YouTube censors German epidemiologist Knut Wittkowski for opposing the lockdown and going against WHO recommendations
Earlier this month, we told you about Swedish Epidemiologist Dr. Johan Giesecke after he explained why coronavirus lockdowns policies are wrong and not evidence-based. Professor Johan Giesecke was a leading consultant on the Swedish model and the State Epidemiologist from 1995 to 2005. Surprising to many, even the World Health Organization (WHO) emergency expert praised Sweden for its response to the coronavirus. In a conference call with reporters, Dr. Michael Ryan says Sweden could be ‘future model’ for coronavirus policy.
Dr. Johan Giesecke is not the only expert against the lockdown. Dr. Knut M. Wittkowski is a German epidemiologist and former head of biostatistics, epidemiology and research design at Rockefeller University. Dr. Wittkowski is a ferocious critic of the nation’s current steps to fight the coronavirus. He derided social distancing, saying it only prolongs the virus’ existence and has attacked the current lockdown as mostly unnecessary. He later went on YouTube to post his views about the lockdown. However, YouTube censored him for opposing lockdown and pulled down his video after rackingup more than 1.3 million views.
When asked during an interview published in Spiked, Wittkowski said:
When the whole thing started, there was one reason given for the lockdown and that was to prevent hospitals from becoming overloaded. There is no indication that hospitals could ever have become overloaded, irrespective of what we did. So we could open up again, and forget the whole thing.
“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,” Dr. Wittkowski says in the now-deleted video. “They don’t tell you. They just say it violates our community standards. There’s no explanation for what those standards are or what standards it violated.”
In defense of the decision to pull down the video, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki told CNN:
“Anything that goes against [World Health Organization] recommendations would be a violation of our policy and so removal is another really important part of our policy,”
In the meantime, Dr. Wittkowski’s articles and interviews continue to circulate across the web. At one point, he compares COVID-19 to a “bad flu,” which likely made him a target for YouTube.
Update: It seems Dr. Wittkowski’s video is back on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/k0Q4naYOYDw
As big tech companies continue to tamp down on scientists and others with opposing views, it is probably the time for government to weigh in and stop the censorship. Below is a Twitter video of Dr. Wittkowski talking about the virus.
https://twitter.com/FatEmperor/status/1259281498487885831