Clemens Wendtner is an oncologist and Head Physician at the Munich Schwabing Clinic. Despite his total lack of epidemiological qualifications, he rose to prominence in the pandemic because he ended up treating some of the very first officially recognised Covid infections in Germany. In those early days he was fond of insisting that Corona was nothing to worry about because it was “in no way more dangerous than influenza”. In the course of April, however, he lost his mind and began shrieking that SARS-CoV-2 is “a completely new type of virus that… is not even remotely comparable to other known pathogens”. Since then he has missed no opportunity to preach about the grave risk of SARS-CoV-2. This naturally qualifies him as a ‘Corona expert’ in the eyes of the Bavarian press, who will just never stop interviewing this sad deranged man. In late 2021 Wendtner arbitrarily decided that Germany needed a vaccination rate of 95% to bring Omicron under control and spent the early months of 2022 demanding vaccine mandates, warning against the relaxation of pandemic restrictions and panicking about Long Covid.
This week, some journalist at the Augsburger Allgemeine with nothing better to do decided it was time to dust off the lunatic Wendtner yet again and see if he has any fresh hygiene wisdom to offer the public. In case you thought all that crazy might have boiled off sometime in the past year, above is how the man appeared for his interview.
Mostly he just rambles about vaccines and Long Covid and how dangerous new SARS-CoV-2 variants might be. It’s all stuff we’ve heard before, and I’d let it pass in silence, were it not for this one highly obnoxious bit:
Professor Wendtner, are you really still masking in your private life?
Yes. I wear a mask professionally of course, but also privately. When I fly or ride the underground, for example. However, I notice that I am one of the very few. But I am resilient, I don’t care. I protect myself and my patients, whom I don’t want to infect. My experience and that of my colleagues is that we have a lot of respiratory infections right now, including Covid. We are therefore preparing a campaign together with the university hospitals called ‘From O to O’. We want to encourage people to wear masks from October to Easter, especially in public, enclosed spaces, on a voluntary basis, of course.
The O’s in ‘O to O’ stand for Oktober and Ostern (or Easter), which is the winter tyre season in Germany. Wendtner’s ridiculous publicity campaign is an attempt to revive the seasonal masking programme outlined in the much-ridiculed Infection Protection Act devised by Karl Lauterbach and Marco Buschmann last year, which likewise attempted to equate mask mandates with winter automobile safety practices. The Deutsche Presse-Agentur has picked up Wendtner’s absurd appeal, and so the national press is now suddenly full of reporting that “Munich clinics are promoting Covid masking”. I hope you will join me in thanking Wendtner for filling our newspapers yet again with baseless appeals to strap plastic to our faces. His services to the Federal Republic are immeasurable, and I for one will never forget them.
That Wendtner should frame his call for community masking as a seasonal strategy, rather than a response to any particular problem, is a great tell. In fact nothing much is happening, virologically speaking, in Germany right now. The acute respiratory infection consultation incidence is totally normal and at pre-pandemic levels:
The hospitalisation incidence shows the same picture:
Wendtner just likes masks. He likes wearing them and he likes seeing other people wear them. He wants people to mask whether they are sick or healthy, whether hospitals are full or empty and whether viruses are circulating or not. More masking is more better in Wendtner’s world, and this above all is the problem with superstitious hygiene practices. Because they’re totally arbitrary and have no basis in reality, they can be invoked in response to literally anything, and no amount of evidence can ever do away with them.
Of course, before Covid, the good Dr. Wendtner had a very different understanding of masks and their utility. On February 24th 2020, he explained to the press that community masking was “pointless” because “humidification of the mask nullifies its protection within 20 minutes”. On March 10th he repeated this assessment, explaining to Tagesschau that “there are very clear indications that prolonged masking is pointless” and on March 27th he advised the German public health insurer ProVita that “wearing masks… in public is pointless”. Ironically, the community mask mandates that a freshly-converted Wendtner went on to support in the course of April and May 2020 have done nothing but yield a wealth of data proving that Wendtner 1.0 was right all along. Masks don’t work, masking is stupid and anybody placing their faith in them is a self-discrediting idiot.
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Perhaps he just likes his bank balance. Spot the opportunism.
It could be.
If I had to guess though, I would say more likely he is mentally ill and shouldn’t be practicing medicine.
He should be investigated immediately and probably suspended until he gets a full psychiatric examination and it is established whether he is mentally capable.
If he is prescribing masks systematically, what other malpractice is he engaged in?
Indeed! If his cancer care is as useless as his understanding of aerosol physics then his patients are doomed.
Yes, follow the money, no doubt..
Another Goebbels Wannabe !!
Indeed. He looks like Goebbels with a gerbil shoved up where the sun don’t shine!
Ooo, they love a good talking to in the media, don’t they? Some mask fetishist with his 15 minute fame almost dried up starts trying to be relevant again and suddenly they’re all over him like a rash. People gotta start turning away from the lying propagandists in their millions The media is only there because of advertising and odd donation from Gates etc anyway. Stop buying the products and the money will dry up.
His original statements were probably nothing but cooing for payment: “Here I stand! And I’m an Authority™! I’ll keep saying stuff in public that’s bad for your business until you send some money in my direction!” Money was then duly sent. And since then, witch doctor Wendler (the traditional term for oncologist) sings another tune.
He should join this lot:
Not a lifestyle competition, but a shared vision (reddit.com)
The ZeroCovidCommunity is a place where people who are passionate about reducing the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and protecting those who are at high risk can come together with a shared vision for the future. We are here to discuss the pandemic and politics, share info, and support one another. Individual mitigations can be a forced response to a lack of systemic solutions, but it is the latter that should be the main subject of activism. Engineering is better than hate.
10,000+ members and growing. People like this “doctor” are just egging on nutcases such as the ones on that subreddit who have allowed covid to shape their lives. Reprehensible.
The good news tof is that “10,000+ members and growing” will soon hit a peak as they line up for their frequent boosters. This is not a group with longevity baked in.
Lol. For some reason I was getting notifications from them now and again, which I have now blocked. But the stuff on there is mind-boggling. Sounds like a living hell, but they seem to embrace it – seems to give them a sense of purpose. I guess a lot of them were a bit nutty before the scamdemic, but their mental health is certainly a casualty of it now.
Thanks for this encouraging update
So true. This is a largely self-correcting problem, rife with Darwin Awards.
Perhaps they ought to study “germ free mice”.
Humanity needs exposure to “germs”
Virus/bacteria etc. have been in us and amongst us since life developed..
Mess about with them at your peril.
And never forget – Nature Bats Last
“Nature Bats Last” Not heard that before; love it
And boy does it bat. Sixes, over the wall, every time.
So true
the Bats don’t Last very long in Wuhan though
Assuming I’m still testing positive when my partner leaves, how risky would it be for our kid if I occasionally leave my room, masked, to prepare some food, do basic housekeeping tasks, and maybe provide them with some company?
If the them is bad English or pronoun-posing is unclear. OTOH, I feel (abstractly) sorry for the kid for having to cope with two nutcases of this type. Imagine them ever desiring to have a something-friend and maybe even touch it without both wearing hazmat suits. Panic in the streets!
I don’t like the idea of the state taking people’s kids away but sometimes you wonder. It’s a cruel world sometimes.
I thought about this, too. Coming from a German position heavily influenced by the 19th and early 20th century (up to 1918), I generally consider states a cultural achievement of mankind, however, certainly not the civil service state which created the mythical COVID monster and still mourns its untimely demise.
Wow, they are feeding off of each other’s mass formation psychosis that they still have yet to recover from. Such a ridiculous cult!
I take it that Dr Wendtler lives on his own and does not mix with anyone else on an intimate basis.
If I were a patient of his I would be worried.
If he believe he is a better designer of humans than God then let him carry on covering his breathing apparatus, I do wonder if he ever eats or drinks in public or with others, and if so how he manages this, perhaps by a feeding tube?
Anyway let him make his own life a misery, as for his advising others, he can stick it up his other orafice. Probably has some kind of net/filter device on that too.
Bet sex is fun with him
And the people respond with a resounding….(Yawn)
It is sad to see what happened to the Germans. All of this has to play out. We assume in Europe that we will will be living in an adventure playground forever. I would disabuse youself of this notion because it is about to change drastically. Silly prats in such a time won’t even have the space to spew their tripe. Just keep it clear and honest and look after your own. The very opposte of what they have been doing for the last few years.
Another one who needs a small padded room and a jacket with very long sleeves and tapes on the end.