Coronavirus: Doctors criticize uncertified masks and PCR tests



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“We have to get used to living with the coronavirus and accept that people die from it, as well as from traffic accidents, influenza and cigarette smoke,” said medical expert Andreas Sönnichsen at a press conference in Vienna. Covid-19 measures “would sometimes do more harm than help”: Self-made masks, used incorrectly, are hardly effective. Dr. Martin Haditsch criticized the fact that most of the PCR tests used “are not certified.”

Corona as “normal risk in life”

Even with draconian measures, the virus could not be eradicated, so the disease it caused had to be classified within the “normal risks of life,” said Sönnichsen, who works at the Center for Public Health at the Medical University of Vienna. , but insist on your only private. Express an opinion.

As a medical professional, one should always strive to avoid causing harm with treatment. “With the Covid measures, starting with the lockdown to the current measures, it can be said with quite certainty that the harm is greater than the benefit,” he said. Other diseases would be poorly cared for, so there would be an excess mortality from heart attacks, for example. Many medical measures were stopped at clinics and reduced for Covid patients who later failed to attend, he said.

“The evidence for wearing masks is poor”

The benefits of the measures that are now being carried out, such as social distancing and the use of masks, are questionable: “The evidence from studies that speak in favor of the use of masks is extremely poor,” Sönnichsen said. The risk reduction is around 20 percent, but only if officially tested masks are worn correctly and changed regularly. There is no evidence that “self-paved pieces of cloth” help; They can be more harmful if washed infrequently and therefore colonized by bacteria, the doctor argued.

Martin Haditsch, a specialist in hygiene and microbiology, infectious diseases and tropical medicine, who also emphasized speaking as a private person, criticized the fact that much of the 400 PCR tests worldwide that are used to search for coronaviruses in the population are not certified. “Therefore, there was no third-party testing that would allow manufacturers to bring these PCR tests to market,” he said.

Of all the PCR tests available, not a single one would be approved for testing in healthy people. Furthermore, it is generally not known which specific SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences they actually detect, because the relevant agents (primers) for PCR are often not described.

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