Perspectives
on the Pandemic II:
A
Conversation with Dr. Knut Wittkowski
New
York, April 1&2, 2020
[00:00:10.04]
JOHN: If you could just tell us your
name and a little bit about your
background?
[00:00:14.00]
WITTKOWSKI: My name is Knut Wittkowski. I was at the
Rockefeller University for 20 years, Head of the Department
of Biostatistics Epidemiology and Research Design, and before that, I worked
for 15 years with Klaus Dietz, one of the leading epidemiologists in the world
in the German town of Tubingen in the Eberhard Karls
University.
[00:00:36.03]
JOHN: You gave recommendations for
how best to deal with
COVID-19. Could you just describe what you wrote?
[00:00:44.20]
WITTKOWSKI: As with every
respiratory disease, we should
protect the elderly and fragile because when they get
pneumonia, they have a high risk of dying of the pneumonia. So that is one of
the key issues that we should keep in mind. On the other hand, children do very
well with these diseases. They're evolutionarily designed to be exposed to all
sorts of viruses during their lifetime, and so they should keep going to school
and infecting each other. Then, that contributes to herd immunity, which means
after about four weeks at the most, the elderly people could start joining
their family because then the virus would have been extinguished.
[00:01:36.02]
JOHN: You mention in the piece that
in fact you think containment
would prolong the duration of the virus. Can you talk
about that?
[00:01:45.00]
WITTKOWSKI: With all respiratory
diseases, the only thing that
stops the disease is herd immunity. About 80% of the
people need to have had contact with the virus, and the majority of them won't
even have recognized that they were infected, or they had very, very mild
symptoms, especially if they are children. So, it's very important to keep the
schools open and kids mingling to spread the virus to get herd immunity as fast
as possible, and then the elderly people, who should be separated, and the
nursing homes should be closed during that time, can come back and meet their
children and grandchildren after about 4 weeks when the virus has been
exterminated.
[00:02:33.24]
JOHN: And so, what do you make of
the policy that was enacted in
the United States and England and most places
throughout the world, this policy of containment, shelter-in-place, etc.?
What's your opinion of it?
[00:02:47.05]
WITTKOWSKI: Well, what people are
trying to do is flatten the
curve. I don't really know why. But, what happens is
if you flatten the curve, you also prolong, to widen it, and it takes more
time. And I don't see a good reason for a respiratory disease to stay in the
population longer than necessary.
[00:03:06.17]
JOHN: And what do you say to people
who just say, "We just didn't
know about the lethality of this virus and it was the
smartest thing to do, to do what we did, and contain everybody, because we just
didn't have the data."
[00:03:23.16]
WITTKOWSKI: We had two other SARS
viruses before. Or,
coronaviruses. It's not the first coronavirus that
comes out, and it won't be the last. And for all respiratory diseases, we have
the same type of an epidemic. If you leave it alone, it comes for two weeks, it
peaks, and it goes for two weeks and it's gone.
[00:03:46.07]
JOHN: You were speaking to my producer
the other day on the
phone, and you said, “The pandemic is over.” What do
you mean by that?
[00:03:56.04]
WITTKOWSKI: There are no more new
cases in China and in South
Korea. The number of new cases in Europe is already
beginning to decline. The virus came later to the US, so here we see a bit of
an incline, maybe, and leveling off within the next couple of days. And if we
see that the cases are not increasing dramatically, that means that the number
of new infections has already declined substantially and peaked about a week
ago.
[00:04:27.09]
LIBBY: Do you believe the Chinese
statistics? Do you think they've
lied to us? Do you believe the stats that have come
out of China?
[00:04:36.09]
WITTKOWSKI: The epidemic has ended
there, yes. Because
otherwise, we would see people emerging - and even in
China, it's today very difficult to keep information under the hood. If there
were lots of cases in hospitals, if the hospitals that they built, the
temporary hospitals, were still full, we would hear that. This could not be suppressed.
[00:05:03.25]
JOHN: During the press briefing
yesterday, Fauci, and the President,
and the rest of the people assembled, were saying that,
had they not done the containment strategy that they have done, that upwards of
2 million people would have died in the United States. What do you think of
that figure?
[00:05:22.27]
WITTKOWSKI: Well, I'm not paid by
the government, so I'm
entitled to actually do science. If the government, if
there had been no intervention, the epidemic would have been over, like every
other respiratory disease epidemic.
[00:05:44.05] JOHN: And how many, in your estimation, would have died? Would
it have been that much?
[00:05:48.25]
WITTKOWSKI: Okay. We have, right
now, let's take realistic
numbers in the United Sates: we have about 25,000
cases every day, that is probably the upper limit - make it 30,000 - who knows?
But let's talk about 25,000. 2% of them will actually have symptoms - that is
500 cases a day. Maybe a third or a fifth - let's say half of them - will need
to be hospitalized. That's 250 patients a day. If they have been hospitalized
for about 10 days, that means that we will have - our hospital system will have
to deal with 2,500 patients every day for a certain period of time - that could
be 3 or 4 weeks, and then the number will dramatically decrease again and the
whole epidemic will be over.
[00:06:51.20]
JOHN: And of those hospitalized
cases, what, in your estimation,
how many would die?
[00:06:59.15]
WITTKOWSKI: 2% will die-
[00:07:03.00]
JOHN: Of the hospitalized cases?
[00:07:05.19]
WITTKOWSKI: Of all cases.
[00:07:06.26]
JOHN: Of all symptomatic cases.
[00:07:06.26]
WITTKOWSKI: Of all symptomatic cases. 2% of all
symptomatic
cases will die. That is 2% of the 250,000 a day. So
that is 500 people a day, and that will happen over 4 weeks. So, that could be
as high as 10,000 people. Now, that compares to the normal numbers of flus
during the flu season, and we have in the United States about 35,000 deaths due
to flu every year during the flu season. So, it would be part of the normal
situation during the flu season.
[00:07:52.13]
LIBBY: Are they reporting flu deaths
this year or is everything just
corona? Is there any statistic for flu death?
[00:08:01.19]
WITTKOWSKI: Yeah, there is a
statistic for flu. It's currently at
about 10,000-12,000. So, together with the Corona
deaths, it's about regular flu season.
[00:08:12.09]
JOHN: You’re basing your estimate
now on the latest available
numbers?
[00:08:16.07]
WITTKOWSKI: Yes.
[00:08:16.20]
LIBBY: So, what accounts, then, for
the fact that the hospitals are
suddenly more overrun than they have been in a
previous flu season, and for world leaders and the news media just going crazy?
[00:08:29.26]
WITTKOWSKI: Funding for hospitals
has, as everybody knows, not
increased recently. So, hospitals had to cut down, and,
therefore, they now have to run their emergency plans, which is not terrible.
That's what they have been planning for, for decades, so if they have to put up
some tents in Central Park, that's not the end of the world. The tents are
there, they're maintained very well, and they will be there for a few weeks -
three, four, maybe, and then the crisis will be over. This is not a situation
nobody has ever thought about.
[00:09:16.07]
JOHN: Do you really think that
there's a major shortage of masks,
and things like this?
[00:09:21.13]
WITTKOWSKI: Of what?
[00:09:21.13]
JOHN: Masks and PPE and all this?
What do you think about all that?
Why should there be a shortage of those things?
[00:09:28.00]
WITTKOWSKI: Because people are
getting crazy now and it's
almost like the toilet paper [...].
[00:09:36.02]
JOHN: I knew someone at a NICU who
suddenly - two weeks ago,
in New York, at NYU, suddenly all the masks and all
the hand sanitizer was gone. So....what do you think
happened there?
[00:09:51.18]
WITTKOWSKI: Like the toilet paper.
Shortages happen now and
then, all the time.
[00:09:57.05]
JOHN: Right, sure.
[00:10:01.02] WITTKOWSKI: And if you have somebody reporting what's
happening that day, in that hospital, possible.
[00:10:09.23]
JOHN: Yeah. Sure.
[00:10:13.05]
WITTKOWSKI: Does it reflect the
state of the whole hospital
system in New York? Not necessarily.
[00:10:19.14]
JOHN: Right. What do you think about
their latest figure that because
of, they claim that because of social distancing, that
we've saved ourselves from the 2 million dead, but that we are probably looking
at 150-200,000 dead, though they've said that it's possible that it could be
lower, if we are really, really good about social distancing, etc. What do you
think about their new estimate of death?
[00:10:52.12]
WITTKOWSKI: Social distancing
definitely is good. It prevented
the sky from falling down.
[00:11:00.04]
JOHN: Are you being ironic?
[00:11:01.19]
WITTKOWSKI: Of course! I don't know
where these numbers are
coming from - they're totally unrealistic. There are
no indications that this flu is fundamentally different from every other flu.
We know what happened in China, we know what happened in South Korea, we know
what happened, or is happening, in Europe. There are no indications that
anything is different from a regular flu. Maybe it's a bit worse than other
flus - could be?
[00:11:32.02]
For a respiratory disease, the flu ends during springtime, that people
spend more time outdoors because outdoors, the viruses
cannot easily spread. That is a form of containment, spending more time
outdoors.
[00:11:55.00]
JOHN: So, we're now spending more
time indoors. We've been told
to go indoors. Isn't that- doesn't that help keep the
virus going?
[00:12:03.17]
WITTKOWSKI: It keeps the virus
healthy, yeah.
[00:12:08.19]
LIBBY: So
we should be told to go outdoors?
[00:12:10.18]
WITTKOWSKI: Yeah. Going outdoors is
what stops every
respiratory disease.
[00:12:25.15]
JOHN: People will say that the
reason why China came out of this
okay in the end is because they went into such severe
lockdown. What do you say to that?
[00:12:37.18] WITTKOWSKI: They had an advantage that in the beginning, they
didn’t know what they were dealing with. So, it took
them a long time to start the containment or social distancing, which, in the course
of the epidemic is good, because there was enough time for the virus to reach
herd immunity before the social distancing started.
[00:13:00.14]
JOHN: Now, it's interesting that you
say that, because at Imperial
College, you know Neil Ferguson has changed his
estimate of the number of dead in England from 500,000 to 20,000 or less, and
he says that that is because of social distancing. Now, we also know that the way in which
social distancing was implemented in England was not very severe, or extreme,
or efficient, so this was after one day of lockdown, he announced that in fact,
it would be 20,000 or less. Is there any possibility that that number would
have changed that way because of the social distancing?
[00:13:46.14]
WITTKOWSKI: No. Actually, we have
data for that.
[00:13:53.23]
I looked into the claim that people make that, in China and South
Korea, the social distancing had successfully helped
to control the epidemic. I looked at the dates when people actually started
social distancing. In China, the epidemic peaked on February 1st to
February 5th, in that period. But the schools were not closed until
February the 20th - that was 2 weeks later. In South Korea, we have
a similar pattern. In Daegu, or however that city is being pronounced, where
the Church of Shincheonji had that outbreak. The
self-quarantine was ordered only on February the 23rd, but the peak
in that city happened; the national distancing was not advised until February
the 29th, so that's a week later, when the national peak happened.
So, both in China and in South Korea, social distancing started only long after
the number of infections had already started to decline, and therefore had very
little impact on the epidemic. That means they had already reached herd
immunity or were about to reach herd immunity. They were very close. But by
installing the social distancing, they prevented it to actually getting to the
final point, and this is why we are still seeing new cases in South Korea,
several weeks after the peak.
[00:16:02.18]
JOHN: You said that this is the sort
of contagion, because it's
airborne, that you can't deal with by doing tracing or
by social distancing. Explain why that is.
[00:16:16.20]
WITTKOWSKI: One thing is tracing
with an airborne disease is
even more difficult than tracing with a sexually
transmitted disease which is difficult enough, as we know from AIDS. Most
people know who they had contact with, sexual contact with, over the last two
weeks. As a human being travelling the subway in New York and doing other
things in New York that we just have to do in New York, I couldn't tell you who
the two three four hundred thousand people are I came in contact with over the
last two weeks. So, contrast tracing for a respiratory disease is impossible.
[00:17:02.23]
JOHN: Why doesn't containment work
for an airborne disease?
[00:17:06.07]
WITTKOWSKI: You cannot stop the
spread of a respiratory disease
within a family, and you cannot stop it from spreading
with neighbors, with people who are delivering, who are physicians - anybody.
People are social, and even in times of social distancing, they have contacts,
and any of those contacts could spread the disease. It will go slowly, and so
it will not build up herd immunity, but it will happen. And it will go on
forever unless we let it go.
[00:17:41.23]
JOHN: Let me ask you, you don't feel
this requires a vaccine?
[00:17:49.20]
WITTKOWSKI: We don't have a vaccine
against the common cold.
We don't have - we have some vaccines against flu, but
they are not that effective. Would it be nice to have a vaccine against SARS?
Yeah. It would be nice. But it would help to create herd immunity a bit faster,
because those who have the vaccine are already immune, and those who don't,
they just need to be exposed to become immune.
[00:18:31.06]
JOHN: You could get this immunity
naturally?
[00:18:34.04]
WITTKOWSKI: For some reason that we
haven't fully understood
yet, humankind has survived all sorts of respiratory
diseases. Nature has a way of making sure that we survive.
[00:18:55.08]
LIBBY: This morning all the tv
doctors were on, saying that, because,
obviously, they're starting to read some of these
pieces about the statistics being off, etc., and so there you had Doctor
Jennifer Ashton on ABC, and I forget the others, saying, "This is more
contagious than any seasonal flu or the H1N1, and this is why we have to take
it so seriously because it's so much more contagious." Is that just
ridiculous?
[00:19:22.03]
WITTKOWSKI: I don't know where that
opinion comes from. We
have no - the data that we have speaks against it.
[00:19:31.22]
JOHN: And what data do we have and
where are you getting your-
[00:19:35.05]
WITTKOWSKI: We have seen- well. You
can download the data
from the European CDC every day, the data, all over
the world, and you can analyze it. And that's what I have done, and probably
other people also have done.
[00:19:53.05]
JOHN: Okay, so, what does this graph
tell you, in general?
[00:19:57.21]
WITTKOWSKI: It tells us that there
are no - the numbers in Europe
are not increasing anymore, of cases. The deaths
follow it by about a week, and that's normal because people die after they
develop the disease. But the important thing is that the numbers of infections
peaked around a week ago and is already on the decline. The European data
includes the data in France where suddenly the number of cases doubled from one
day to the next. This is somebody finding a box of reports in an office and
sending them in and said, "Oops! We forgot to report that over the last
month!" So, this, the epidemic in France is not increasing anymore, even
though somebody found a couple of reports in a shoebox.
[00:21:04.14]
JOHN: And why - when they - won't
governments just say, "that's
because we practiced social distancing?"
[00:21:11.00]
WITTKOWSKI: I'm not a psychiatrist.
I don't know what other
people think. I'm a scientist.
[00:21:16.02]
WITTKOWSKI: We can see that in
China, in Korea, the epidemic
went down, and the epidemic did exactly what every
other epidemic did, and it's not that 400% of all people died. Maybe it's 3
rather than 1% - maybe! But nothing is fundamentally different from the flus
that we have seen before. Every couple of years there is a flu that is a bit
worse than the other flus were, and it goes away in exactly the way the other
flus went away, and this one behaves exactly the same way. The epidemic has
ended in China, at least, in the provinces where it was. It has ended in South
Korea. In Europe, it's declining and will be ending anytime soon. Could be a
bit longer than typically, because of the containment, which flattened and
prolonged the epidemic. And so, if we really -- that's really good if we want
to be affected by it as long as it gets. And in the United States we are doing
the same thing. We are prolonging the epidemic to flatten the curve. But
eventually, it will end.
[00:22:43.04]
LIBBY: Speaking of the numbers, I
noticed in your paper, you said
that in mid-March there was a change in the reporting
system. What was that all about?
[00:22:50.18]
WITTKOWSKI: This is not the first
time it happens. On March 20th,
Germany changed its reporting system and suddenly, a
lot of cases that had not been reported before were reported. But this is not a
sudden increase in cases. Over all, this had no impact on the dynamic of the
German epidemic. It increased until about March 27th or so, and has been stable or declining since. The problem in
this disease is that reporting and diagnosing are not
separated and recorded differently. In the AIDS epidemic, every case was
reported with a day of diagnosis and a day of reporting. For whatever reason,
this standard developed during the AIDS epidemic is not being employed here.
So, we cannot deconvolute this data.
[00:24:25.22]
In Italy there was a spike on one day, there was a spike on one day in
Norway. But we have seen now so many of these spikes,
they last for one day and then the numbers go back to where it was before. So,
we are not really scared anymore if we see something changing very fast. Nature
doesn't jump. As people have known for a long time. The course of an epidemic
is always smooth. There is never a ten-fold increase in number of cases from
one day to the other.
[00:25:08.17]
There is nothing to be scared about. This is a flu epidemic like every
other flu. Maybe a bit more severe, but nothing that
is fundamentally different from the flus that we see in other years.
[00:25:33.23]
JOHN: What do you think accounts for
the difference in response this
time than say to the Swine Flu in 2009? Why are we
suddenly so much more panicked and having shut the world down? What do you
think is going on?
[00:25:50.10]
WITTKOWSKI: I think at least one
factor is the internet. People are
using the internet now much more often, and so news,
wrong or false, is spreading the globe within hours, if not minutes. And so,
let's say 50 years ago, we would read in the paper that about a week ago there
was an epidemic of flu in the United States or in China or somewhere else, and
at that time, it was already over. So, people would say, "Okay, that
happens all the time." Now, what we read is, "Oh! There were 785
cases in the Vatican for two days" Eh, maybe not. And even if it was a
reporting error, these stories are circulating the world and contributing to
chaos and people being afraid of things they shouldn't be afraid of.
[00:27:05.04]
JOHN: And what do you think are the
possible health risks of the
policy that we are following now, the shelter in place?
[00:27:14.01]
WITTKOWSKI: Well, we will see maybe
a total of fewer cases –
that is possible. However, we will see more cases
among the elderly, because we have prevented the school children from creating
herd immunity. And so, in the end, we will see more death because the school
children don't die, it's the elderly people who die, we will see more death
because of this social distancing.
[00:27:43.23]
JOHN: So, we keep being told now
about the second wave that will
come in the fall. Now, tell us what your thoughts
about the second wave are and how - it seems like from everything you're saying
is that we'll have a second wave because of social distancing-
[00:28:03.18]
WITTKOWSKI: Yes.
.[00:28:04.10]
JOHN: Okay, so, could you say that
in a sentence for me?
[00:28:06.21]
WITTKOWSKI: Okay. If we had herd
immunity now, there couldn't
be a second wave in autumn. Herd immunity lasts for a
couple of years, typically, and that's why the last SARS epidemic we had in
2003, it lasted 15 years for enough people to become susceptible again so that
a new epidemic could spread of a related virus. Because typically, there is
something that requires cross-immunity, so if you were exposed to one of the
SARS viruses, you are less likely to fall ill with another SARS virus. So, if
we had herd immunity, we wouldn't have a second wave. However, if we are
preventing herd immunity from developing, it is almost guaranteed that we have
a second wave as soon as either we stop the social distancing or the climate changes
with winter coming or something like that.
[00:29:19.10]
JOHN: But, because this is an
airborne illness, it sounds to me as
though social distancing wouldn't even have prevented
more people from getting it, right? I mean, it already spread, because it's
airborne, because it lives on surfaces. By the time England or the US shut
down, it had probably already gotten all around, right?
[00:29:44.16]
WITTKOWSKI: Unfortunately, it seems
that in western countries
where the story of China was already known, people
started with social distancing, as imperfect as it is, before the epidemic
could reach the level that is needed to develop herd immunity.
[00:30:10.16]
JOHN: I see. And so, to summarize,
you are saying that's going to
flatten and extend the epidemic and create the second
wave that we are being told to fear?
[00:30:21.00]
WITTKOWSKI: Yes. The second wave is
a direct consequence of
social distancing.
[00:30:28.16]
JOHN: That's wonderful to hear.
[00:30:29.13]
WITTKOWSKI: We already know that the
social distancing cost the
US taxpayer 2 trillion dollars, in addition to
everything else that it costs, but it also has severe consequences for our
social life, and depression is definitely something that we will be
researching. I can say for myself, walking through New York City right now is
depressing.
[00:31:10.17]
JOHN: So, what do you think? Should
we tolerate this? Should we
stand for staying sheltered in house arrest till ...
what is it? April 30th they want?
[00:31:23.02]
LIBBY: April 30th now.
[00:31:24.20] JOHN: I mean, is that what
we ought to do or should we, perhaps,
be resisting?
[00:31:31.00]
WITTKOWSKI: We should be resisting,
and we should, at least,
hold our politicians responsible. We should have a
discussion with our politicians. One thing we definitely need to do, and that
would be safe and effective, is opening schools. Let the children spread the
virus among themselves, which is a necessity to get herd immunity. That was
probably one of the most destructive actions the government has done. We should
focus on the elderly and separating them from the population where the virus is
circulating. We should not prevent the virus from circulating among school
children, which is the fastest way to create herd immunity.
[00:32:24.09]
JOHN: And can you explain, just one
more time, as clearly as you
can, what's the concept with natural herd immunity?
What happens to the virus when it's gone through the population in the way
you're describing?
[00:32:39.07]
WITTKOWSKI: If 80% of people have
had contact with the virus
and are therefore immune, and that, typically, that
contact is just a form of immunization. So, there is no disease, there's
nothing happening, and still there is immunity. If 80% of people are immune and
somebody has a virus and is infectious, it will be very difficult for that
infectious person to find somebody who is still susceptible, not immune. And
therefore, this person will not infect anybody else and therefore we won't have
the disease spreading. That is herd immunity.
[00:33:29.12]
JOHN: And what happens to the virus?
What happens to the virus, at
that point?
[00:33:33.23]
WITTKOWSKI: Well, viruses don't
live, technically, but the virus
will eventually be destroyed.
[00:33:41.15]
JOHN: I see.
[00:33:44.03]
WITTKOWSKI: Unless, right now, it is
at the drycleaners. My
drycleaner closed down because of COVID, so I can't
get my clothes cleaned. And so, if there should be viruses on my clothes, which
is possible, I cannot get them cleaned at the drycleaner because the drycleaner
is a non-essential service and therefore closed down. We are experiencing all
sorts of counterproductive consequences of not well-thought-through policy.
[00:34:17.17]
JOHN: Should there be a major
testing regime in place where the
whole population is tested, and should that be a
prerequisite for us coming out?
[00:34:28.17]
WITTKOWSKI: Any answer with two
letters will do. No.
[00:34:36.02]
JOHN: So, just describe why testing
is not productive.
[00:34:40.18]
WITTKOWSKI: Testing doesn't stop
anything by itself. Testing
could give us, if we do antibody testing, not testing
for the actual virus. If we do antibody testing, we would actually get an
estimate of how close we are to herd immunity. That could be useful. But,
testing for people who are infectious means they probably have already been, for
two or three days, been in for half of their infectious period. Now, they are
being tested positive what are they supposed to do? We are already having
social distancing. They can't do much more than they are already doing. Testing
for respiratory disease is neither necessary nor effective.
[00:35:35.14]
JOHN: Now, you said, you mentioned
earlier that you have asthma.
And I'm guessing you're over 40?
[00:35:43.02]
WITTKOWSKI: Yes.
[00:35:45.01]
JOHN: Are you at all nervous about-
[00:35:47.15]
WITTKOWSKI: No.
[00:35:48.09]
JOHN: Why aren't you nervous?
[00:35:50.05]
WITTKOWSKI: We don't die of the
virus. We die of pneumonia.
So, if we have a virus respiratory disease, the
disease - once the body has created antibodies, the immune system has created
antibodies, the antibodies, or the immune system is killing all infected cells
which destroys much of the mucosa. And bacteria can easily settle on that
destroyed mucosa, and then cause pneumonia. And it is the pneumonia that is
killing people, if it's not treated. I had a virus, whatever it was, maybe it
was - who knows - about three weeks ago, and my physician gave me the
antibiotics I should take if the disease gets better and then gets worse,
because that is a sign of pneumonia and then we have to treat the pneumonia.
[00:36:56.06]
JOHN: And pneumonia is what is
treated with antibiotics-
[00:36:59.10]
WITTKOWSKI: Pneumonia is what's
treated with antibiotics. Not
the virus.
[00:37:04.08]
JOHN: Okay. So, you feel that it's -
you may have already had
COVID-19?
[00:37:10.06]
WITTKOWSKI: Okay. At the end of that
experience which reminds
me of Camus’s Plague,
if you ever read it, you will see lots of parallels, unfortunately. So, no, I
am not scared. I may have had it, like many other people, who had a mild flu
like I had, or had no symptoms whatsoever. That is the normal thing happening
to 70% of the people in the end, or even 75%, and it is the remaining that get
ill and need treatment. And they should seek treatment as early as possible -
you shouldn't wait. And it's definitely helpful if you have health insurance.
[00:38:05.11]
WITTKOWSKI: The problem in cities
like New York is there are
too many people who don't have health insurance. And
if you don't have health insurance, you are hesitant to see your doctor. And if
you are hesitant, you see the doctor too late, and if pneumonia has already
progressed, and you see your doctor, it's too late for antibiotics to be
effective and you may die. The best way is isolate if you are old and fragile,
and if you get the disease, see your doctor as soon as possible.
[00:38:53.07]
JOHN: 75% you say won't get any
symptoms, maybe even 80%,
right? Or is it more? I mean, do we know what that
rate is right now?
[00:39:04.00]
WITTKOWSKI: We don't know what it is
right now. For that, we
would need to do antibody testing, and very wide
antibody testing. However, we already see the epidemic declining and that is a
sign that we have at least a substantial proportion of people who are immune.
It may not be enough for herd immunity yet. We may not have reached the 80%
that we need. But we may have 50%.
[00:39:34.12]
JOHN: And so, what do you think we
should do at this point? Should
we pivot to what you suggested earlier or is it too
late for what you suggested?
[00:39:45.18]
WITTKOWSKI: It's difficult to tell.
It may be too late. It may not be
too late. The problem is, if we are artificially
keeping the number of infections low among low-risk people like schoolchildren
and their parents, we may not have reached herd immunity yet, so if we are
stopping, we may have an increase in the number of new infections. That is the
downside of starting containment. We should not believe that we are more
intelligent than Mother Nature was when we were evolving. Mother Nature was
pretty good at making sure that we're a good match for the disease that we
happen to see virtually every year.
[00:40:40.09] LEE: But is this a pandemic? That's
the big question.
[00:40:44.07]
WITTKOWSKI: It is a pandemic like
every flu every year is.
[00:40:47.06]
LEE: A pandemic, yeah?
[00:40:50.21]
JOHN: So, is there anything else you
want to say about this that –
what's been aggravating you the most? Or what would
you like people to know?
[00:41:02.18]
WITTKOWSKI: I think people in the
United States and maybe other
countries as well are more docile than they should be.
People should talk with their politicians, question them, ask them to explain, because
if people don't stand up to their rights, their rights will be forgotten. I'm
Knut Wittkowski. I was at the Rockefeller University,
I have been an epidemiologist for 35 years, and I have been modeling epidemics
for 35 years. It's a pleasure to have the ability to help people to understand,
but it's a struggle to get heard.