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Author Precht (at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2019)
Photo: Manfred Segerer / imago images
Germans just love to see, hear and read it.
Best-selling author (»Who am I - and if so, how many?«) Richard David Precht, 56, is considered to be on the stage and telegenic, as an eloquent television philosopher who can chat about everything right away, about education, euthanasia, digitization, thinker, animal welfare or Europe.
Many people think Precht is really smart, but why? Because Germany's dashing TV star is now telling mentally unfiltered nonsense that can not only be annoying, but even dangerous.
Now the intellectual pseudo giant has also reached the spheres of virology, immunology and pediatrics and shared his inspirations with the world in a podcast with ZDF presenter Markus Lanz.
"Never" would he have children vaccinated against corona, said Dr.
phil.
Precht.
Why not?
Because they have an "developing immune system" that cannot be "manipulated", otherwise autoimmune diseases might be threatened in their mid-twenties.
Precht advises against "working the immune system with this vaccine".
Apparently he is talking about the new mRNA vaccines from Biontech / Pfizer and Moderna, and he doesn't find them that great: These vaccines are "genetic engineering!" And completely untested ("not a single long-term effect study").
"I am not a vaccination opponent"
But that's not all.
Because what people get with the vaccine is completely unpredictable: "We can just as little estimate the side effect of the vaccination as the side effect of the coronavirus," raved the Germanist, who nevertheless confessed in the program, "I'm not an opponent of vaccinations."
With this talk Precht especially stirs up fear in parents and in people, they are unsure about vaccinations.
In terms of content, it’s nonsense what he’s saying.
Researchers have refuted each of these claims many times over the past few months.
The immune system of children is in no way hindered by existing vaccinations, on the contrary: Vaccinations lay a foundation for immunity, which saves millions of children’s lives year after year.
The technology of mRNA vaccines, which has been developed in the laboratory for decades, is based on genetic engineering processes, but they do not mean, as Precht apparently insinuates, that humans would be exposed to genetic engineering without being tested or that they would even be genetically modified. The approval procedures for the vaccines developed in record time have not been shortened or simplified. Authorities and researchers around the world pay close attention to the side effects of the vaccinations and any vaccine damage. Unlike Precht, they also know that possible side effects can only occur within days or weeks of the vaccination, but never, as Precht suggests, many months or years later. Because four billion people are now double vaccinated, doctors can assess the risk profile of the vaccine very well,because also rare and extremely rare side effects have now been shown. There is absolutely no question that the side effects of the coronavirus are far more drastic and dangerous than those of the vaccines.
Precht's closeness to the milieu of lateral thinkers
Obviously, the great thinker did not research the scientific literature, well-known experts or recognized regulatory authorities such as the US FDA.
Precht, unworthy of a critical mind, probably formed his opinion on the basis of narrow-gauge Internet information from the milieu of lateral thinkers.
Precht now wants to "significantly reduce" the measures to combat the virus, because these are - suddenly Precht is also a lawyer - no longer constitutionally covered.
Moreover, it is "not the task of the state to exclude or make impossible the risk of illness for everyone."
And anyway, what is so dangerous about Corona?
In the winter of 2017/2018 "25,000 people died of flu", and that was "possibly more than Covid".
In a conspiratorial maverick manner, Precht apparently mistrusts the information from the Robert Koch Institute, according to which the virus has so far killed around 95,500 people in Germany.
According to the official count, the number of victims worldwide is now over five million, which Precht completely ignores.
Doctors at the University of Washington in Seattle estimate the actual number of deaths at around twelve million.
Does he think before speaking?
Did the star thinker just have a bad day?
No.
Precht is like that.
He has already attracted attention with strange utterances that indicate that he does not always put thinking ahead of talking.
"99.99 percent" children are not threatened by Corona "in any form," Precht recently told the television station Phoenix. Precht is right here - and still wrong: Around one in 10,000 infected children becomes seriously ill with Covid, and every third child who ends up in the intensive care unit dies. In the United States, around 700 children have so far succumbed to the virus, making it sixth on the list of the most common causes of death in this age group. Children can also get "long covid", which means they develop symptoms such as extreme tiredness, headaches and concentration problems that last for months and severely impair normal life.
The FDA has now approved vaccination with the Biontech vaccine for children from the age of five, precisely because the benefits of the agent clearly outweigh its risks in the opinion of the experts.
Unvaccinated children can also transmit coronaviruses more easily, for example to their parents.
In the USA alone, 140,000 children have lost a legal guardian to Covid-19.
The number of Corona orphans worldwide is in the millions.
So who would say that this virus is 99.99 percent harmless to the little ones?
Precht continued to claim without any evidence: "We vaccinate our children so that statisticians can say: We have even more people vaccinated." He gave the intensive discussion on the approval of vaccines for minors rather under-complex, but warned of the coming "rule of statisticians «.
Even at the very beginning of the pandemic, in March 2020, the prolific speaker stood out with exclusive information. Covid is "as dangerous as flu," he said at an event in Düsseldorf. The case mortality is "0.3 percent". In fact, it is about ten times higher in Germany, which Precht, like the rest of the world, could not have known at the time. But a Precht cannot be deterred from not knowing when forming a wrong judgment.
For the media - of course!
- The disease is, of course, "a hit," said Precht.
The author had already clearly recognized the secret psychological mechanisms behind all the excitement about the new virus and put it clairvoyantly as follows: »In a society that has not had a war for a long time, no real epidemics and epidemics, no massacres, no civil wars, there is a certain amount of fun and horror in such exceptional states. "
Pandemic as amusement for the sated: This is pure oaths.
The lateral thinker Stefan Homburg reacted enthusiastically to the philosopher's self-outing.
On Twitter, he welcomed Precht to the »Critics' Camp«.
