By Prof. Dr. Thomas Aigner

Global Research, February 14, 2021

Letter to the President of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz, 

Dear colleagues, 

With greatest astonishment, with deepest concern, even bewilderment, I have taken note of the “7th ad hoc statement” of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina of 8.12.2020. In my opinion, this paper is not worthy of an honest, critical-balancing science oriented towards the service and welfare of human beings. I do not have medical expertise. However, as a scientist committed to nothing but the pure truth, I take the liberty of speaking out.

I feel very strongly alarmed by several points:

1. on 11/27/2020, a group of 22 internationally renowned experts submitted the following expert opinion on the PCR test, the linchpin of the “pandemic”, for the journal Eurosurveillance:

“External peer review of the RT-PCR test to detect SARS-CoV-2 reveals 10 major scientific flaws at the molecular and methodological level: consequences for false positive results”.

Quote: “This highly questions the scientific validity of the test”. Furthermore, the serious remark: “serious conflicts of interest of the authors are not mentioned” (1).

1. The PCR test is the basis of the justification for declaring a “pandemic”, and RKI, politicians and the media announce the positive test results daily as so-called “new infections”. According to the 22 independent experts, the test contains “several scientific inadequacies, errors and flaws”. It is clearly stated:

“the test (is) unsuitable as a specific diagnostic tool to identify the SARS-CoV-2 virus and make inferences about the presence of an infection”. 

Is it not obvious that there is an extremely serious problem here, which should actually shake the whole “pandemic”? I cannot understand why neither the Leopoldina nor other academies include this well-founded expert opinion and demand or initiate a further, thorough and scientifically clean clarification.

1. Based on this “pandemic”, which is based on at least a very questionable test, a worldwide vaccination campaign is now to be started on an unprecedented scale;and this with vaccines that have never been tested before and that have been developed at an unprecedented speed. In light of the first reported serious side effects and after warnings from renowned experts, it is clear that the completely novel RNA vaccines have been far from adequately tested, especially with regard to long-term effects. Why are the academies silent on such existential issues?

Incidentally, there are currently several statements by medical practitioners that are diametrically opposed to the Leopoldina paper. For example, the Chairman of the Board of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, Prof. Gassen, expects that the hard lockdown now ordered will fail (3). The infectiologist Prof. Schrappe declares the entire lockdown policy a definite failure (4).

I had hoped that the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz, as an important sister organization of the National Academy of Sciences, would make a critical statement on the Leopoldina statement. Regrettably, this has not happened so far. Are not the academies the guardians of pure science and also of the freedom of the sciences ? Aren’t the venerable academies particularly challenged in a scientific landscape that is increasingly characterized by third-party funding and the massive influence of powerful lobby interests (e.g. the pharmaceutical industry)? Is it really the task of an academy such as the Leopoldina to fuel the scaremongering of the media and politics?

1. Where is the broad discourse that used to be customary, with a balanced assessment of the sometimes very contradictory statements by scientists and physicians from various disciplines, lawyers, psychologists, sociologists, economists and philosophers? Why is there no reaction from the academies when, in recent months, the voices of proven experts (often of international standing) who articulate an assessment that deviates from the one-size-fits-all narrative, indeed in some cases diametrically contradicts it, are repeatedly ignored, marginalized, even defamed, censored, and deleted from social media? Why no reaction of the academies, if the right to freedom of science and freedom of expression, which is guaranteed in the Basic Law, as well as other fundamental rights are trampled ? Has Germany learned nothing from history?

After the governments refer to this, from my point of view disastrous paper of the National Academy of Sciences when imposing a renewed “hard lockdown”, as well as because of the points listed above, I have decided, after careful consideration, to take the certainly unusual step of resigning from the Academy of Sciences in Mainz as an expression of my personal protest.

I cannot reconcile it with my conscience to be a part of this kind of science. I want to serve a science that is committed to fact-based honesty, balanced transparency, and comprehensive humanity.

For the attention of Prof. Dr. Burkhard Hillebrands (Vice President, Mathematical and Natural Sciences Class),

members of the Mathematical and Natural Sciences Class of the Mainz Academy of Sciences,

and Prof. Dr. Gerald Haug (President of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina).

Positive PCR tests drop after WHO instructs vendors to lower cycle thresholds. We have been played like a fiddle

Hospitalization rates associated with Covid have dropped from a high of 132,500 Americans on January 6 to 71,500 on February 12.  The US had 920,000 staffed hospital beds in 2019, of which 14.4% harbored a Covid case last month, and 7.8% do now.

This tremendous drop was predicted. Every hospitalized patient is tested for Covid, often repeatedly, using PCR tests with high false positive rates. False positives are due in considerable part to exhorbitant cycle thresholds. This refers to the maximum number of doublings that are allowed during the test. The problem caused by excessive cycle thresholds was well described in a NY Times article last August, but has otherwise been ignored by the mass media. Dr. Sin Hang Lee challenged the FDA’s reliance on exhorbitant cycle thresholds in its acceptance of efficacy claims for Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine in early December. He and FDA remain engaged in this debate.

The WHO instructed PCR test users and manufacturers on December 14 and again on January 20 that PCR cycle thresholds needed to come down. The December 14 guidance stated WHO’s concern regarding “an elevated risk for false SARS-CoV-2 results” and pointed to “background noise which may lead to a specimen with a high cycle threshold value result being [incorrectly] interpreted as a positive result.”

The first instruction has been superceded by the second, which additionally advises on clinical use of the test:  If the “test results do not correspond with the clinical presentation, a new specimen should be taken and retested…” While this implies that the test should only be performed in those with symptoms, and its results should be interpreted with the clinical context in mind, most PCR tests in the US are used very differently: to screen asymptomatics at work, at colleges and universities, to permit border crossings, etc.  No caution is applied to the results. One single positive test defines someone as a Covid case. Yet it is well known, and was acknowledged in WHO’s January guidance, that screening in low Covid prevalence situations, such as in the screening of asymptomatics, increases the risk of false positives. And the risk increases as the prevalence of disease drops, such that in situations of low disease prevalence, it is common to find that most positives are actually false positives.  For example, see this BMJ chart and then the real-life example in the comment below it.

Everyone in the field knew that the PCR test results were bogus.  Even Tony Fauci admitted last July that cycle thresholds above 35 were not measuring virus, and furthermore that virus could not be cultured from samples that required a high number of cycles to show positivity.

But the drumbeat from the Coronavirus Task Force and some academics and others was “Test all, test often”–despite the inordinate numbers of false positives and negatives. Congress repeatedly allocated many billions of dollars for testing (often free for the person being tested) and so testing quickly mushroomed. Nearly two million Covid tests a day were recorded in the US over the last 3 months. Most of these have been PCR tests which, despite their problems, are still considered the most accurate. Most of the remaining tests performed were rapid antigen tests. These tests too suffer from high false positive rates, as the FDA warned last November.

While daily deaths have only dropped about 15% since January 12, there have been dramatic drops during the month in new cases (down 60% from 250,000 new cases/day to 100,000) and, as noted, in hospitalizations (down 46%). Reports claim a total of 475,000 Americans have died from Covid.

However, none of these numbers are reliable.  In addition to inaccurate PCR results, a variety of other measures have skewed the reported number of deaths from Covid.

While CDC electronically codes other causes of death, it has chosen to hand code every Covid death, and explains:

o “It takes extra time to code COVID-19 deaths. While 80% of deaths are electronically processed and coded by NCHS within minutes, most deaths from COVID-19 must be coded by a person, which takes an average of 7 days.”

I am waiting for CDC to answer my Freedom of Information Act query, which requested the protocol CDC’s coders use for coding Covid-19 as a cause of death. Why is CDC treating Covid deaths differently from deaths due to other conditions?

CDC changed the way it coded death certificates for a Covid-caused death last March, to include everyone for whom Covid is in any way contributory to the death. By placing different parts of the instructions about coding on different web pages, CDC successfully hid what it was doing. On one page, the guidance states, “If COVID-19 is determined to be a cause of death, it should be reported on the death certificate.” On a different webpage, CDC states: “When COVID-19 is reported as a cause of death on the death certificate, it is coded and counted as a death due to COVID-19.” 

CDC has encouraged providers to be generous with Covid designations. And the Covid death definition appears to be a moving target, variable across states. CDC attempts to explain why its mortality numbers do not add up, and includes this excuse: “Other reporting systems use different definitions or methods for counting deaths.” But it is CDC that chose not to issue uniform guidelines.

• Anyone with a positive Covid test who dies within 30 days of the test is counted as a death due to Covid, even if Covid is not even mentioned on the death certificate in Nevada. Colorado coroners are being forced to list gunshot wound deaths as due to Covid if the victim had a positive recent test. Oregon’s health agency reported last August  that:

“We consider COVID-19 deaths to be: 

Deaths in which a patient hospitalized for any reason within 14 days of a positive COVID-19 test result dies in the hospital or within the 60 days following discharge.

Deaths in which COVID-19 is listed as a primary or contributing cause of death on a death certificate.”

• CDC guesstimates that many deaths, perhaps half, which list generic pneumonia as the cause of death are actually Covid deaths, and redesignates them as Covid-caused deaths.

Weekly mortality surveillance data include a combination of machine coded and manually coded causes of death collected from death certificates. Prior to week 4 (the week ending January 30, 2021), the percentages of deaths due to PIC were higher among manually coded records than more rapidly available machine coded records. Improvements have been made to the machine coding process that allow for more COVID-19 related deaths to be machine coded, and going forward, the percentage of PIC deaths among machine coded and manually coded data are expected to be more similar. The data presented are preliminary and expected to change as more data are received and processed, but the amount of change in the percentage of deaths due to PIC should be lower going forward. Weeks for which the largest changes in the percentage of deaths due to PIC may occur are highlighted in gray in the figure below and should be interpreted with caution.

• CDC applies several statistical techniques to deal with anomalous data before publishing its cause of death results. The raw death data are not made available to the public.

By accepting excessive cycle thresholds for Covid PCR tests, CDC considerably expanded the numbers of Covid-positive cases and hospitalizations, as well as deaths.

I do not mean to imply that the tests, whose manufacturers may have recently reduced their cycle thresholds, are now accurate. Over 200 different PCR tests have been “authorized” under emergency rules by the FDA, which so far has not standardized or formally approved them. The public is in the dark as to whether and how each individual test may have changed in response to WHO’s instruction, and we remain uninformed about the accuracy of each test. In fact, it has been established by the American College of Pathology that PCR test results are not reproducible.

Today, the media are telling us to rejoice.  Maryland has just gotten its percentage of positive Covid tests below 5%, when a month ago the rate was 8.76%.  In my state of Maine, a reduction in the pecentage of test results that are positive has turned all counties ‘green,’ allowing schools to be open.

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Things are worse, things are better.  Wear no mask–no, wear a mask–hey, wear two masks. New variants with even more infectivity are coming! But they are no more lethal, and SARS-CoV-2 is quite infectious already, so will the new strains make an appreciable difference?

It seems that despite having recovered from Covid, we can be reinfected with the new viral strains. But how common is that? Does it simply mean you can have a positive PCR test, but be otherwise asymptomatic?

I found only a single case report of a person becoming severely ill from a new strain after having recovered from original Covid.

• The point is to keep us begging for the latest vaccine as soon as we have received the last but no-longer-effective vaccine.

Our families are being torn up. Our small businesses are going bankrupt.  Our countries, and probably we ourselves, are being scooped up by the banks, as borrowing on an unheard-of scale persists at a dizzying pace.

Who will pay these debts?  What will be the price? Can you see that the crashing of our economies is intentional, buttressed by lie after lie?

We are being lied into the abyss. Our so-called leaders are tossing us and especially our children and grandchildren over a cliff.  They threw away our Constitution long ago. Now, they have stolen and sold our future.

Please calm down.  Turn off all the “news” and ponder what has been happening. We can fix this mess, once enough of us understand it. Give it the time and focus it deserves.  Our leaders won’t save us.  Only WE can.