Corona Astrologer Christian Drosten Acknowledges that SARS-2 Has Become an Influenza-Level Risk, Fields New Justifications for Masks and Social Distancing

Why newspapers even bother to interview this strange virus hysteric any longer, is a deepening mystery.

Germany’s foremost Corona astrologer, Christian Drosten, returned from obscurity to grant a long and very terrible interview to the Süddeutsche Zeitung a few days ago. There is nothing in it that would surprise even the dimmest goldfish. Things have gotten better but we must still be careful; perhaps in a few years we will be able to retire our caution, but that time has not yet come; even if the virus no longer poses a serious danger to individuals, it might still cause social disruptions, so we must still mask and work to reduce our contacts.

Here are some excerpts, to give you the flavour the thing:

… [T]he great burden of disease has been eliminated. The infection mortality rate, which used to be 1.5 percent in Germany, has probably been reduced by a factor of 20 to 30 through vaccinations and surviving infections. This puts us in the range of a substantial flu season. From the individual’s point of view, the danger of the pandemic – that is, that I as an individual will die from it – is therefore over for most people. But you also have to think in terms of public health. And there, the pandemic is only over when there are no more new waves that cause society-wide problems. …

Absence from work can be a problem. So we need to take this society-wide view. Full intensive care units and deaths were primarily a human problem at the beginning of the pandemic. Many people died, these were terrible fates for individuals. What drove us was compassion. We did not say, what is a life worth if it has already been lived for 70 years? But now we have to consider the medical position of the whole population. …

Asked why measures are necessary in Germany but not in neighbouring countries, like Switzerland, he has this to say:

In Switzerland, the population is small, there are no comparable metropolitan areas, and mobility isn’t as high. These are all major factors in the spread of viruses. In the same way, comparisons with Scandinavia are flawed: Those countries are huge, the population density low, the towns are small. The vaccination rates there are very high, and society has …. a greater sense of cohesion and follows recommendations to a large extent. I was in Sweden a few weeks ago. There are recommendations in the supermarket on how to deal with SARS-CoV-2. Among other things, it says: If you are 70 years old, you’d better stay at home. Nobody in Germany would accept that. We’d do better to compare ourselves with larger countries like Great Britain. And there, the pandemic caused almost twice as many deaths per inhabitant as in Germany. The difference is in the measures. Because vaccination was worse here than there.

Asked if we’ll need heavy restrictions for the Winter, he says:

Wearing masks indoors will certainly be necessary again. And the population will probably manage the contact reduction themselves. If people notice that people are getting sick all around them, they might not go out in the evening after all.

Harsher measures may not be as necessary as before, but only because we can rely on “personal responsibility” now:

The situation has changed. With an incidence of 50 [before Omicron], which had to be countered in earlier waves because of the full intensive care units, many people could not perceive that the disease was present in their personal environment. But with the high incidences we are likely to have in winter, you can see that the disease really exists. …

It will be important for politicians to monitor the situation closely. Before so many people fall ill that they can no longer buy anything, that the hospitals no longer function or that there are no police officers on duty, measures must be taken. I also assume that there will be companies that will have to close down for a few weeks.