• Login
  • Register
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

It’s Never Wrong to be Wrong When You’re Christian Drosten

by Robert Kogon
20 March 2024 9:00 AM

The preview photo for my recent article on Christian Drosten and his links to viral research in Wuhan, and even Montana, comes from a remarkable June 2021 interview in the Swiss online magazine Republik. The full pic of Drosten in full protective gear and vaguely resembling the Michelin man can be seen below.

The interview is titled “Herr Drosten, Where Did This Virus Come From?” But it is less remarkable for what Drosten has to say on this topic than as a document of its times. For even though it was published not even three years ago, how times have changed!

Consider, for instance, Drosten’s response to the question of achieving so-called herd immunity through a combination of vaccination and infection. Drosten rejects the notion out of hand: in effect, pushing not just for 70% or 80% vaccination rates but for 100%.

“Everyone who does not get vaccinated, will get infected with SARS-2,” he says, thus clearly implying that those who do get vaccinated will not get infected or at least not as a rule. Those were the days when they still called them “breakthrough infections”, after all.

By just six months later, however, in January 2022, Drosten was claiming that everyone would have to get infected in order to achieve durable immunity – as if that had been the plan all along! In one of his regular “Corona Update” podcasts on German public radio, he would even “explain”:

The ideal immunisation is to have a full immunisation – with three doses – and then, on the basis of this immunisation, to get infected with the real virus for a first time and also a second and a third time.

Say what? In any case, Drosten appears to have taken his own advice, since, as reported on the Daily Sceptic here, in an interview last October he would note that he had “had three doses and been infected twice”.

Drosten would, of course, repeatedly insist that “hybrid” vaccine-induced and natural immunity is somehow superior to mere natural immunity or that vaccination was still worthwhile, since, he claimed, it reduced the severity of disease thus allowing people to get infected “safely”. But this was not the original claim, and, as the below screenshot from the European Medicines Agency summary document on the BioNTech-Pfizer “Comirnaty” vaccine reminds us, it is not what COVID-19 vaccines were authorised to do.

In short, when, in June 2021, Christian Drosten suggested that people who are vaccinated against COVID-19 would not get infected, he was wrong – and not just wrong, but wildly so. In the same interview, incidentally, he also claimed that COVID-19 vaccination prevents transmission of the disease: something which is now virtually universally recognised not to be the case and, furthermore, was not even claimed in the studies on which authorisation was based! (See, for instance, “Limitations and Remaining Questions” here.)

How can Germany’s Covid oracle be so wrong and continue to be treated as an oracle? How can he still be regarded as an authority on Covid not only in Germany, but indeed around the world? How can he be permitted to lecture others on spreading misinformation when objectively, by the standards of what we know today, he was himself spreading misinformation in June 2021 – and those who already suspected that vaccination was ineffective and said so were right.

Why does Christian Drosten benefit from such an odd sort of moving of the goalposts in reverse? If in the original version of the metaphor, the goalposts are moved further away, making it harder for the kicker to reach them, in the version of the metaphor applicable to Drosten – and the agenda of mass COVID-19 vaccination he championed – they are moved closer and closer to the kicker, so that somehow, some way his feeble kick is just enough to get the ball over the bar, thus converting error into wisdom.

In the same interview, Drosten also pushed for vaccinating children, by the way, insisting that there was not likely to be any risk and that getting Covid could have serious consequences for them. “From the perspective of a parent, my child would be vaccinated,” he said, “No question.” His use of the subjunctive is rather odd, since, though not much is known about Drosten’s private life, he is in fact reported to have a young son.

Robert Kogon is the pen name of a widely-published journalist covering European affairs. Subscribe to his Substack. Translations from the German by the author.

Tags: Christian DrostenCOVID-19GermanyPfizer/BioNTechVaccine

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

R.I.P. The Scottish Enlightenment 1697-2024

Next Post

The NHS Told Me I Had to Wait Over a Year for My “Urgent” Prostate Operation

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

17 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

DONATE

PODCAST

Episode 36 of the Sceptic: Karl Williams on Starmer’s Phoney Immigration Crackdown, Dan Hitchens on the Assisted Suicide Bill and Tom Jones on Reform’s Local Council Challenge

by Richard Eldred
16 May 2025
0

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editor’s Picks

Chinese ‘Kill Switches’ Found in US Solar Farms

15 May 2025
by Will Jones

News Round-Up

16 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

16 May 2025
by Eugyppius

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

16 May 2025
by Ben Pile

Civil Servants Threaten to Strike Over Trans Ban in Women’s Lavatories

16 May 2025
by Will Jones

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

29

Civil Servants Threaten to Strike Over Trans Ban in Women’s Lavatories

25

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

19

News Round-Up

18

Chinese ‘Kill Switches’ Found in US Solar Farms

27

Trump’s Lesson in Remedial Education

16 May 2025
by Dr James Allan

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

16 May 2025
by Eugyppius

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

16 May 2025
by Ben Pile

Renaud Camus on the Destruction of Western Education

15 May 2025
by Dr Nicholas Tate

‘Why Can’t We Talk About This?’

15 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

POSTS BY DATE

March 2024
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
« Feb   Apr »

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

  • X

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In

© Skeptics Ltd.

wpDiscuz
You are going to send email to

Move Comment
Perfecty
Do you wish to receive notifications of new articles?
Notifications preferences