The Drosten overdose
This is a 5-minute read
Why the German media needs to become more critical of its favourite virologist
Not everyone’s favourite… (© Jaz_Online via Shutterstock)
With half a million Twitter followers, virologist Christian Drosten isn’t quite as influential as Union Berlin goalkeeper Loris Karius (620,000 followers), but his social media following is pretty impressive for a middle-aged man in a lab coat.
For his fans in the media, the hyperbole knows no bounds. Early on in the pandemic, Stern magazine mocked up an Obama-style image of him and heralded him as “the Enlightener.”
For one young journalist, the news that he cycles to work was too much to take. “Oh my God, now he’s revealed that he cycles to meetings. He’s perfect!” she gushed on Twitter.
If you’ve been living under a rock and don’t know who Drosten is, his basic thesis is that people need to sit tight until a coronavirus vaccine becomes available; he is an advocate of PCR testing combined with tracing “cluster events” to break infection chains; and has described the idea that herd immunity is a realistic goal as “a dangerous fallacy.” He is also THE virologist that the government listens to. While he denies it still happens, in the early days of the pandemic Merkel would call him for advice.
Currently head of virology research at the Charité Hospital in Berlin, he was part of a team who discovered the first SARS virus back in 2003 and is a world renowned specialist on coronaviruses.
As impressive as his CV is, one wishes that the German media would ask harder questions of him.
Like what you’re reading? German current affairs and news straight to your inbox. Subscribe here:
For instance, back in 2011 he told an interviewer that “there are concepts like herd immunity… if we as adults are immune against our typical human viruses this is the normal situation.”
In 2016 he dismissed the long-term threat posed to South and Central America by the Zika virus with the following remark:
“On the Zika virus, we are pretty certain that the epidemic will be over this year or next, because so many people are currently infected with it that afterwards everyone will be immune. And then it is very probable that the virus will die out in that region.”
Why does Drosten think herd immunity applies to every other “typical human virus” as well as a novel virus like Zika, but doesn’t apply to the novel coronavirus?
Or Perhaps he thinks that achieving herd immunity for the coronavirus is less ethical than doing so for the Zika virus. If that is the case, someone should ask him why a disease like Covid-19, which is practically harmless to children, is more dangerous than Zika, which has been shown to lead to brain deformities in unborn infants.
It would also be interesting to hear a journalist pull Drosten up on his apparent vault face on PCR testing.
Back in 2014 he had this to say on how the Saudi Arabian government was using the sensitive PCR test procedure during an outbreak of MERS, a rare but deadly coronavirus that mainly affects the Arab Peninsula.
Drosten: PCR testing is so sensitive that it can detect a single hereditary molecule of the virus. For example, if a pathogen scurries across the nasal mucosa of a nurse for a day without her getting sick or noticing anything, then she is suddenly a case of MERS.
Where previously terminally ill people were reported, now suddenly mild cases and people who are actually in perfect health are included in the reporting statistics. This could also explain the explosion in the number of cases in Saudi Arabia. In addition, the media have been stirring up the story to unbelievable heights.”
Interviewer: You think that the media have an influence on case reporting?
Drosten: Over there, there is hardly any other topic on TV news or in newspapers. And doctors in hospitals are also news consumers. They also think that they need to keep an eye on this disease, which is very rare in Saudi Arabia. Medicine is not immune to fashions.
He went on to say that people should only count as MERS positive if antibodies are found in their blood samples.
Drosten: The WHO can only give non-binding recommendations on case reporting. In the case of SARS, for example, it only recommended reporting cases where an antibody test was positive.
Interviewer: And what does that mean?
Drosten: Our body is constantly being attacked by viruses and bacteria. But they often fail because of barriers such as the skin or the mucous membranes in the nose and throat. There they are successfully fended off before they can cause harm.
The immune system only develops antibodies against pathogens that seriously affect our bodies. If antibodies are present, that means that the person actually had an infection. An antibody test would make it much easier to differentiate between scientifically interesting and medically relevant cases.
Can this really be the same Christian Drosten who has been warning for months about rising numbers of PCR positive cases?
Of course, the 48-year-old scientist might have perfectly valid reasons for having changed his mind on PCR testing and herd immunity.
But the German media don’t push him on these contradictions - instead they awarded him one of the most prestigious prizes for journalism - the Grimme Online Award for his weekly podcast. Yes, that’s right, Drosten gets to pose the questions as well as answer them.
This all matters because Drosten is such an influential voice. When he came out in favour of a lockdown this week, politicians immediately seized on his remarks to justify the move towards the new nationwide shutdown.
He isn’t the only expert in the cautious camp. But this time around at any rate the opposing side seems to have deeper ranks.
The virologists Henrdick Streeck and Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit were joined by the Kassenärztliche Bundesvereinigung, which represents 175,000 doctors, plus some 50 other medical associations, in denouncing a new lockdown.
Reducing the level of infections “can’t come at any price,” their letter to the government stated. “We are already experiencing the failure to provide other urgent medical treatment, plus serious side effects in children and young people through social deprivation and breaks in education and vocational training.”
Streeck (60k Twitter followers, Drosten no longer one of them) isn’t perfect. He made a dodgy decision to involve a PR agency in publishing his first corona case study. And his findings have been challenged by peers for an estimate of the infection fatality rate which is considered too low.
But the media hasn’t deified him either - if anything they go too far in the other direction. One Spiegel journalist, channelling the spirit of Trump, nicknamed him Hendrick “please listen to me too” Streeck.
Why are the media failing to apply objective standards? An interesting piece in the Süddeustche Zeitung suggests some answers.
“In many editorial offices there are too few science journalists, i.e. physicians and natural scientists, who understand the field properly,” the researcher Stephan Russ-Mohl argues.
Instead, journalists untrained in medicine all flock to the same answers as it provides them with a sense of security. “‘Groupthink’ may be human,” says Russ-Mohl, “but it cannot be excused if we are talking about the professional standards that should guide journalism.”
J.L.