Interview On Coronavirus With Dr. Claus Köhnlein, A Medical Specialist Of Internal Diseases

[Giraffe]

KenFM interviewed Dr. Claus Köhnlein on April 7. KenFM is a German independent news platform that is doing investigative journalism.

Links to the interview on youtube or directly on their website.

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The translation was PMed to me by user @blob69 for verification.

 

[Giraffe]

Interview on coronavirus with Dr. Claus Köhnlein, a medical specialist of internal diseases

Claus Köhnlein completed his residency in Oncology Department at the University of Kiel. Since 1993, he has worked in his own medical practice, treating hepatitis C and AIDS patients who are skeptical of antiviral medications.

KenFM: You have been studying coronaviruses for a long time. In 2009 you have already published a book on this topic, titled 'Virus Mania'. Before we move on to the questions, let me cite a paragraph from the book:

“A daily scan through the news gives the impression that the world is constantly invaded by virus epidemics. The latest headlines feature the so-called swine flu H1N1. The public is also continually terrorized by reports about the bird flu, SARS, hepatitis C, AIDS, Ebola and BSE. However, this virus mayhem ignores very basic scientific facts: the existence, the pathogenicity and the deadly effects of these agents have never been proven. Medical authorities and the media claim that the proof has been provided, but that is a consequence of the fact that some decades ago they stopped using a direct method of virus detection and instead began to rely on indirect detection (i.e. antibody and PCR tests). But modern methods of virus detection “do not tell us anything about the replication of the virus, which animal is carrier of the virus and how does the virus make people ill,” as more than a dozen of critical top virologists wrote in the science journal Science. “It is similar to looking at a fingerprint and using that image to determine if someone has bad breath.””

This is the introductory text to a book that you published in 2009, and now follows my first question. What kind of a test is used to determine the presence of the new coronavirus, what is the test measuring and how do we interpret the results?

Claus Köhnlein: The PCR method with all its drawbacks is also used for the new coronavirus. This test is extremely sensitive. Back then we have talked to the inventor of this test, Kary Mullis, that I have met with many times (unfortunately he passed away last year). He said: “This test is much too sensitive to be used in microbiology.” But sadly, that is exactly what happened. Now virologists mainly use this test, the disadvantage of which is that you cannot know if what you are measuring has anything to do with a patients’ clinical picture.

KenFM: Please explain what “sensitive” means.

Claus Köhnlein: Just one piece of DNA is enough for the test to react positively. But one piece of DNA is not enough for disease; in a patient who is ill due to a virus, we should find a large viral load, but this test doesn’t measure that.

KenFM: So this means that sensitivity is precisely the drawback of the test?

Claus Köhnlein: Exactly, the test does not prove a causal link to the disease. In other words, we do not know if what the test is measuring is causative for a disease whatsoever. And we often see patients who react positive to the test do not have a disease.

KenFM: There are different kinds of coronaviruses - the one that is now relevant bears a label covid-19 and is considered particularly dangerous. Do you agree?

Claus Köhnlein: I cannot accept that it is more dangerous.

Every day we are being told that the numbers of the infected are increasing, but these are always absolute numbers. If the numbers are constantly added up, they can't go down.

KenFM: So this means that the absolute number of people who tested positive is increasing, but this doesn’t mean that these people are getting so sick that they should go to a hospital. We cannot say that the situation is getting worse based on a number of tests being done.

Claus Köhnlein: That is exactly where the problem is. When the number of tests increases, of course the number of positive people will also go up. But the proportion of positive test results remains the same.

KenFM: And that is why we cannot assume that there was an actual increase.

Claus Köhnlein: Yes, that’s right. It also means that this is not a new virus. If the proportion of positive test results remains the same, this shows that we are measuring something that has been with us for a while. If the proportion would increase exponentially, that would mean that this is a new virus.

KenFM: According to Robert Koch Institute, the proportion of positive test results increased by only 1% (from 6 to 7%) during calendar weeks 11 and 12. That means that we should ask ourselves if the measures taken are justified. The virus spreading exponentially would mean that a larger and larger percentage of people would have to be infected with it. From a medical point of view, could one say that a positive test automatically means someone is ill and needs a doctor?

Claus Köhnlein: Not at all, this depends on the clinical picture. Usually no doctor is needed. Typically just sniffles and cough are present, sometimes also lung inflammation - in this case the help of a doctor is needed, but care must be taken to first determine whether it is a viral pneumonia or a bacterial infection, and only then should appropriate action be taken. If the infection is viral, I would advise against the use of cortisone and antiviral medication. Antibiotics are also very inappropriate for the treatment of viral pneumonia.

KenFM: Why?

Claus Köhnlein: They suppres the immune system.

KenFM: So they harm an already overburdened body?

Claus Köhnlein: That’s right. I think covid-19 patients are being treated too aggressively. I mentioned the Lancet study where a patient was treated with 600 mg cortisone, antiviral drugs, intravenous antibiotics and interferon in a hospital in Wuhan, and you can imagine that it didn’t end well. But nowadays it is very difficult to stand by a patient with and preach therapeutic nihilism. This is often impossible. Because of fear and worry the patients are being treated too aggressively.

I also received data from a health department in Italy (dated 17th March). The data shows that more than 50% of Italian patients were treated with antiviral drugs, 30% with steroids and 80% with antibiotics.

KenFM: What you are describing seems to be related to the fact that as a doctor you are already with one foot in the prison if you don’t offer everything you have available to the patient?

Claus Köhnlein: Yes. Doctors tend to overtreat; it is much more difficult to hold back.

KenFM: If you do, they can blame you for not doing everything you could possibly do. How do you see the classic course of covid-19?

Claus Köhnlein: I have a feeling that it’s a classical course, which means that I cannot clinically differentiate between this illness and for example the flu or other cold-like illnesses. The difference can only be determined using the PCR method to detect a coronavirus or influenza. Coronavirus is supposed to cause a characteristic dry cough, but such a cough is often seen also in other diseases, which means that it is not really a typical coronavirus symptom.

KenFM: If the media was not talking about a pandemic, would you even notice that anything is wrong?

Claus Köhnlein: If it were not for the tests, I would not notice any new clinical picture.

KenFM: In your opinion, what percentage of those infected is eligible for intensive care?

Claus Köhnlein: That is hard to say because I have no infected patients that I should treat. There are a few in Kiel, but the intensive care units are still largely empty. We are still in a period of “the calm before the storm.”

KenFM: I tried to call you this morning but your practice was full. But there were no coronavirus patients?

Claus Köhnlein: No, none.

KenFM: Coronavirus was discovered on the Princess Diamond cruise ship, passengers were quarantined for several weeks, 3700 people were not allowed to leave the ship. 700 passengers tested positive, 6 died. This means that the mortality rate on this ship was below 1%. How does this match the estimates that covid-19 mortality is around 5%?

Claus Köhnlein: It does not match. I find it hard to explain why; I do not know where these numbers came from.

KenFM: Are there also other viruses that pose a similar or an even bigger risk to our health, but no one is talking about them at the moment? Is a classical flu currently active in Germany, are people dying from it?

Claus Köhnlein: The Robert Koch Institute estimates that classical influenza causes from 10,000 to 25,000 deaths each year [in Germany]. As for coronavirus, we are still a long way from this number. In my opinion the coronavirus epidemic, if one exists at all and it’s not only an epidemic of tests, is not clinically relevant.

KenFM: You have been saying from the beginning that the disease is not clinically relevant, but the curve keeps going up exponentially. What do you think will happen?

Claus Köhnlein: It’s hard to say what will happen, but I have a feeling that the panic and fear are leading to overaggressive treatments, and I really hope that doesn’t happen in Germany.

KenFM: So you would say the pandemic was created? That if we wouldn’t be talking about a pandemic, there would be no mass illness?

Claus Köhnlein: Yes, I think so.

KenFM: You have already given your medical opinion about the potential dangers of coronavirus in alternative media. What were the reactions like?

Claus Köhnlein: A lot of people actually agree with me. My colleagues also had a look at the Lancet publication and think such a therapy could be having an immunosuppresive effect, and as a consequence a very negative impact on the course of the viral disease.

KenFM: At the moment only one other doctor, the virologist Drosten and the Robert Koch Institute, is talking with us, and the question is, why don’t other doctors with a different opinion dare to speak up? After all, we have 390,000 doctors in Germany…

Claus Köhnlein: I have a special role to play here because I wrote a book on the subject. I went through a similar situation already in the case of the bird flu and swine flu, and I’m not worried about a possible epidemic, but am very concerned about the countermeasures to stop the epidemic. I see that new virostatic drugs are in the pipeline, probably even mass vaccination. I remember the 1970s, when swine flu was present in America and in the end there was such a heated atmosphere that people thought along the lines of “it’s better to have no epidemic, but [nevertheless] vaccination, as compared to having a vaccination and no epidemic.”

KenFM: So this is a business in which the pharmaceutical industry grabs onto or even makes up a pandemic, and then the countries buy means to counter it at a predetermined price and force the citizens to use them?

Claus Köhnlein: Yes, such a scenario has been happening for some time now in regular intervals. In between there was another alarm for smallpox. Back then Saddam Hussein allegedly had biological weapon of mass destruction … not only chemical (which he had not), but also biological (which he had not)… The smallpox pathogen was proclaimed as a bioweapon that he could be carrying in his pockets, and that is why Germany (and other European countries) bought the smallpox vaccine for each citizen - a total of 80 million doses of the vaccine were bought. A similar thing then happened with swine flu - a vaccine was recommended, even though practically no one got ill with swine flu, and in the end almost no one wanted to get vaccinated, so the vaccine was discarded and the costs were enormous.

I have a feeling that the situation will be similar now, especially with the antiviral drug remdesivir that belongs to the class of nucleoside analogues or DNA chain terminators. Such drugs were derived from chemotherapy (drugs to treat cancer). Since coronavirus is a common cold virus, I think the situation is especially unfavorable.

KenFM: On our show we already talked about the drug that you just mentioned. It is made by Gilead Sciences. On their website I found an open letter written by the company’s CEO; he says a lot of people contacted him and begged for the drug to get on the market as soon as possible, despite no long term studies. One of the company’s major shareholders is Donald Rumsfeld and it is financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates is also a major sponsor of the World Health Organization (WHO), which means that we can’t talk about independence. How independent do you think our federal government and the Robert Koch Institute are from the pharmaceutical industry?

Claus Köhnlein: I don’t know about the money flow, but I’m afraid that if the Bill Gates Foundation is financing the WHO, the money then flows forward to such institutions, and in that case the Robert Koch Institute is certainly not independent.

KenFM: One last question. How do you think this crisis will develop, will the governments again buy vaccines for enormous sums of money?

Claus Köhnlein: Yes, probably. The same goes for antiviral drugs. I just hope the doctors will be sensible enough not to use them, or that they will at least wait until placebo-controlled, randomized studies are done. But as I said already, I think it’s absurd to be treating a common cold with nucleoside analogues - it’s similar to shooting at a sparrow with a cannon.

KenFM: Denmark already announced a law for mandatory vaccination, when vaccines will be ready, and it’s supposed to enforce it with the help of the military and police. Do you think this could happen in Germany as well?

Claus Köhnlein: The first step was made with the measles vaccine, and it is in fact a violation of the individual’s basic right to physical and psychological integrity. Apart from this, I think anything is possible at this moment.

 

[Braveheart]

 

[Vinny]

Glad you are spreading some common sense here, Giraffe!

 

[Giraffe]

Glad you are spreading some common sense here, Giraffe!

Credits to @blob69.

 

[Lejeboca]

Nice interview. Thanks much for the TRANSLATION, @blob69 and Giraffe !

 

[burtlancast]

A long interview and yet the good doctor hasn't peeped a word about which treatment he proposes for Covid patients.

 

[Vinny]

A long interview and yet the good doctor hasn't peeped a word about which treatment he proposes for Covid patients.

I think the point of the interview was about something else

 

[Regina]

Giraffe,
Mein deutsches Verständnis ist schrecklich.
Can you help us translate what Dr Bhakdi is saying now?

 

[Giraffe]

Can you help us translate what Dr Bhakdi is saying now?

What does "help us translate" mean? I am not a trained translator. To translate an 1-hour interview, would be a huge task for me.

I see that the original video has been deleted. Here is a copy:

Corona-Wahn ohne Ende? ServusTV Talk Spezial mit Prof. Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi

 

[ecstatichamster]

Thank you @Giraffe

 

[Regina]

What does "help us translate" mean? I am not a trained translator. To translate an 1-hour interview, would be a huge task for me.

I see that the original video has been deleted. Here is a copy:

Corona-Wahn ohne Ende? ServusTV Talk Spezial mit Prof. Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi

Sorry. I didn't mean for you to translate it. I thought perhaps there is a translation feature I am unaware of.

 

[jb116]

What does "help us translate" mean? I am not a trained translator. To translate an 1-hour interview, would be a huge task for me.

I see that the original video has been deleted. Here is a copy:

Corona-Wahn ohne Ende? ServusTV Talk Spezial mit Prof. Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi

Here's a somewhat crude translation, but better than nothing. You get the basic gist.

 

[Regina]

Here's a somewhat crude translation, but better than nothing. You get the basic gist.

Oh, thank you so much!!!

Well, I did understand when he said he left Thailand for freedom. But now, we no longer have freedom.

 

[blob69]

Here's some additional information about Claus Köhnlein.

He was one of the doctors who realized decades ago that they are killing patients with AIDS drugs:



Because of his extensive experience with AIDS and other "viral diseases" he later wrote a book called Virus Mania, which is a very interesting and convincing work with 1000+ references:

https://www.amazon.com/Virus-Mania-Continually-Epidemics-Billion-Dollar/dp/1425114679 (English)

https://www.amazon.de/-/en/dp/3891891474/ (German)

He gave two other interviews on coronavirus (in German, the first one has been translated to many other languages, second one is very recent):





His main premise is that medical treatments are very dangerous and are likely contributing to many deaths that are then blamed on the epidemic in question. For example, he cites sources that convincingly argue that even the Spanish flu may in fact have been iatrogenically caused, at least in part, with horribly toxic drugs and vaccines (i.e. heavy metals, chloroform, heroin, enormous doses of aspirin etc.). He also argues that viruses have never been properly isolated and proven as a cause of disease (i.e. the Spanish flu could never be shown to be contagious in any of the trials that were meant to prove transmission from person to person).

Introduction to the book Virus Mania: "A daily scan through the news gives the impression that the world is constantly invaded by virus epidemics. The latest headlines feature the human papillomavirus (HPV) alleged to cause cervical cancer and the avian flu virus, H5N1. The public is also continually terrorized by reports about SARS, BSE, hepatitis C, AIDS, Ebola, and polio. However, this virus mayhem ignores very basic scientific facts: the existence, the pathogenicity and the deadly effects of these agents have never been proven. The authors of Virus Mania, journalist Torsten Engelbrecht and doctor of internal medicine Claus Köhnlein, show that these alleged contagious agents are, in fact, particles produced by the cells themselves as a consequence of certain stress factors such as drugs, malnutrition, pesticides and heavy metals.

The central aim of this book is to steer the discussion back to a real scientific debate and put medicine back on the path of an impartial analysis of the facts. It will put medical experiments, clinical trials, statistics and government policies under the microscope, revealing that the people charged with protecting our health and safety have deviated from this path. To substantiate these statements, the authors cite dozens of highly renowned scientists and present approximately 1,100 pertinent scientific references.

The topic of this book is of pivotal significance. The pharmaceutical companies and top scientists rake in enormous sums of money by attacking germs and the media boosts its audience ratings and circulations with sensationalized reporting (the coverage of the New York Times and Der Spiegel are specifically analyzed). "The primary purpose of commercially-funded clinical research is to maximize financial return on investment, not health," says John Abramson of Harvard Medical School. Virus Mania will inform you on how such an environment took root-and how to empower yourself for a healthy life."