Covid is not a specific disease

The question of whether Covid-19 has caused deaths in excess of what we would normally have to expect during flu seasons is still being debated and may never be entirely settled. I remain skeptical of correlations between positive tests and excess mortality and tend to subscribe to the alternative hypothesis that most, if not all, of any observed excess mortality was caused – directly or indirectly – by the societal and political reaction to the "pandemic."

The main argument in favor of this hypothesis continues to be the age distribution of Covid deaths – with an average which in most countries is a little higher than the general population's (around 80 years in the developed world). Epidemiologically speaking, the Covid deaths were part of normal and unavoidable mortality. We are not immortal, and we die at our average age of death.

The assumption that the Covid deaths, while displaying a similar age distribution, were (mostly) an addition to normal population mortality is contradicted by the fact that where excess mortalities could be observed in the years 2020 to 2023, they disproportionately – and tragically – concerned the younger generations, where they could not possibly have been caused by Covid.

Also, in contrast to what one would necessarily have to expect if Covid-19 had been exceptionally severe in comparison with other flu seasons, there were no increases in the total number of respiratory disease visits and admissions during the "pandemic" years, neither in GP or specialist practices, nor in hospitals and emergency care units. A few countries (Germany for example) even saw a decrease in these health services in 2020.

The personal impressions of many healthcare providers notwithstanding – epidemiologically, this "pandemic" was nothing new – a series of winter flu seasons.

Undoubtedly, these simple deductions from the openly available facts and figures are scientific truths that will sooner or later become public knowledge. The truth train has started its journey; it will nevertheless travel for a long time, as there are many careers, reputations, and enormous amounts of money at stake.

The denomination of "Covid-19" as a specific disease has led to the development of specific measures, specific vaccines, and specific drugs against SARS-CoV-2 and its spread.

More and more (but still too few) physicians and scientists are beginning to ask whether all these interventions reduce the total number of common cold and flu cases, the total number of pneumonias, the total number of hospitalizations, and – above all – the total number of deaths. These are, after all, the only truly relevant questions for public health. Up to this day, we have no hard data to help us answer these questions.

The purely clinical result from the Covid vaccine trials was that over the total duration of the trial, people in the vaccinated groups were much sicker than the ones who had received a placebo. Summing up the test-positive and the test-negative "cases" with the side effects demonstrates that they had far more fever, far more chills, more headaches, more myalgias, and more gastrointestinal discomforts – and these were exactly the non-specific clinical symptoms that counted as endpoints for the trials. The vaccinated may have had less positive tests to SARS-CoV-2, perhaps. Clinically, however, they were sicker than the placebo groups – and undoubtedly very significantly so.

The commonly claimed "prevention of severe forms" has never been demonstrated. In the registration trials, the results for test-positive chest infections lacked significance because the numbers were too small. Above all, we have no hard evidence whatsoever concerning the efficacy of the Covid vaccines against all-cause pneumonias, all-cause hospitalizations, and total mortality. It would not have been difficult – and it would still be possible – to run outcomes trials with these endpoints.

Incidentally, we have no convincing hard evidence for the clinical efficacy of the Influenza vaccines and therapeutics, either. It is therefore entirely possible – perhaps even likely – that all of the now abundantly used virus-specific strategies in our medical armamentarium have no or even negative effects on the outcomes of respiratory infections. These ubiquitous and omnipresent viruses are probably more or less interchangeable, meaning that whoever may be "protected" against a specific strain will catch another one if his or her immunity happens to be off guard.

We should try and find out whether specific measures against a non-specific disease are truly warranted or not, and we know how this needs to be done. That the likely results of true outcome trials would be devastating for many experts and politicians is not a good reason to refrain from performing them. The truth will be out one day in any case.