Mr. Drosten’s strange relationship to freedom of expression

By Gunnar Schupelius

The chief virologist at the Charité is apparently calling for the restriction of academic freedom in the interest of health policy. But that is unconstitutional, says Gunnar Schupelius.

In mid-October, scientists spoke at the “World Health Summit” at the Charité about how the spread of dangerous viruses could be counteracted in the future. Prof. Christian Drosten, the director of the institute for virology at the Berlin Charité, was there. He complained about the increase in disinformation on the Internet, which had already caused confusion during the Corona years, and appealed to the media and scientists to correct incorrect information, reports Ärzteblatt. He literally said: “We must ask scientific institutions to select among scientists who are truly experts.”

That doesn’t sound wrong at first: Of course, incorrect information has to be corrected, and of course we need experts who really know their stuff.

The only question is who decides. Would Drosten like to do it himself? One might assume so, because the virologist seems to consider himself almost infallible. A year ago, in an interview with “Zeit” regarding the Corona measures, he said: “But what was the wrong decision in Germany in the end?” And added: “I can’t think of much.”

At this point it was clear that Germany had done a lot wrong, following the recommendations of Drosten, who was one of the most influential advisors to the federal government and the prime ministers in combating the pandemic.

From March 2020 to May 2022, he continuously warned on Twitter about the collapse of intensive care units, ever higher corona waves and more and more deaths.

By spring 2023 at the latest, many of his claims turned out to be false. The comparative figures from the EU statistics authority Eurostat showed that excess mortality in the years 2020 to 2022 was lowest in Sweden of all places, i.e. in the only country that did not impose a lockdown and did not even impose a mask requirement.

Drosten had vehemently rejected the Swedish approach and claimed: “Sweden will end up with the same measures (meaning: the lockdown) (…), only much later and with many more deaths.” That was one of many misjudgments that Drosten never corrected.

He claims for himself a scientific authority that he denies to others. He complains about supposedly incorrect information from others and should rather take a look at his own nose.

Science thrives on the competition of knowledge, i.e. on freedom of expression. Drosten obviously wants to restrict this in the interest of health policy; there is no other way to understand his statements. But to put it bluntly, this is unconstitutional.

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