By Ralph T. Niemeyer
If you believe most of the media, our health system is on the verge of total collapse. The intensive care units are overcrowded and doctors will soon have to decide which patients they can still save and which they have to let die.
Mostly to blame for this are citizens who are not obedient enough and measures that are still far from strict enough. But is this picture the truth?
An interesting new study casts doubt on this. The number of serious respiratory diseases in the first half of 2020 tended to decrease rather than increase. Only the infection numbers according to the very unreliable PCR tests seem to explode.
And the intensive care units are no more stressed this year than in other years. If bottlenecks nevertheless arise, it is mainly due to the disastrous personnel policy of the hospitals and a short-sighted health policy. At the latest after the supposedly bad “first wave”, there would have been an opportunity to change both.
The pervasive equating of positively tested people with the seriously ill, the mixing of deaths at, with and probably long after Corona, the massive isolation of supposed “contact persons” without any symptom, especially from school and daycare children: That this pandemic has been a lie for months and the fact that facts are left out, massive fears are fueled and there is little interest in evidence can now be proven.
Now it becomes clear: Even an allegedly extraordinary state of emergency in German clinics was apparently constructed by interested circles with gigantic figures to justify the massive restriction of basic rights. Scientists from the Quality Medicine Initiative (IQM) found amazing results.
The intensive care units (ITS) are threatened with collapse, is the mantra that has been preached for months and with which the federal government exhorts the population to obey. Whether this is actually the case – and, if so, whether it is due to the corona virus at all – is questionable.
The data from the federal government`s “DIVI” intensive care register indicate no extraordinary increase in the number of patients on the ITS in Germany since the beginning of the pandemic.
According to the first survey at the beginning of March, there was talk of 28,000 ITS beds in Germany, of which around 4,800 were free. In other words: around 23,000 beds were occupied.
The number of ITS patients is currently trending around 22,000. It is just as high as it was in August. The difference: at that time only a good 200 of those affected had a positive corona test, today it is almost 4,000.
So is the number of other ITS-related illnesses mysteriously decreasing with the increase in Covid cases?
It is unlikely. Now one could speculate that operations will be postponed – without a political order as in the spring. Problem: This has been the norm, which has been increasing for years, especially in the winter and spring months when the flu is rampant.
As an author, I have been writing every winter for ten years about similar sounding warning calls from doctors and their organizations: personnel shortages in hospitals, beds had to be locked, operations postponed, patients had to be carted around halfway across Germany. Even pregnant women in labor were sent away. This has been the reality I have been reporting on for years, not a new phenomenon.
“DIVI” – spokesman Torben Brinkema also knows that it is less the technical requirements than personnel saved for years for profit reasons that are the cause of the overload of emergency medicine, especially in the case of flu waves. This has been the biggest problem for a long time, he admitted in an interview with me a few weeks ago.
Pediatric intensive care medicine is particularly dramatic, he added. The sensible consequence of this would be to train staff, pay better and finally improve the currently miserable working conditions of the carers. Instead, however, the money goes into the pockets of PCR test manufacturers and large corporations, above all the pharmaceutical industry.
No more patients than usual
Now, at the beginning of the pandemic, the federal government was generous: it made more than half a billion euros to equip the ITS with ventilators and beds due to Corona. The personnel problem remained untouched. A look at the “DIVI” register shows the reality: the clinics are now even reporting fewer usable ITS beds than in March, namely around 27,500. There are obviously no nurses for an ominous additional “emergency reserve” of almost 12,000 beds.
It not only appears that politicians do not want to address this delayed real emergency, which has nothing to do with Corona.
Even more: it appears to have worsened during Corona. And: It uses the state of emergency as a reason for tough measures with expected massive collateral damage – not only with regard to the impending bankruptcy wave.
In short: the total number of ITS patients is relatively constant at an average of 22,000. What increased in November was just the number of those patients who tested positive. “DIVI” – spokesman Brinkema could not say who actually struggles with the much-described severe Covid symptoms, such as pneumonia. This is not recorded.
Thousands of fake Covid patients
The IQM study could now shed more light on the number games and inconsistencies. It provides several remarkable results for the first half of 2020. First: From January to June 2020, the 421 hospitals examined treated 187,174 people with severe respiratory diseases (SARI cases), including those diagnosed with Covid-19.
That was not more, but around a sixth fewer people affected than in the same period last year. Back then, between January and June 2019, clinics treated a total of 221,841 severe SARI cases.
It is inconceivable that Covid-19 could have simply eradicated severe pneumonia caused by other pathogens, which, according to various statistics, led to up to 50,000 deaths a year in Germany even before Corona. What is to be assumed: The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) as a subordinate authority of the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG) may have a great interest in the numbers of seriously ill people who are allegedly treated with Covid-19 in normal or intensive care units to appear particularly high. Because this is exactly what another result of the IQM study suggests. The authors write:
“Amazingly, we found a much higher number of inpatients, 46,919, who were treated with the suspected diagnosis of Covid disease, but without evidence of an infection in the laboratory.”
These alleged Covid-19 cases actually had a positive PCR test only 14,783 people affected. One can now assume, the authors continue, “that a lack of test capacities were responsible for this, especially at the beginning of the pandemic”. However, this “does not match the time course of the suspected cases which occurs later”.
Lots of cases for propaganda?
The study goes on to say: “In our opinion, the most likely explanation is that in view of the media presence of the topic and the attentiveness associated with it, cases with suitable symptoms were treated as suspected Covid even if the PCR remained negative.” the clinics would have booked this under “false negative”.
“In total, however, this resulted in an implausibly high number of suspected Covid cases,” warn the authors. Ultimately, this could have resulted in an unjustifiably high cost of protective measures.
Many “cases” were constructed with a questionable assignment to diagnosis codes. The almost 15,000 patients who tested positive fell into the ICD-10 category U07.1 (“key number not assigned”)! The German Institute for Medical Documentation and Information (DIMDI) writes:
“Use this key number if Covid-19 is detected by a laboratory test, regardless of the severity of the clinical findings or the symptoms.”
This already shows: Regardless of whether it is actually a Covid disease or whether it is terminal cancer, an accident or a diabetes emergency – a positive test turns every patient into a Covid case.
The remaining 32,000 alleged Covid cases fell under the even more questionable key number U07.2. This is a purely suspected case, a positive test is not necessary – more: Even with a negative test, patients can be classified as Covid cases.
The DIMDI catalog literally states that this number is to be assigned if “Covid-19 has been clinically or epidemiologically confirmed and the virus has not been detected by a laboratory test”.
Not only the presence of pneumonia, i.e. pneumonia, which could have been triggered by all possible pathogens, is sufficient for this. Rather, even “contact occasions” are sufficient, in other words: the proven contact with a person who tested positive before admission to the hospital.
Questionable PCR tests
This makes it clear: The RKI figures, which place the hospitalization rate of “Covid patients” at five to six percent of all those who tested positive and in some cases higher, are simply unbelievable.
Do you want to stir up fears with an exaggerated probability of ending up in a clinic with a serious illness? Was it possible that the clinics were under political pressure to push the numbers as high as possible so as not to run the risk of underestimating the pandemic?
Of course, the authors do not assume that the clinics that belong to the association themselves have any intention. Among other things, they criticize, the PCR tests could do their part. With that they open another barrel, the contents of which the sparrows have long been whistling from the roofs.
For the use of the PCR tests for the detection of Sars-CoV-2 gene sequences, there is no standardized strategy, either nationally or internationally, they warn. Introducing these must “have the highest priority”.
Incorrect assignment of patients carries the risk of incorrect or over-treatment, which ties up resources and can lead to personnel and material bottlenecks.
Massive collateral damage
In addition, the authors are also concerned about whether collateral damage could also lead to excess mortality. Only for April was there a slight increase in deaths, unusual for this month, which is at least temporally related to positive corona tests.
An increased death rate in August has demonstrably no connection to corona cases, they write. The Federal Statistical Office gives a heat wave as a possible cause. However, according to the scientists, “this effect could also be attributed to the reduced hospital care, especially in emergencies during the previous months”. You are asking for a “deeper analysis”.
Indeed, the measures are likely to have and are likely to have caused many collateral victims.
In the meantime there are indications of this, also in Germany. A study by doctors under Stefan Kortüm from the Hochrhein Clinic in Waldshut, Baden-Württemberg, found that the 37 percent excess mortality that occurred there in April only partially correlates with positive corona tests – which does not necessarily prove a causal relationship, however
In any case, 45 percent of the additional deaths in the district were not related to Sars-CoV-2. Much more people than usual have found rescue workers lifeless at home, possibly because they no longer dared to see a doctor.
The rate of suicide attempts could also have skyrocketed.
For Berlin, this means a response from the Senate Department for the Interior to the request of the independent MP Marcel Luthe, formerly the liberal FDP.
According to this, the Berlin fire brigade had to be deployed a total of 294 times between January and October 2020 because people had tried to hang themselves. For comparison: In the whole of 2018 there were seven comparable rescue missions, the following year there were three.
Conclusion
First: In the first half of 2020, German clinics treated a total of around 16 percent fewer patients with severe respiratory diseases (SARI cases) than in the first half of 2019.
These lower case numbers already include the patients declared as Covid cases. But two thirds of these alleged Covid patients did not even have a positive corona test. In all alleged Covid cases, it is still unclear whether they even had a covid-specific disease, which, if present, could just as easily have been triggered by other pathogens.
Second: The PCR tests are not standardized to this day. This means that the specific application, for example with regard to the number of reproduction cycles, is not standardized. In addition, the RKI stated in response to my request that the hundreds of PCR tests on the market were not subject to any authorization, but only to a notification requirement. The reliability can therefore be seriously doubted.
Third: The intensive care units are not more crowded than they were before Corona. What has increased is only the proportion of patients with a positive PCR test. What is falling, however, is the number of usable beds in which those affected can be treated. This is likely to be due to an increasing lack of staff. This is a long known problem. It is due to the years of downsizing in order to make clinics marketable and profitable for their operators.
Fourth: Politicians must be accused of operating deliberately with misleading figures in order to continue to terrify the population and to make them compliant to the massive restrictions on fundamental rights that threaten to become permanent.
Fifth: It is to be feared that an enormous number of collateral damage in connection with the measures could be hyped to the coronavirus using questionable methods. Several studies have now shown that there are victims due to around 1.6 million postponed operations, panic, stress, anxiety and depression.
Ultimately, the IQM study suggests once again that the authoritarian measures, enforced with rigor by an obviously fact-resistant federal government and state politicians, are not only indecisive in many respects, sometimes absurd and irrational, but are also not based on any scientifically evident foundation.
Rather, it testifies to another part of a construct of lies that is based on only one motivation: to frighten the population in order to make them compliant. The objective certainly has little or nothing to do with democracy and human dignity, and certainly not with any protection for the frequently cited “risk groups”.
With regard to the clinics, the authors state at least for the first half of the year:
“At no point in time was a capacity bottleneck measurable in the hospitals involved. The consequences of the reduced hospital treatments must be analyzed precisely and promptly in order to use this data to assess which measures are appropriate. “
It can be assumed, however, that politicians will ignore this study as well as the increasing number of warning calls from hundreds of doctors.
