Epidemiologist censored by YouTube for being against lockdown orders

Dr. Knut M. Wittkowski, former head of biostatistics, epidemiology and research design at Rockefeller University, said YouTube removed a video of him giving a talk about the coronavirus that had racked up more than 1.3 million views.

Wittkowski, 65, is a critic of the nation's current efforts to fend off the contagion. He has gone so far to say that social distancing is not an effective way of combating the virus, suggesting that doing so only perpetuates the virus' existence. He has also criticized the current lockdown protocols, referring to them as unnecessary, according to New York Post.

Wittkowski, who has earned two doctorates in computer science and medical biometry, is of the opinion that the coronavirus should be allowed to achieve "herd immunity," and that outside of a vaccine, the pandemic is only going to come to an end if it is able to spread through the population.

"With all respiratory diseases, the only thing that stops the disease is herd immunity. About 80 percent of the people need to have had contact with the virus, and the majority of them won’t even have recognized that they were infected," he said in the now-deleted video.

"I was just explaining what we had," Wittkowski told The Post of the video, saying he had no idea why it was removed. The footage was produced by Journeyman Pictures, a British film company.

"They don’t tell you. They just say it violates our community standards. There’s no explanation for what those standards are or what standards it violated."

In interviews and articles across the web, Wittkowski has likened COVID-19 to a "bad flu," which has likely made him a target for YouTube. The video platform said in April that it would be "removing information that is problematic" about the pandemic, but the specifics of that statement have largely been hidden from the public.

“Anything that goes against [World Health Organization] recommendations would be a violation of our policy and so removal is another really important part of our policy,” CEO Susan Wojcicki told CNN. The issue here is that the World Health Organization (WHO) has come under fire from not only individuals, but whole countries.

While Wittkowski's argument is still within the minority among his colleagues, it nevertheless carries with it some legitimacy, as can be seen in Sweden, a country that has taken a non-lockdown approach.

The WHO is not a fan of Wittkowski's assessment, with the group's executive director of health emergencies, Mike Ryan, calling it "a really dangerous, dangerous calculation."

Rockefeller University—Wittkowski's employer for the last two decades—has even released a statement sharply distancing themselves from him and his ideas on coronvirus.

While the doctor's content may have been booted from YouTube, he has found a home at the

While the doctor might have been too hot for YouTube, he has found a home at the American Institute for Economic Research, which currently has Wittkowski's video available online.

Across the board, social media has made strides to limit the flow of verboten information.

“We have broadened our definition of harm to address content that goes directly against guidance from authoritative sources of global and local public health information,” Twitter said in April shortly after removing two tweets by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Last month Facebook conceded that they had been working with state governments in California, New Jersey and Nebraska to remove pages for anti-quarantine events.

“It’s the kind of totalitarian thinking and conduct that has cost millions of lives in recent world history. The fact that it’s being done by private companies and not government doesn’t change that,” Ron Coleman, a prominent First Amendment lawyer, said.

Wittkowski, however, says history has already vindicated his earlier position that the old and immunocompromised alone should have been strictly isolated, which The Post reported in March.

Around one-third of all US coronavirus deaths have been among the nursing-home patients and staff, a problem Wittkowski mentioned was exacerbated in New York Governor Cuomo's March 25 executive order requiring nursing homes to accept individuals with the virus.

Wittkowski dismissed a new order from the governor this week requiring regular COVID testing for staff as a farce.

“Cuomo can’t undo his mistake of forcing nursing homes to take in infected people when the horse is out of the barn,” he said.

Wittkowski has taken his own advice by flouting New York's coronavirus restrictions, walking around his Upper East Side neighborhood maskless and eating in underground restaurants.

“We don’t have to fear anything but fear,” he said. “Wasn’t that an American who said that?”