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Why the corona recommendations of the German Evidence-Based Medicine Network are dangerous.

2020-09-19T05:55:52.365Z


The German Network of Evidence-Based Medicine has published a statement on the corona pandemic. Unfortunately, it's not very evidence-based.


The German Network Evidenzbasierte Medizin eV has done a great job of popularizing this type of medicine against much resistance.

But the network has also written a position on the corona pandemic, which has now come under heavy criticism.

"Polemical and emotional," is how Charité virologist Christian Drosten calls the paper on Twitter, in which measures such as mass tests, mask requirements and distance rules are presented as incorrect, superfluous or questionable.

Are the evidence-based medical professionals right with their criticism?

Or do the most scientific of all doctors play into the hands of corona deniers with wrong arguments? 

Unfortunately, the latter seems to be more the case.

The authors of the statement do not seem to have fully understood that a pandemic is a highly dynamic process in which the situation can change dramatically within weeks.

They also make technical mistakes that make their assessment of the situation grotesquely wrong.

What sounds scientific is actually haphazard.

The evidence-based physicians are not wrong with all points of criticism;

so it is of course absolutely justified to demand better research.

But right at the beginning they do something that they usually accuse the pharmaceutical industry of: They are "cherry-picking" - do not look for objective quality criteria for the best of all existing studies in order to evaluate their results, but only pick out those studies whose results suit them fit into the stuff. 

Instead of using large, high-quality studies to indicate mortality, for example a nationwide antibody study from Spain and an antibody test on 100,000 people in Great Britain, which showed an infection mortality of 0.8 and 0.9 percent - around eight to nine times higher than in the case of influenza - they only refer to current figures and studies such as the controversial and comparatively tiny "Heinsberg study", which comes to 0.36 percent.

If someone were to make such a mistake with illnesses like cancer or heart attack, the evidence-based doctors - and rightly so - immediately took to the barricades.  

Icon: enlarge

Sign indicating that a mask is required in the beer garden on Munich's Viktualienmarkt

Photo: Ralph Peters / imago images

They criticize the test strategy, which has long been corrected anyway, with the same arguments with which they otherwise dismantle breast cancer early detection or PSA screening.

It has long been clear that the proportion of false positive corona tests is negligible - and the consequences, should a PCR test turn out to be false positive (a maximum of two weeks in quarantine), with those of a false positive breast cancer screening (surgery, chemo, Irradiation) cannot be compared. 

The recommendation to only prescribe a face mask when there are high numbers of infections is downright dangerous.

Evidence-based medical professionals argue as if it were a matter of preventing patients from taking unnecessary, side-effect drugs - and completely overlook the fact that the aim is to prevent the spread of a virus. 

It is a shame that the statement remains silent on the subject of all things, where criticism is really appropriate and where the high level of expertise of evidence-based doctors is urgently needed: Denouncing the often catastrophic poor quality of Covid 19 therapy studies. 

With best regards

Veronika Hackenbroch

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Feedback & suggestions?

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Abstract

My reading recommendations this week:

  • Readers repeatedly demand "more balance" in our reporting and mean that we should also provide a platform for non-academic opinions.

    But that is a "core journalistic mistake", said Dirk Steffens, moderator of "Terra X" in an interview.

  • Also a consequence of climate change: In South and Central America "coffee rust", a fungus, threatens the coffee harvest.

  • Is there something good to be gained from the outbreak of African swine fever in Germany?

    Yes, says my colleague Philip Bethge.

  • Tire wear is one of the most important sources of fine dust.

    A type of vacuum cleaner that can extract around 60 percent of the particles while driving has now won the James Dyson Award.

  • Was the publication of the first study data of the Russian vaccine "Sputnik V" tampered with?

  • Quantum computers are so fast that previous methods of data encryption will no longer work.

    What could "post-quantum cryptography" look like?

  • The face mask will be part of our everyday life for a long time.

    Is there sometimes an advantage when emotions are not so easily recognized?

    About the psychology of wearing a mask.

Quiz*

1. Who was the first woman in space?

2. What is pink hydrogen?

3. What color is a sunset on Mars?

* You can find the answers at the bottom of the newsletter.

Picture of the week 

Icon: enlarge Photo: NASA

US astronaut Kathleen Rubins experienced

115 days of weightlessness 

four years ago;

it was the first time that she sequenced DNA in space.

On October 14th she will leave for the International Space Station ISS again.

While she is racing around the earth at over 27,000 kilometers per hour, she and her two Russian colleagues will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first long-term crew of the ISS up there on November 2nd.

footnote  

It

is estimated that

500 billion US dollars in

government subsidies are poured into projects around the world that reduce biodiversity.

According to the fifth Global Biodiversity Report that has just been published, the goal set ten years ago has thus been completely missed.

Few countries would

even identify

potentially harmful investments - for example in fishing or deforestation 

so the sobering conclusion.

SPIEGEL + recommendations from science 

  • Conversation:

    The biologist Meldrin Sheldrake explains how our lives are largely determined by fungi

  • Careers:

    A professor harms science with dubious publications - all the time

  • Protocol: 

    can corona trigger diabetes in adolescents?

  • History: 

    A find in Mainz gives an insight into Charlemagne's strange passion for collecting

*

Quiz Answers


1.

The Soviet cosmonaut

Valentina  

Tereshkova, who orbited the earth in 1963.


2.

Hydrogen, which is obtained with the help of atomic electricity.


3.

Blue.

Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2020-09-19

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