One year of destroyed economies, social isolation, deep social splits calls for an anniversary thread to celebrate the RT qPCR manuscript by Christian Drosten and Victor Corman submitted on January 21st 2020 to Eurosurveillance
Before this very publication, virologists were neither treated like superstars, nor were they considered icons or half-gods. In 2009, Drosten almost succeeded in installing the false premise virology could supersede holistic medical sciences as discussed in this thread.
Drosten is a virologist. He neither has any background in epidemiology, nor has he ever worked in the civil service. He doesn't have a background in public health. Yet he, and his colleagues, affect our daily lives to the level of whom to meet up or how to flush the toilet.
Before 2020, Drosten and Corman were common virologists at Charite Berlin, whenever they were not involved in economic implications. Other than that, they looked at coronaviruses in dromedary caves in the Middle East or Africa.
Finally, in January of 2020, the published paper laid the theoretical grounds for the current pandemic - the RT-qPCR mass testing religion - for which he was awarded his second German Federal Cross of merit ( he received the first one in 2005 for developing the SARS-CoV PCR Test)
Manuscript rushed through every approving authority -> prior to submission, had been sent to WHO (EARLY) with prsopect of being approved in any case. Big-data analyst visualized this phenomenon.
Being part of editorial board at Eurosurveillance has been advantageous for drosten and reusken, to reach the one-day-peer-review milestone, even though they might have been excluded from the process. So far, providing the process protocol is being refused.
It is also remarkable that Drosten ahs not been into sophisticated Twitter campaigning since 2016. His first substantial tweet since his rediscovery of Twitter was on January 23 of 2020, when he promoted his one-day-wonder publication. Coincidence or PR campaigning?
On January 9 of 2020, Drosten's overconfidence reached a new high by complaining that the correspondence to NEJM did not cite his freshly published paper. Instead, the authors chose to refer to his protocol-design pre-release on WHO.
Drosten aimed for the RT-qPCR protocol design, which could serve as a robust diagnostic methodology. However, the protocol-design and its factual scientific precision somewhat resemble Russian roulette ()
In 2009, Dosten had already followed a similar approach when he created a PCR test for the swine flu. Regarding the question of why it is crucial to do so much testing if the strain is mild, he answered: because we remember the 1918 outbreak.
PCR testing in 2009 caused a pseudo-epidemic that was stopped by Wolfgang Wodarg, whose credibility is damagaed today over Coronavirus.
Nature-paper also stated "it is disturbing that a rogue politician [...] can create such mischief for the WHO and drug industry, despite virtually no evidence of wrongdoing. Fake pandemic outcry.
In 2014, Drosten gave a striking interview for the German business magazine WIWO. His statements back then are in contradiction with comments he made in 2020.