Knut Wittkowski: social distancing and lockdown are counter-productive

My original post was very much more pro Wittkowski. After some time I am ashamed to say that I archived it, for fear it would mislead people into getting into danger, then un-archived it but very much toned down. So I was originally anti-lockdown but then cowed by pro-lockdown people on Facebook.

Knut Wittkowski, for twenty years a Senior Research Associate and head of the Rockefeller University's Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design, has no doubts that social distancing is the absolutely worst way to deal with an airborne respiratory virus, as he says in an interview with Journeyman Pictures,  

He thinks herd immunity could have been achieved in the USA in four weeks at the cost of 10,000 dead, meaning 2% of patients with symptoms. This compares with the usual 35,000 who die of flu each year in the USA.

The current Coronavirus panic is a creation of the internet, which tells us instantly what is happening on the other side of the world.

In China social distancing only began after the epidemic reached its peak and it began in South Korea when it was close to its peak and herd immunity was in sight. Because social distancing prevented herd immunity in South Korea being fully attained the virus will come back there. Herd immunity lasts typically for a couple of years.

He thinks tracking an airborne contagion is impossible.

A vaccine would be nice to have but is not essential, he says. Flu vaccines 'are not that effective' anyway and, of course, there is no vaccine for the common cold.

Social distancing will result in more old people dying in this wave of infections and in a second wave of infections, either when social distancing stops or when winter comes.He urges that schools be open, so that the virus may spread harmlessly among children and thus shorten the amount of time the elderly and infirm must be sequestered. 

He thinks most people who get the virus won't have any symptoms. A large number of people (in the USA or worldwide?) have the virus and, even without herd immunity being achieved, we see the virus already declining.


If he is right Sweden, which is trying to achieve herd immunity and eschewing social distancing, will show us.


He talks several times about Mother Nature. That there is an order in the universe that transcends man's understanding is something of which hard scientists, unlike social scientists, are constantly aware, but in the wider world it is unfashionable. The fashionable idea resembles Whittaker Chambers' definition of communism.

'It is the vision of man's liberated mind, by the sole force of its rational intelligence, redirecting man's destiny and reorganizing man's life and the world.'

Gentle reader, I am increasingly sceptical about the need for the lockdown though I believe we should observe the rules on social distancing. We shall know very much more soon and meanwhile I very certainly do not want Romanian hospitals to be overwhelmed by elderly people, like the very much better ones in Lombardy. 

Dr. Wittkowski, on the other hand, told the New York Post a few days ago that he regularly goes to one of two illicit restaurants operating in secret in the smart Upper East Side quarter of Manhatten.

He speaks very lucidly and the interview is fascinating watching but if you don't have the time here is a full transcript.