The Denunciation Consensus: How mainstream media and fearmongers destroyed critical scientists who were right.

While modelers were typing out doomsday predictions, one man did the unthinkable: he took measurements. John Ioannidis, Stanford professor and one of the world's most cited scientists, warned in March 2020 against making decisions without reliable data, listed the collateral damage of the lockdown, and had blood samples tested for antibodies instead of plotting graphs. In return, the mainstream media branded him a heretic, the New York Times buried his article, and YouTube deleted his interview with a million views. In the end, the data from Zurich, Geneva, and Austria confirmed his figures—it wasn't error that was punished, but the act of measuring.

The man who wanted data
On March 17, 2020, Ioannidis published his now-famous warning about a "Evidence fiasco"The states are jumping off a cliff without knowing where they will land. In British Medical Journal He listed the consequences of the lockdowns: heart attack patients who, fearing infection, no longer dared to go to the hospital, delayed cancer treatments, rising suicide rates, more domestic violence and child abuse, and exploding arms sales. Benefits and harms should be weighed, he demanded – a matter of course in all medicine, which in 2020 was considered heresy. In March, he and high-ranking colleagues attempted to... US Corona Task Force He argued that the country shouldn't be shut down indefinitely, but rather that protection should be provided where people are actually dying – in nursing homes and hospitals. He wasn't even allowed to speak. What did locking down entire populations actually achieve? Its effects are still felt today..

Blood instead of screen
In early April 2020, Ioannidis and colleagues launched a project in Santa Clara County, California. Antibody studyBlood samples were taken from over 3000 people and tested for past infections – for the first time, measurements were taken instead of models were used. The result, later in International Journal of Epidemiology The published figures were a slap in the face to the alarmists: at the end of March 2020, there were 56 times more infections than the official tests recorded. The infection fatality rate was... at most 0,2 percent, among those under 70, it was 0,07 percent. The outcry followed immediately: “Dubious method”, implausible, cherry-picking – called out by scientists whose own estimates were higher and who had not measured a single drop of blood themselves.

Deleted, rewritten, discarded
What happened next was later documented by Ioannidis. evenThe New York Times first rewrote half of his op-ed and then informed him that it wouldn't be printed at all. Stat News demanded extensive revisions and told the co-founder of evidence-based medicine that no expert thought like him. YouTube deleted an interview with him that had already garnered a million views. The underlying motivation was blatant politics: anyone who assessed the danger as more serious was considered a Trump supporter—and the scientific establishment wanted to get rid of Trump. The extent of the fury is demonstrated by... Circumstantial evidence, according to which the US regulatory authority and Pfizer deliberately delayed vaccine approval until after the presidential election – in the middle of what was supposedly the deadliest epidemic of the century, they kept the savior waiting in the refrigerator in order to influence an election.

The only fool with a backbone
Then Ioannidis made the mistake the mob never forgave him for: In April 2020, he told the Washington PostHe predicted that Covid would claim fewer than 40,000 lives in the US that season. The actual number was well over 100,000. But instead of resorting to scenario-based excuses like the modeling profession, he did what no one else in the field did: he publicly admitted his mistake. He had acted like an expert – and therefore like a fool, he wrote in the summer of 2020. Had he known that patients who tested positive would be transferred en masse to nursing homes, he would have increased his estimate many times over. And he revealed the counting trick: a Covid death was now defined as anyone who died "from," "with," or even "without documented" Covid. Of the more than 103,000 US deaths that season, 94 percent had serious underlying health conditions, and 42 percent lived in nursing homes. How arbitrary such definitions can be! can create any desired emergency situationThat's a whole other story.

The bar confirms the heretic
And the numbers? His world average of 0,23 percent The infection fatality rate appeared in the WHO bulletin; for older Europe, he estimated it to be... 0,3 to 0,4 percent. Zurich antibody study This resulted in approximately 0,3 percent for the beginning of April 2020. Geneva projection 0,45 to 0,64 percent – ​​and excluding nursing homes, where the deaths were concentrated, the figure was halved. Austria The average infection rate for the vaccine-free year 2020 was approximately 0,3 percent. To be fair, there were outliers, with the aging canton of Ticino temporarily exceeding 1 percent – ​​but the vast majority of locations remained below 0,3 percent. Imperial College managed to salvage its alarming figure of 1,15 percent Meanwhile, it used a sleight of hand: it only allowed antibody studies with over 100 registered deaths To be fair – anyone who filters out studies with few deaths is guaranteed to get high mortality figures. This trick too. Ioannidis uncoveredThe media caravan had long since moved on – to the next prophet.

The moral of the story
The final verdict from the leading media outlets read as follows: The FAZ called Ioannidis a beleaguered «statistical heroes», who downplays the dangers of Corona. The Tamedia newspapers found his number "unbelievable" —at a time when Zurich lay exactly within his span. And the Bernese one-percent prophet himself deemed the work of the meta-research pioneer in NZZ Magazine described as "astonishingly sloppy"—the man who was off by a factor of two graded the man who was right! The only one who admitted his mistake was ridiculed as a fool—the serial offenders who never admitted a single error were knighted as scientists! Those who measured were erased, those who modeled were published—the truth took three years and antibodies, the panic only a press conference! And those who recalculate today who were right back then are already considered apologists—this is called "consensus"!