason to place millions of people at such risk. It is utterly irresponsible and criminal, in my opinion. As a doctor, I would rightly be judged as grossly negligent and imprisoned.” 

Regarding the tests, in addition to the fact that they are unsuitable as a diagnostic tool, there is also the problem that they have no official validation. The EU insists on official approval for this sort of medical product. Currently, transitional provisions apply, from national to EU law.

The current tests open up a new, enormous market for PCR and antibody tests, as for the mechanically automated processes developed for them. “New tests” are required by “new waves”.

A member of the inquiry [Dr Füllmich] drew attention at this point to the possibility of product liability. In this context, the question was later put to Wodarg as to whether he had discerned any distinguishing quality of the corona outbreak. This question [stated Füllmich] is legally pivotal in justifying such a massive suspension of fundamental rights – the foundation of Germany’s democracy – through the lockdown measures. Wodarg could discern no such quality:

“That the pathogen is more dangerous than previously, that the pathogen is more dangerous than others that emerge during the influenza season, has not been demonstrated.”

Restrictions to our freedoms by state authorities such as healthcare offices are administrative acts, argued Wodarg. Such acts must be very well considered and justified, as otherwise indemnity claims could be brought against the official bodies.

“If I cannot prove and justify, before a court, that I was certain, that it was right, that it had to be, then I am liable. And if a healthcare office relies on a test that is not approved as a diagnostic tool, then locks up people who show no symptoms, well they’d have to dress up very warmly were they to present that case before court.”

The conclusions drawn at the time from the swine-flu reassessment in a report by the Council of Europe are, according to Wodarg, primarily relevant to structural factors that are equally pertinent to the corona crisis.

There are most definitely remedial courses of action in this regard, especially in Germany with its international and exemplary body, the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG). The [PCR] test, the foundation for all of this, could be subjected to a risk-benefit analysis in line with up-to-date international scientific knowledge. The government, the Federal Joint Committee, and the health-insurance funds may commission such an analysis. But this has yet to happen.

“That one can use some in-house test to shut down the entire republic is very strange.”

Democracy and media

In answer to the question as to whether he had ever in his professional and political life experienced such a total lack of interest in precisely identifying causes despite such grave restrictions to fundamental rights and consequences, Wodarg answered in the negative:

“In terms of the homogeneity of the political response, no, I’ve never experienced its like. There was always an identifiable, powerful opposition, and the government had to explain itself. I’ve never experienced anything of this kind. With the swine flu, however, it was also the case that there was no real political opposition in Germany.”

The media has played a very decisive role, he continued:

“When there’s no opposition in the media, when there is no critical media outlet, then politics loses its nerve, too. (…) If the media presents politics with public facts that are served up as the truth, it is then extremely difficult for politicians to resist. (…) If the issues at hand are presented in such a way that no one would understand if the government behaved any differently, then it gets very difficult for government and opposition alike.”

With regards to the economic consequences from the corona measures, which won’t be fully felt by the majority of the population until September, Wodarg expresses scepticism regarding the media’s role to date:

“When the media report on the economic difficulties, their reporting is of the effect that they themselves are nicely protected. In other words, the responsibility that the media has … the uncritical position and the one-sided reporting of the larger media outlets that we observe … that’s a mistake … that is a failure by our media. What we’re doing in this small office here should actually be discussed in public, and on the major channels. I get asked thousands of times, ‘Why aren’t you there, why aren’t you getting involved!?’ I used to do just that. But today, because [critical voices] are just defamed – hey presto, you’re gone. That’s how they filter out all critical voices.”

By weaponising the media in this way, democracy is damaged, reasoned Wodarg. The self regulation possible in a democracy, in terms of finding compromises and solutions that improve public wellbeing, takes place in a one-sided way.

“We are being turned into the victims of those who are laughing themselves to death over our democracy. (…) Guilty parties are named. But they themselves are never the guilty ones.”

He looks with confidence to the coming national elections at which everyone wants to be reelected:

“If we are able to get the questions we’re raising here in this form to the general public, such that they are then asked by the majority of the population and taken up by the media: ‘What is your position on this? Do you really want to force these masks on us again as a sign of our subjugation, or are you going to protect us against this sort of nonsense? Do you want to expose us again to these genetic experiments and put us under pressure?’ When I hear Frau von der Leyen say, ‘We won’t be able to end the pandemic until the vaccine is there.’ Who is ‘we’? What kind of behaviour is that?”

Wodarg finds this incomprehensible, and also that it is swallowed by the media; as if a pandemic could be ended “by the government”.

“The important thing – which is part of this inquiry’s work as I understand it – is that the public is furnished with arguments that enable them to ask questions. (…) What are you [politicians] doing to us? What are your primary concerns? How will you ensure that we’re not lied to? What is your relationship with the pharmaceutical industry? Surely you realise that they don’t have our health, but rather their stock-market performance, in mind.”

The problem impacts the entire healthcare system with its profit-orientation towards private interests, to whom, one way or another, public money flows via the health-insurance funds. And this is equally true of the financial disincentives [beds kept empty earned hospitals money] influencing hospitals during the corona crisis. Money, needed in other areas, that could have been differently employed with more effective public controls.

Summation and outlook

The first session raised serious doubts over the alleged medical circumstances of the corona crisis that are presented as facts, summarised Dr Viviane Fischer, inquiry spokesperson. The [PCR] test’s veracity could not be determined. The inquiry members find it strange both that nobody appears to be interested in this particular issue, and that the institutes that could pronounce on the matter have not been commissioned to do so.

The grave and already identifiable consequences of the corona measures will be examined more closely in subsequent sittings. Dr V. Fischer also stated it will be important to determine the factual bases for the corona crisis that are relevant to each of its different stages. In the final analysis, in the event of such grievous attacks on fundamental rights and such severe consequences arising therefrom, an attendant and lasting evaluation of the effected measures is indispensable, according to a statement from the Federal Constitutional Court.

“Was there sufficient factual justification for the lockdown?”

This would be addressed via international inquiries and fact-finding hearings, for instance on the situation in China, Italy and other countries, regarding the images and media reports, which were and continue to be instrumental in shaping how the crisis is handled in Germany.

Additional special attention should be given to the responsible institutional bodies for country-specific details as well as supranational monitoring and inquiries.

Examination of the issues surrounding the test will be intensified, including possible co-infections, and, equally, of the inquiry into the medical measures and consequences of the corona crisis. Furthermore, the economic impact on bodies such as central banks and financial entities, as on state social systems and budgets, must also be examined.

In connection with vaccine and test problems, the inquiry concluded it is also important to consider data-protection aspects and possible use of the “corona lists” and genome data collected in this context.

As with the processes surrounding the swine flu, light must be shed on the hidden decision structures, vested interests and their personnel and institutional connections, in particular at the WHO and its affiliated organisations. Of primary importance here would be the relationship between economic and public interests.

*[Translator’s addition, quoting Wodarg on this vital point: “A pandemic rests on two pillars. The first is that there’s an infectious disease spreading globally. The second was the seriousness of the disease, the severity of case numbers and fatality / number of deaths.” Wodarg later quotes the particular criterion that disappeared from the WHO website around 4 May 2009: “An influenza pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus appears, against which the human population has no immunity, resulting in epidemics worldwide, enormous numbers of death and illness.” He asserts that the WHO failed to announce this change, but various nations noticed and voiced their concerns. (See this article from 18 May 2009.) Pandemics are now a “banality”. The swine flu pandemic was declared in June 2009.]