Are there viruses? – Doctors for COVID Ethics
Source: TKP.at, Dr. Peter F. Mayer, 22 May 2024
A discussion that has arisen again and again over the past four years concerns the question of whether viruses even exist or whether respiratory diseases have other causes. The two scientists and doctors Michael Palmer and Sucharit Bhakdi recently published an article on this issue at Doctors for Covid Ethics.
They first note that in connection with the COVID-19 “pandemic,” it has become clear to many people how much the political and scientific authorities have systematically lied. This concerns the origin of the infectious agent as well as the necessity and safety of the prescribed countermeasures such as lockdowns, masks and vaccines. Here in TKP, too, the existence of the virus responsible for COVID-19 or even of viruses and pathogenic germs in general was repeatedly doubted or rejected in the comments. Palmer and Bhakdie try to correct things.
In any case, they recognize that the public has ample reason to distrust not only politicians, officials and the media, but also the “scientific community”…
Has the SARS-CoV-2 virus ever been isolated?
“Yes, it has been isolated – countless times. An overview of such studies was provided by Jefferson et al. A robust study correlating virus isolation, PCR, and clinical findings in a series of hospitalized COVID-19 patients was reported by Wölfel et al. It is also possible to purchase samples of the purified virus from the American Type Culture Collection. Although these are heat-inactivated, they should still make it possible to confirm the identity of the virus if one has the necessary experience and equipment.
The legend that SARS-CoV-2 was never isolated is based solely on the rigid requirement that such isolation must be carried out without the use of cell cultures. As already mentioned, it is very likely that practicing virologists will ignore this request, for which we cannot blame them.
But isn’t COVID-19 just the flu in a new guise?
It was indeed striking that as the number of COVID-19 cases increased, the number of influenza cases also fell sharply. This can be explained as follows:
- Respiratory infections are often caused by more than one virus. If the tests are not comprehensive, the results will be distorted by the tests chosen.
- The hysteria surrounding COVID-19 led doctors to conduct diagnostic tests selectively for COVID-19 and rule out other respiratory pathogens.
- Extremely loose criteria have been used to diagnose COVID-19 infections. You’ve probably heard about the widespread problems with false-positive PCR tests.
The poor laboratory methods inevitably led to numerous misdiagnoses of COVID-19. Patients diagnosed in this way were then usually not further tested for influenza, which led to a decrease in the number of diagnosed influenza cases. Failure to test for bacterial pathogens resulted in patients with bacterial pneumonia going undiagnosed and denied necessary antibiotic treatment. This was just one of the many forms of medical malpractice in the COVID-19 era that was the root cause of the excess mortality [Rancourt, DG et al. (2021) Nature of the COVID-era public health disaster in the USA, from all-cause mortality and socio-geo-economic and climatic data. Rancourt, D.G. et al. (2022) COVID-Period Mass Vaccination Campaign and Public Health Disaster in the USA.ResearchGate DOI:10.13140/RG.2.2.12688.28164 ].
Conclusion
Although we have every reason to distrust and accuse today’s medical and scientific establishment, this should not lead us to ignore solid scientific evidence where it exists. Germ theory in general, as well as virology, is very rich in such evidence, notwithstanding its recent distortions and abuses, which urgently need to be recognized and corrected. However, the solution does not lie in radical skepticism that borders on nihilism. Instead, we must rediscover and reinvigorate the spirit of rigorous but unbiased debate that once made medical science great.
