In July 2020, Dehning, Zierenberg et al. published an article in the “most prestigious” academic journal, Science, claiming that three governmental interventions in Germany successfully “kept virus spread below the growth threshold” (Dehning, Zierenberg, et al., 2020).
In this paper, Kuhbandner, Christof, et al. demonstrate that the infection decline occurred before implementing any non-pharmaceutical interventions using the infection dates, as shown in the featured image. The authors argue that the original simulation using reporting dates was flawed and that Dehning, Zierenberg et al. also disregarded the reality that lockdown as the countermeasure was ineffective.
“Once fear has been installed into a community, as was the case with the media reporting on the pandemic (Bendau et al., 2021), rational argument seems to lose effectiveness due to an anxiety-induced hypersensitivity in recognizing, processing, and responding to threat-related information, even in the absence of actual threat and the presence of contradicting information (Bar-Haim, Lamy, Pergamin, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van IJzendoorn, 2007).”
“The idea that we can plan and control our future is conceptually flawed, as any attempt to plan or control it will inevitably influence its outcome, often in unforeseen ways (Fuller, 2017).”
The link below is valid until January 30th, 2022 and allows you to download the paper.