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April 15, 2020
from
HumansAreFree Website
Dr.
Knut M. Wittkowski, PhD, ScD, headed the Department of
Biostatistics, Epidemiology & Research Design at Rockefeller
University for 20 years, he recently put out a paper (The
First three months of the COVID-19 epidemic - Epidemiological
evidence for two Separate Strains of SARS-CoV-2 viruses spreading
and Implications for Prevention Strategies) and gave an
interview explaining the potential dangers of "social distancing."
According to the data he collected, despite the fact that the
claim that China and South Korea have successfully controlled the
epidemic with lockdown and social distancing seems to be rampant, in
China the epidemic peaked on February 1st to February 5th
but the schools were not closed and severe lockdown measures were
not put in place until February the 20th.
That was two weeks later, in South Korea according to the data
collected by Wittkowski, we have a similar pattern.
In the interview (below video), he goes into much more detail,
answers many questions and touches upon multiple issues, and he also
emphasizes that in the United States and in other countries, there
will most likely be a 'second wave' of this new coronavirus because
of social distancing and lockdown.
In the interview he says letting younger people out and keeping
everything normal will help the elderly.
He says some safety
measures should be put in place for the elderly but what we are
doing right now, according to him, is more dangerous for the
elderly.
Source
If we had herd immunity now, there couldn't be a second wave in
autumn… If we had herd immunity, we wouldn't have a second wave.
However, if we prevented
herd immunity from developing, it is almost guaranteed that we have
a second wave as soon as either we stop the social distancing or the
climate changes with winter coming or something like that...
Perspectives on the Pandemic
Professor Knut Wittkowski
Interview Transcript
Source
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[00:10.04] |
JOHN: If you
could just tell us your name and a little bit about your
background?
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[00:14.00] |
WITTKOWSKI: My
name is Knut Wittkowski. I was at the Rockefeller
University for 20 years, Head of the Department of
Biostatistics Epidemiology and Research Design, and
before that, I worked for 15 years with Klaus Dietz, one
of the leading epidemiologists in the world in the
German town of Tubingen in the Eberhard Karls
University.
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[00:36.03] |
JOHN: You gave
recommendations for how best to deal with COVID-19.
Could you just describe what you wrote?
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[00:44.20] |
WITTKOWSKI: As
with every respiratory disease, we should protect the
elderly and fragile because when they get pneumonia,
they have a high risk of dying of the pneumonia. So that
is one of the key issues that we should keep in mind. On
the other hand, children do very well with these
diseases. They're evolutionarily designed to be exposed
to all sorts of viruses during their lifetime, and so
they should keep going to school and infecting each
other. Then, that contributes to herd immunity, which
means after about four weeks at the most, the elderly
people could start joining their family because then the
virus would have been extinguished.
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[01:36.02] |
JOHN: You
mention in the piece that in fact you think containment
would prolong the duration of the virus. Can you talk
about that?
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[01:45.00] |
WITTKOWSKI:
With all respiratory diseases, the only thing that stops
the disease is herd immunity. About 80% of the people
need to have had contact with the virus, and the
majority of them won't even have recognized that they
were infected, or they had very, very mild symptoms,
especially if they are children. So, it's very important
to keep the schools open and kids mingling to spread the
virus to get herd immunity as fast as possible, and then
the elderly people, who should be separated, and the
nursing homes should be closed during that time, can
come back and meet their children and grandchildren
after about 4 weeks when the virus has been
exterminated.
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[02:33.24] |
JOHN: And so,
what do you make of the policy that was enacted in the
United States and England and most places throughout the
world, this policy of containment, shelter-in-place,
etc.? What's your opinion of it?
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[02:47.05] |
WITTKOWSKI:
Well, what people are trying to do is flatten the curve.
I don't really know why. But, what happens is if you
flatten the curve, you also prolong, to widen it, and it
takes more time. And I don't see a good reason for a
respiratory disease to stay in the population longer
than necessary.
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[03:06.17] |
JOHN: And what
do you say to people who just say, "We just didn't know
about the lethality of this virus and it was the
smartest thing to do, to do what we did, and contain
everybody, because we just didn't have the data."
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[03:23.16] |
WITTKOWSKI: We
had two other SARS viruses before. Or, coronaviruses.
It's not the first coronavirus that comes out, and it
won't be the last. And for all respiratory diseases, we
have the same type of an epidemic. If you leave it
alone, it comes for two weeks, it peaks, and it goes for
two weeks and it's gone.
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[03:46.07] |
JOHN: You were
speaking to my producer the other day on the phone, and
you said, "The pandemic is over." What do you mean by
that?
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[03:56.04] |
WITTKOWSKI:
There are no more new cases in China and in South Korea.
The number of new cases in Europe is already beginning
to decline. The virus came later to the US, so here we
see a bit of an incline, maybe, and leveling off within
the next couple of days. And if we see that the cases
are not increasing dramatically, that means that the
number of new infections has already declined
substantially and peaked about a week ago.
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[04:27.09] |
LIBBY: Do you
believe the Chinese statistics? Do you think they've
lied to us? Do you believe the stats that have come out
of China?
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[04:36.09] |
WITTKOWSKI: The
epidemic has ended there, yes. Because otherwise, we
would see people emerging - and even in China, it's today
very difficult to keep information under the hood. If
there were lots of cases in hospitals, if the hospitals
that they built, the temporary hospitals, were still
full, we would hear that. This could not be suppressed.
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[05:03.25] |
JOHN: During
the press briefing yesterday, Fauci, and the President,
and the rest of the people assembled, were saying that,
had they not done the containment strategy that they
have done, that upwards of 2 million people would have
died in the United States. What do you think of that
figure?
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[05:22.27] |
WITTKOWSKI:
Well, I'm not paid by the government, so I'm entitled to
actually do science. If the government, if there had
been no intervention, the epidemic would have been over,
like every other respiratory disease epidemic.
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[05:44.05] |
JOHN: And how
many, in your estimation, would have died? Would it have
been that much?
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[05:48.25] |
WITTKOWSKI:
Okay. We have, right now, let's take realistic numbers
in the United Sates: we have about 25,000 cases every
day, that is probably the upper limit - make it 30,000 - who
knows? But let's talk about 25,000. 2% of them will
actually have symptoms - that is 500 cases a day. Maybe a
third or a fifth - let's say half of them - will need to be
hospitalized. That's 250 patients a day. If they have
been hospitalized for about 10 days, that means that we
will have - our hospital system will have to deal with
2,500 patients every day for a certain period of
time - that could be 3 or 4 weeks, and then the number
will dramatically decrease again and the whole epidemic
will be over.
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[06:51.20] |
JOHN: And of
those hospitalized cases, what, in your estimation, how
many would die?
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[06:59.15] |
WITTKOWSKI: 2%
will die -
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[07:03.00] |
JOHN: Of the
hospitalized cases?
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[07:05.19] |
WITTKOWSKI: Of
all cases.
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[07:06.26] |
JOHN: Of all
symptomatic cases.
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[07:06.26] |
WITTKOWSKI: Of
all symptomatic cases. 2% of all symptomatic cases will
die. That is 2% of the 25,000 a day. So that is 500
people a day, and that will happen over 4 weeks. So,
that could be as high as 10,000 people. Now, that
compares to the normal numbers of flus during the flu
season, and we have in the United States about 35,000
deaths due to flu every year during the flu season. So,
it would be part of the normal situation during the flu
season.
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[07:52.13] |
LIBBY: Are they
reporting flu deaths this year or is everything just
corona? Is there any statistic for flu death?
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[08:01.19] |
WITTKOWSKI:
Yeah, there is a statistic for flu. It's currently at
about 10,000-12,000. So, together with the Corona
deaths, it's about regular flu season.
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[08:12.09] |
JOHN: You're
basing your estimate now on the latest available
numbers?
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[08:16.07] |
WITTKOWSKI:
Yes.
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[08:16.20] |
LIBBY: So, what
accounts, then, for the fact that the hospitals are
suddenly more overrun than they have been in a previous
flu season, and for world leaders and the news media
just going crazy?
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[08:29.26] |
WITTKOWSKI:
Funding for hospitals has, as everybody knows, not
increased recently. So, hospitals had to cut down, and,
therefore, they now have to run their emergency plans,
which is not terrible. That's what they have been
planning for, for decades, so if they have to put up
some tents in Central Park, that's not the end of the
world. The tents are there, they're maintained very
well, and they will be there for a few weeks - three,
four, maybe, and then the crisis will be over. This is
not a situation nobody has ever thought about.
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[09:16.07] |
JOHN: Do you
really think that there's a major shortage of masks, and
things like this?
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[09:21.13] |
WITTKOWSKI: Of
what?
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[09:21.13] |
JOHN: Masks and
PPE and all this? What do you think about all that? Why
should there be a shortage of those things?
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[09:28.00] |
WITTKOWSKI:
Because people are getting crazy now and it's almost
like the toilet paper [...].
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[09:36.02] |
JOHN: I knew
someone at a NICU who suddenly - two weeks ago, in New
York, at NYU, suddenly all the masks and all the hand
sanitizer was gone. So... what do you think happened
there?
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[09:51.18] |
WITTKOWSKI:
Like the toilet paper. Shortages happen now and then,
all the time.
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[09:57.05] |
JOHN: Right,
sure.
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[10:01.02] |
WITTKOWSKI: And
if you have somebody reporting what's happening that
day, in that hospital, possible.
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[10:09.23] |
JOHN: Yeah.
Sure.
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[10:13.05] |
WITTKOWSKI:
Does it reflect the state of the whole hospital system
in New York? Not necessarily.
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[10:19.14] |
JOHN: Right.
What do you think about their latest figure that because
of, they claim that because of social distancing, that
we've saved ourselves from the 2 million dead, but that
we are probably looking at 150-200,000 dead, though
they've said that it's possible that it could be lower,
if we are really, really good about social distancing,
etc. What do you think about their new estimate of
death?
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[10:52.12] |
WITTKOWSKI:
Social distancing definitely is good. It prevented the
sky from falling down.
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[11:00.04] |
JOHN: Are you
being ironic?
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[11:01.19] |
WITTKOWSKI: Of
course! I don't know where these numbers are coming
from - they're totally unrealistic. There are no
indications that this flu is fundamentally different
from every other flu. We know what happened in China, we
know what happened in South Korea, we know what
happened, or is happening, in Europe. There are no
indications that anything is different from a regular
flu. Maybe it's a bit worse than other flues - could be?
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[11:32.02] |
For
a respiratory disease, the flu ends during springtime,
that people spend more time outdoors because outdoors,
the viruses cannot easily spread. That is a form of
containment, spending more time outdoors.
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[11:55.00] |
JOHN: So, we're
now spending more time indoors. We've been told to go
indoors. Isn't that - doesn't that help keep the virus
going?
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[12:03.17] |
WITTKOWSKI: It
keeps the virus healthy, yeah.
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[12:08.19] |
LIBBY: So we
should be told to go outdoors?
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[12:10.18] |
WITTKOWSKI:
Yeah. Going outdoors is what stops every respiratory
disease.
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[12:25.15] |
JOHN: People
will say that the reason why China came out of this okay
in the end is because they went into such severe
lockdown. What do you say to that?
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[12:37.18] |
WITTKOWSKI:
They had an advantage that in the beginning, they didn't
know what they were dealing with. So, it took them a
long time to start the containment or social distancing,
which, in the course of the epidemic is good, because
there was enough time for the virus to reach herd
immunity before the social distancing started.
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[13:00.14] |
JOHN: Now, it's
interesting that you say that, because at Imperial
College, you know Neil Ferguson has changed his estimate
of the number of dead in England from 500,000 to 20,000
or less, and he says that that is because of social
distancing. Now, we also know that the way in which
social distancing was implemented in England was not
very severe, or extreme, or efficient, so this was after
one day of lockdown, he announced that in fact, it would
be 20,000 or less. Is there any possibility that that
number would have changed that way because of the social
distancing?
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[13:46.14] |
WITTKOWSKI: No.
Actually, we have data for that.
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[13:53.23] |
I
looked into the claim that people make that, in China
and South Korea, the social distancing had successfully
helped to control the epidemic. I looked at the dates
when people actually started social distancing. In
China, the epidemic peaked on February 1st to
February 5th, in that period. But the schools
were not closed until February the 20th - that
was 2 weeks later. In South Korea, we have a similar
pattern. In Daegu, or however that city is being
pronounced, where the Church of Shincheonji had that
outbreak. The self-quarantine was ordered only on
February the 23rd, but the peak in that city
happened; the national distancing was not advised until
February the 29th, so that's a week later,
when the national peak happened. So, both in China and
in South Korea, social distancing started only long
after the number of infections had already started to
decline, and therefore had very little impact on the
epidemic. That means they had already reached herd
immunity or were about to reach herd immunity. They were
very close. But by installing the social distancing,
they prevented it to actually getting to the final
point, and this is why we are still seeing new cases in
South Korea, several weeks after the peak.
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[16:02.18] |
JOHN: You said
that this is the sort of contagion, because it's
airborne, that you can't deal with by doing tracing or
by social distancing. Explain why that is.
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[16:16.20] |
WITTKOWSKI: One
thing is tracing with an airborne disease is even more
difficult than tracing with a sexually transmitted
disease which is difficult enough, as we know from
AIDS.
Most people know who they had contact with, sexual
contact with, over the last two weeks. As a human being
travelling the subway in New York and doing other things
in New York that we just have to do in New York, I
couldn't tell you who the two three four hundred
thousand people are I came in contact with over the last
two weeks. So, contrast tracing for a respiratory
disease is impossible.
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[17:02.23] |
JOHN: Why
doesn't containment work for an airborne disease?
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[17:06.07] |
WITTKOWSKI: You
cannot stop the spread of a respiratory disease within a
family, and you cannot stop it from spreading with
neighbors, with people who are delivering, who are
physicians - anybody. People are social, and even in times
of social distancing, they have contacts, and any of
those contacts could spread the disease. It will go
slowly, and so it will not build up herd immunity, but
it will happen. And it will go on forever unless we let
it go.
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[17:41.23] |
JOHN: Let me
ask you, you don't feel this requires a vaccine?
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[17:49.20] |
WITTKOWSKI: We
don't have a vaccine against the common cold. We don't
have - we have some vaccines against flu, but they are not
that effective. Would it be nice to have a vaccine
against SARS? Yeah. It would be nice. But it would help
to create herd immunity a bit faster, because those who
have the vaccine are already immune, and those who
don't, they just need to be exposed to become immune.
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[18:31.06] |
JOHN: You could
get this immunity naturally?
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[18:34.04] |
WITTKOWSKI: For
some reason that we haven't fully understood yet,
humankind has survived all sorts of respiratory
diseases. Nature has a way of making sure that we
survive.
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[18:55.08] |
LIBBY: This
morning all the TV doctors were on, saying that,
because, obviously, they're starting to read some of
these pieces about the statistics being off, etc., and
so there you had Doctor Jennifer Ashton on ABC, and I
forget the others, saying, "This is more contagious than
any seasonal flu or
the H1N1, and this is why we have to
take it so seriously because it's so much more
contagious." Is that just ridiculous?
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[19:22.03] |
WITTKOWSKI: I
don't know where that opinion comes from. We have no - the
data that we have speaks against it.
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[19:31.22] |
JOHN: And what
data do we have and where are you getting your -
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[19:35.05] |
WITTKOWSKI: We
have seen - well. You can download the data from the
European CDC every day, the data, all over the world,
and you can analyze it. And that's what I have done, and
probably other people also have done.
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[19:53.05] |
JOHN: Okay, so,
what does this graph tell you, in general?
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[19:57.21] |
WITTKOWSKI: It
tells us that there are no - the numbers in Europe are not
increasing anymore, of cases. The deaths follow it by
about a week, and that's normal because people die after
they develop the disease. But the important thing is
that the numbers of infections peaked around a week ago
and is already on the decline. The European data
includes the data in France where suddenly the number of
cases doubled from one day to the next. This is somebody
finding a box of reports in an office and sending them
in and said, "Oops! We forgot to report that over the
last month!" So, this, the epidemic in France is not
increasing anymore, even though somebody found a couple
of reports in a shoebox.
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[21:04.14] |
JOHN: And
why - when they - won't governments just say, "that's
because we practiced social distancing?"
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[21:11.00] |
WITTKOWSKI: I'm
not a psychiatrist. I don't know what other people
think. I'm a scientist.
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[21:16.02] |
WITTKOWSKI: We
can see that in China, in Korea, the epidemic went down,
and the epidemic did exactly what every other epidemic
did, and it's not that 400% of all people died. Maybe
it's 3 rather than 1% - maybe! But nothing is
fundamentally different from the flues that we have seen
before. Every couple of years there is a flu that is a
bit worse than the other flues were, and it goes away in
exactly the way the other flues went away, and this one
behaves exactly the same way. The epidemic has ended in
China, at least, in the provinces where it was. It has
ended in South Korea. In Europe, it's declining and will
be ending anytime soon. Could be a bit longer than
typically, because of the containment, which flattened
and prolonged the epidemic. And so, if we really - that's
really good if we want to be affected by it as long as
it gets. And in the United States we are doing the same
thing. We are prolonging the epidemic to flatten the
curve. But eventually, it will end.
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[22:43.04] |
LIBBY: Speaking
of the numbers, I noticed in your paper, you said that
in mid-March there was a change in the reporting system.
What was that all about?
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[22:50.18] |
WITTKOWSKI:
This is not the first time it happens. On March 20th,
Germany changed its reporting system and suddenly, a lot
of cases that had not been reported before were
reported. But this is not a sudden increase in cases.
Over all, this had no impact on the dynamic of the
German epidemic. It increased until about March 27th
or so, and has been stable or declining since. The
problem in this disease is that reporting and diagnosing
are not separated and recorded differently. In the AIDS
epidemic, every case was reported with a day of
diagnosis and a day of reporting. For whatever reason,
this standard developed during the AIDS epidemic is not
being employed here. So, we cannot deconvolute this
data.
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[24:25.22] |
In
Italy there was a spike on one day, there was a spike on
one day in Norway. But we have seen now so many of these
spikes, they last for one day and then the numbers go
back to where it was before. So, we are not really
scared anymore if we see something changing very fast.
Nature doesn't jump. As people have known for a long
time. The course of an epidemic is always smooth. There
is never a ten-fold increase in number of cases from one
day to the other.
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[25:08.17] |
There is nothing to be scared about. This is a flu
epidemic like every other flu. Maybe a bit more severe,
but nothing that is fundamentally different from the
flues that we see in other years.
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[25:33.23] |
JOHN: What do
you think accounts for the difference in response this
time than say to the Swine Flu in 2009? Why are we
suddenly so much more panicked and having shut the world
down? What do you think is going on?
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[25:50.10] |
WITTKOWSKI: I
think at least one factor is the internet. People are
using the internet now much more often, and so news,
wrong or false, is spreading the globe within hours, if
not minutes. And so, let's say 50 years ago, we would
read in the paper that about a week ago there was an
epidemic of flu in the United States or in China or
somewhere else, and at that time, it was already over.
So, people would say, "Okay, that happens all the time."
Now, what we read is, "Oh! There were 785 cases in the
Vatican for two days" Eh, maybe not. And even if it was
a reporting error, these stories are circulating the
world and contributing to chaos and people being afraid
of things they shouldn't be afraid of.
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[27:05.04] |
JOHN: And what
do you think are the possible health risks of the policy
that we are following now, the shelter in place?
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[27:14.01] |
WITTKOWSKI:
Well, we will see maybe a total of fewer cases - that is
possible. However, we will see more cases among the
elderly, because we have prevented the school children
from creating herd immunity. And so, in the end, we will
see more death because the school children don't die,
it's the elderly people who die, we will see more death
because of this social distancing.
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[27:43.23] |
JOHN: So, we
keep being told now about the second wave that will come
in the fall. Now, tell us what your thoughts about the
second wave are and how - it seems like from everything
you're saying is that we'll have a second wave because
of social distancing -
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[28:03.18] |
WITTKOWSKI:
Yes.
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[28:04.10] |
JOHN: Okay, so,
could you say that in a sentence for me?
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[28:06.21] |
WITTKOWSKI:
Okay. If we had herd immunity now, there couldn't be a
second wave in autumn. Herd immunity lasts for a couple
of years, typically, and that's why the last SARS
epidemic we had in 2003, it lasted 15 years for enough
people to become susceptible again so that a new
epidemic could spread of a related virus. Because
typically, there is something that requires
cross-immunity, so if you were exposed to one of the
SARS viruses, you are less likely to fall ill with
another SARS virus. So, if we had herd immunity, we
wouldn't have a second wave. However, if we are
preventing herd immunity from developing, it is almost
guaranteed that we have a second wave as soon as either
we stop the social distancing or the climate changes
with winter coming or something like that.
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[29:19.10] |
JOHN: But,
because this is an airborne illness, it sounds to me as
though social distancing wouldn't even have prevented
more people from getting it, right? I mean, it already
spread, because it's airborne, because it lives on
surfaces. By the time England or the US shut down, it
had probably already gotten all around, right?
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[29:44.16] |
WITTKOWSKI:
Unfortunately, it seems that in western countries where
the story of China was already known, people started
with social distancing, as imperfect as it is, before
the epidemic could reach the level that is needed to
develop herd immunity.
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[30:10.16] |
JOHN: I see.
And so, to summarize, you are saying that's going to
flatten and extend the epidemic and create the second
wave that we are being told to fear?
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[30:21.00] |
WITTKOWSKI:
Yes. The second wave is a direct consequence of social
distancing.
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[30:28.16] |
JOHN: That's
wonderful to hear.
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[30:29.13] |
WITTKOWSKI: We
already know that the social distancing cost the US
taxpayer 2 trillion dollars, in addition to everything
else that it costs, but it also has severe consequences
for our social life, and depression is definitely
something that we will be researching. I can say for
myself, walking through New York City right now is
depressing.
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[31:10.17] |
JOHN: So, what
do you think? Should we tolerate this? Should we stand
for staying sheltered in house arrest till... what is
it? April 30th they want?
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[31:23.02] |
LIBBY: April
30th now.
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[31:24.20] |
JOHN: I mean,
is that what we ought to do or should we, perhaps, be
resisting?
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[31:31.00] |
WITTKOWSKI: We
should be resisting, and we should, at least, hold our
politicians responsible. We should have a discussion
with our politicians. One thing we definitely need to
do, and that would be safe and effective, is opening
schools. Let the children spread the virus among
themselves, which is a necessity to get herd immunity.
That was probably one of the most destructive actions
the government has done. We should focus on the elderly
and separating them from the population where the virus
is circulating. We should not prevent the virus from
circulating among school children, which is the fastest
way to create herd immunity.
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[32:24.09] |
JOHN: And can
you explain, just one more time, as clearly as you can,
what's the concept with natural herd immunity? What
happens to the virus when it's gone through the
population in the way you're describing?
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[32:39.07] |
WITTKOWSKI: If
80% of people have had contact with the virus and are
therefore immune, and that, typically, that contact is
just a form of immunization. So, there is no disease,
there's nothing happening, and still there is immunity.
If 80% of people are immune and somebody has a virus and
is infectious, it will be very difficult for that
infectious person to find somebody who is still
susceptible, not immune. And therefore, this person will
not infect anybody else and therefore we won't have the
disease spreading. That is herd immunity.
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[33:29.12] |
JOHN: And what
happens to the virus? What happens to the virus, at that
point?
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[33:33.23] |
WITTKOWSKI:
Well, viruses don't live, technically, but the virus
will eventually be destroyed.
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[33:41.15] |
JOHN: I see.
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[33:44.03] |
WITTKOWSKI:
Unless, right now, it is at the drycleaners. My
drycleaner closed down because of COVID, so I can't get
my clothes cleaned. And so, if there should be viruses
on my clothes, which is possible, I cannot get them
cleaned at the drycleaner because the drycleaner is a
non-essential service and therefore closed down. We are
experiencing all sorts of counterproductive consequences
of not well-thought-through policy.
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[34:17.17] |
JOHN: Should
there be a major testing regime in place where the whole
population is tested, and should that be a prerequisite
for us coming out?
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[34:28.17] |
WITTKOWSKI: Any
answer with two letters will do. No.
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[34:36.02] |
JOHN: So, just
describe why testing is not productive.
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[34:40.18] |
WITTKOWSKI:
Testing doesn't stop anything by itself. Testing could
give us, if we do antibody testing, not testing for the
actual virus. If we do antibody testing, we would
actually get an estimate of how close we are to herd
immunity. That could be useful. But, testing for people
who are infectious means they probably have already
been, for two or three days, been in for half of their
infectious period. Now, they are being tested positive
what are they supposed to do? We are already having
social distancing. They can't do much more than they are
already doing. Testing for respiratory disease is
neither necessary nor effective.
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[35:35.14] |
JOHN: Now, you
said, you mentioned earlier that you have asthma. And
I'm guessing you're over 40?
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[35:43.02] |
WITTKOWSKI:
Yes.
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[35:45.01] |
JOHN: Are you
at all nervous about -
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[35:47.15] |
WITTKOWSKI: No.
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[35:48.09] |
JOHN: Why
aren't you nervous?
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[35:50.05] |
WITTKOWSKI: We
don't die of the virus. We die of pneumonia. So, if we
have a virus respiratory disease, the disease - once the
body has created antibodies, the immune system has
created antibodies, the antibodies, or the immune system
is killing all infected cells which destroys much of the
mucosa. And bacteria can easily settle on that destroyed
mucosa, and then cause pneumonia. And it is the
pneumonia that is killing people, if it's not treated. I
had a virus, whatever it was, maybe it was - who
knows - about three weeks ago, and my physician gave me
the antibiotics I should take if the disease gets better
and then gets worse, because that is a sign of pneumonia
and then we have to treat the pneumonia.
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[36:56.06] |
JOHN: And
pneumonia is what is treated with antibiotics -
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[36:59.10] |
WITTKOWSKI:
Pneumonia is what's treated with antibiotics. Not the
virus.
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[37:04.08] |
JOHN: Okay. So,
you feel that it's - you may have already had COVID-19?
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[37:10.06] |
WITTKOWSKI:
Okay. At the end of that experience which reminds me of
Camus's
Plague, if you ever read it, you will see
lots of parallels, unfortunately. So, no, I am not
scared. I may have had it, like many other people, who
had a mild flu like I had, or had no symptoms
whatsoever. That is the normal thing happening to 70% of
the people in the end, or even 75%, and it is the
remaining that get ill and need treatment. And they
should seek treatment as early as possible - you shouldn't
wait. And it's definitely helpful if you have health
insurance.
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[38:05.11] |
WITTKOWSKI: The
problem in cities like New York is there are too many
people who don't have health insurance. And if you don't
have health insurance, you are hesitant to see your
doctor. And if you are hesitant, you see the doctor too
late, and if pneumonia has already progressed, and you
see your doctor, it's too late for antibiotics to be
effective and you may die. The best way is isolate if
you are old and fragile, and if you get the disease, see
your doctor as soon as possible.
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[38:53.07] |
JOHN: 75% you
say won't get any symptoms, maybe even 80%, right? Or is
it more? I mean, do we know what that rate is right now?
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[39:04.00] |
WITTKOWSKI: We
don't know what it is right now. For that, we would need
to do antibody testing, and very wide antibody testing.
However, we already see the epidemic declining and that
is a sign that we have at least a substantial proportion
of people who are immune. It may not be enough for herd
immunity yet. We may not have reached the 80% that we
need. But we may have 50%.
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[39:34.12] |
JOHN: And so,
what do you think we should do at this point? Should we
pivot to what you suggested earlier or is it too late
for what you suggested?
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[39:45.18] |
WITTKOWSKI:
It's difficult to tell. It may be too late. It may not
be too late. The problem is, if we are artificially
keeping the number of infections low among low-risk
people like schoolchildren and their parents, we may not
have reached herd immunity yet, so if we are stopping,
we may have an increase in the number of new infections.
That is the downside of starting containment. We should
not believe that we are more intelligent than Mother
Nature was when we were evolving. Mother Nature was
pretty good at making sure that we're a good match for
the disease that we happen to see virtually every year.
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[40:40.09] |
LEE: But is
this a pandemic? That's the big question.
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[40:44.07] |
WITTKOWSKI: It
is a pandemic like every flu every year is.
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[40:47.06] |
LEE: A
pandemic, yeah?
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[40:50.21] |
JOHN: So, is
there anything else you want to say about this
that - what's been aggravating you the most? Or what would
you like people to know?
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[41:02.18] |
WITTKOWSKI: I
think people in the United States and maybe other
countries as well are more docile than they should be.
People should talk with their politicians, question
them, ask them to explain, because if people don't stand
up to their rights, their rights will be forgotten. I'm
Knut Wittkowski. I was at the Rockefeller University, I
have been an epidemiologist for 35 years, and I have
been modeling epidemics for 35 years. It's a pleasure to
have the ability to help people to understand, but it's
a struggle to get heard. |
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