Hot chair
Vaccination opponent Marcus Fuchs on “Stern TV” – his statements in the fact check
Watch the video: Lateral thinker Marcus Fuchs answers questions on the “hot seat” on Stern TV.
Marcus Fuchs is a leading lateral thinker in Dresden. On Sunday he sat at “Star TV” on the “hot seat”. He claims that unvaccinated people are better protected from omicron. A fact check.
On Sunday evening, the moderators Frauke Ludowig and Nikolaus Blome presented a well-known format: the “hot seat”. A guest is placed on it who presents a provocative thesis that is to be debated with other guests. Marcus Fuchs, opponent of vaccination and leading figure of the “lateral thinker” movement in Dresden, was a guest on the “hot seat”. He himself is unvaccinated. When asked whether he owed society a vaccination, Fuchs replied: “Vaccination has been shown to protect neither from infection nor from transmission nor from death.” The question therefore arises to what extent compulsory vaccination is justified. Fuchs then claimed that unvaccinated people were even better protected from omicrons than vaccinated people, referring to figures from the RKI.
Wrong numbers of the RKI
The fact checker team from RTL and star checked Marcus Fuchs’ statement – and refuted it. Expert Tobias Hamelmann says: “In his statement that unvaccinated people have a lower risk of becoming infected with omicron, Fuchs refers to an incorrect figure from the RKI, which has since been corrected. Vaccinated people have a higher risk of becoming infected with omicron – in the Compared to Delta! Boosted vaccinees are clearly less at risk of contracting omicron than unvaccinated individuals.”
The figures that Fuchs refers to come from the RKI weekly report of December 30th. It stated that 4,020 of 4,205 Omicron cases for which the vaccination status was known had been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. This corresponds to almost 96 percent. Only 186 of the positive cases were unvaccinated. The figures were also shared and discussed on social networks. For example, the group “Freie Sachsen” claimed on Facebook that the Omikron variant “now even specifically infects vaccinated people”.
The RKI has now announced that the numbers are based on incorrect calculations. Data corrected on January 3rd. Accordingly, not 186, but 1,097 infected people were reported as unvaccinated. The proportion of unvaccinated people infected with Omikron is not 4 but 21 percent. In his latest weekly report However, the RKI points out that the number of infected people will also increase among those who have been vaccinated and those who have recovered in the coming weeks.
The effectiveness of the vaccination against Omikron has not yet been conclusively clarified
“Initial studies indicate a lower proportion of hospitalized patients compared to infections with the delta variant among those infected with full vaccination or booster vaccination. However, the data is not yet sufficient for a final assessment of the severity of the diseases caused by the omicron variant,” says in the report. In addition, the RKI points out that all vaccines approved in Germany “according to the current state of knowledge” provide effective protection against a severe course of the disease in most cases, both after the basic immunization and after the booster.
According to the current status, 2857 people between the ages of 18 and 59 are in the hospital because of a corona infection. 961 of them are considered fully vaccinated. this corresponds to almost 34 percent. The majority, i.e. two thirds, of the corona patients in this age group treated in the hospital are therefore not vaccinated. However, the effectiveness of the vaccines against the omicron variant “cannot be finally assessed”.
Study data falsified?
In his speech, Marcus Fuchs also claimed that figures from Pfizer’s approval study had been manipulated. In fact, a regional director of the “Ventavia Research Group”, a sub-company from Texas (USA), which carried out Covid studies for Pfizer, made allegations against the study. In the British Medical Journal, she wrote that the data from autumn 2020 was falsified and patients were said to have been “unblinded”. This means that the subjects of the study were said to have been told too early whether they were vaccinated with the actual preparation or a placebo. This would have influenced the reports of possible side effects and the effectiveness of the vaccination.
Several million people have now been vaccinated. In contrast, around 44,000 people at 150 locations worldwide took part in the study. Around 1000 were subjects of the Ventavia study. So they only make up a fraction of the total number of people vaccinated. The company did not work properly with the clinical data in the study. However, there have been no medical consequences.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has also commented on the incident. She also concluded that “the identified deficiencies do not jeopardize the quality and completeness of the data from Comirnaty’s main study and do not affect the benefit-risk assessment or any conclusions on the safety, efficacy and quality of the vaccine”.
Sources: RTL, corrective, RKI weekly report