Startseite
Podcasts
Bastian Barucker Podcast
The legacy of COVID-19 policies

The legacy of COVID-19 policies

Bastian Barucker vor 1 Jahr

A conversation with Prof. John Ioannidis

0:00

1:21:24

Five years ago, so-called containment measures began worldwide due
to a coronavirus that was declared new and initially classified as
very deadly. General school closures, curfews, lockdowns, assembly
bans and even vaccination amndates were decided against the
recommendations of existing national pandemic plans. These
so-called non-pharmaceutical interventions(NPIs) were intended to
slow the spread of the virus and at the same time represented a
significant encroachment on the civil liberties of citizens. I take
stock of the proportionality and effectiveness of these measures in
a conversation with one of the world's most cited scientists. John
Ioannidis, a professor of medicine and top epidemiologist at
Stanford University, was a guest in Berlin and took the time to
talk to me about pandemic policy. (15th of March 2025) We not only
shed light on the questions of how dangerous SARS-Cov2 really was
or how it could happen that the social debate space was so
poisoned. We also talk about the effectiveness of mod-RNA
injections and the significance of leaked RKI-minutes, which
revealed the strong influence of politics on science. Asked about
the origin of the virus in the preliminary discussion, Ioannidis
replied: "Regarding the origin of the virus, I have always believed
that we need transparency in research, so in the critical case we
need full transparency on what experiments were done and in what
conditions and precautions. In the absence of such transparency,
the debate moves out of science and becomes an issue for the secret
services, which is a pity for science. I realize that the balance
is gradually shifting and that some secrete services claim that it
was a lab leak. I cannot judge secret services, this is not my
expertise, but I do worry that a narrative "secrete services say it
was a lab leak" can be linked easily with a narrative "so, it must
have been a horrible virus and therefore all the horrible measures
we took were justified". This makes me very uneasy." Video and
Article:
https://blog.bastian-barucker.de/covid-19-policies-john-ioannidis/
production costs: 3000 € support the blog:
https://blog.bastian-barucker.de/unterstuetzung/