Professor Vogt: “Now we need to wait for a supervirus with a mortality rate of 90%”

Not so long ago, Novye Izvestia published excerpts from a speech by the famous Swiss cardiac surgeon Paul Vogt about the pandemic situation. And here is the professor’s new article at Swiss Health Magazine. In particular, Vogt says:

“COVID-19 is very contagious. As noted in almost all countries, the total number of infected people increases by about 40% daily without taking countermeasures, which corresponds to a doubling of the number of infected people every two days or a hundredfold increase per week. The infection rate is also higher than that of the flu because there are no vaccinated persons from COVID-19. The average rate of undetected infections ranges from 30 to 90%, depending on the country. The death rate of COVID-19, as we saw with the example of closed populations (cruise ships), is about 20 times higher than the death rate from influenza.

We are like in the movie "Infection", filmed in 2011. It all started in China with a bat. Some of the virologists interviewed daily today acted as consultants in the picture. Everything is so realistic - even the politicians in the film behave like our politicians today (“everything is under control”, “just the flu”, “public life must go on”, “don't panic”).

Indian and Chinese researchers report that COVID-19 has a genome similar to HIV / Ebola, which allows it to bind to human cells 1000 times stronger than SARS coronavirus. However, the inclusion of the HIV / Ebola genome in COVID-19 is called an “eccentric” mutation, and this specific gene that makes COVID-19 so contagious is absent in all other coronaviruses, such as SARS or MERS. It is doubtful, however, whether this is actually a fragment of the HIV / Ebola genome or not, since there always exist genome sequences with great similarity between different viruses.

What scenarios exist

1) COVID-19 remains a seasonally recurring infection with significantly higher mortality compared to influenza.

2) COVID-19 becomes endemic in the population and localized outbreaks occur again and again; they can be identified in advance without the need to discuss isolation measures each time.

3) COVID-19 will endemicly strengthen among the population, but there is a vaccination similar to that of hepatitis B.

4) COVID-19 is endemic in the population, but there is antiviral combination therapy similar to HIV. While a patient with HIV should be treated all his life, COVID-19 requires only a 10-day "triple therapy", the components of which are known and which is already in clinical trials. As part of such therapy, COVID-19 can be transformed into a disease that can be diagnosed at home with the first symptoms using a free-selling test similar to a pregnancy test and treated on an outpatient basis with drug therapy for 5-10 days.

5) KOVID-19 behaves seasonally and in the fall catches up with us in a mutated form: it’s like in a nightmare.

If in the nearest future a vaccine or therapy will not be developed, then with a new outbreak of COVID-19 in the fall of 2020, we will face the same problems as now. We have time to prepare and avoid mistakes. Suppose that COVID-19 returns in the fall, and we still have neither a vaccine, nor a clear medication. Then the goal of combating the pandemic should be to reduce human casualties without reintroducing harsh isolation measures. The most important and affordable means of combating such a pandemic are the mandatory wearing of masks, disinfection and maintaining a distance. These timely and consistent measures can reduce the spread of the virus through air and through surfaces by up to 99% without the need for strict isolation. Emerging local “hot spots” of infection should be temporarily quarantined with limited movement outside their borders.

The fact that the coronavirus may contain the HIV / Ebola genome (for example, by cross-pollination during infection of the HIV / Ebola-positive patient with COVID-19 and subsequent spread) should be taken seriously enough. We must be prepared for the fact that one day a supervirus will appear that combines the genome of the fast-spreading coronavirus with the Ebola genome with its mortality rate of 90%. And we have to have a super-advanced interdisciplinary pandemic concept that really works..."