Doctor Pēteris Apinis: The government's decision to ban the marathon was malicious

"Our government and the fanatical panic-mongers should read World Health Organization (WHO) documents using their brains. But they read WHO documents literally, imposing terrible restrictions limiting children from learning, patients from getting treatment, producers from exporting, and other people from thinking. Everyone has to believe in the government's hypochondriacs and wear masks, as if we were about to get into a crowded Hong Kong subway or an Indian intercity train car,” says Dr. Pēteris Apinis, a famous Latvian doctor who led the Latvian Medical Association for a long time. Today we have an interview with him.

Tell us honestly: does the virus exist or not?

Coronavirus exists and such viruses cross the species barrier (animal to human and back) on a regular basis. Some are more dangerous, others less so. I have read the statements of very authoritative virologists that coronaviruses from other animal species have always reached humans and very often caused local epidemics for centuries. After that, they were self-limiting, just as SARS-Cov-1 was self-limiting and disappeared. Humans did not detect these viruses, because there are millions of viruses in the world, but each human virome (a set of viruses that "live" in a person) has at least 300 viruses. And another aspect: in the past, the world was not so interconnected and integrated that viruses could spread around the globe in a short period of time. In the past, the virus was not immediately a global problem. History knows a lot of stories when in a certain place, in a region, in a country, people used to fall terribly ill and die of a disease.

Are you saying that we have fallen ill from coronaviruses before?

At least four coronaviruses are not self-limiting. Prior to 2003, two human coronaviruses were detected: the alpha-coronavirus HcoV-229E and the beta-coronavirus HcoV-OC43. In the Netherlands in 2004 the first case of HcoV-NL63 was reported and in Hong Kong in 2005 was the first HCoV-HKU1 patient.

In humans, these four coronaviruses cause about 15% of common colds. In most cases, the disease occurs in a mild form with a runny nose and inflammation of the upper respiratory tract. In some cases, these viruses can cause serious illness, especially in the elderly. In any case, coronavirus disease produces antibodies in humans, but they are thought to cross-protect us against SARS-CoV-2 as well.

One theory is that people in Eastern Europe have lighter cases of Covid-19 because they have already had these four coronaviruses, or because they have previously contracted a self-limiting coronavirus before scientists noticed it.

Will the virus that causes Covid-19 become self-limiting too?

There are many conflicting opinions among the world's most outstanding virologists and infectologists, so I do not know the correct answer. Many prominent minds say that yes, they will become self-limiting and disappear in a few years, others will say no, and it will mutate, and two-thirds of the world's population will have to contract it. I can believe that the virus is no longer so dangerous and does not cause such a serious disease, because it sees us as its home and has no interest in destroying its home, that is, killing people. Even very prominent experts today agree that the mortality from SARS-CoV-2 was and still is exaggerated, and in reality it is lower than the mortality from influenza, i.e. 0.14%. In the majority of the population, the virus does not cause any symptoms, although in the literature these figures range from 20% to 95%. Our knowledge is still quite fragmented and based on veterinary experience.

You strongly oppose the government's decision to ban the Riga Marathon.

I was very surprised by Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs, who suddenly became a fighter against the gatherings of people. If I remember correctly, two weeks ago he admired the street marches in Minsk with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators. In a street march, people are many times closer to each other than when running a marathon and even gathering for the start (10 minutes - maximum). I wish to explain to Mr Rinkēvičs that the virus has no borders and that it is not aware of the Latvian-Belarusian border posts. If gatherings outside were so infectious, Germany would have died out after the protests in Berlin, and so would have the United States after demonstrations and riots to "reduce racial inequality."

But the government voted against the marathon, not just Rinkēvičs.

Our Prime Minister seems to be a hypochondriac, so he should be kept in quarantine until October 2022. It would benefit everyone, and I would hope that the country's economy would recover. The government's decision to ban the marathon was simply malicious and ruining public health. I was pleased with Ilga Šuplinska and Ilze Viņķele for having a clear understanding that sport activities increase not only physical but also mental health, as well as education.

Why are you so in favor of sports?

Sport is the foundation of a nation's health. In order to reduce the chances of cancer and heart attack in patients, it is my duty to make each of my patients train and exercise. Starting tomorrow - every single day. Movement and exercise create a sense of happiness only for those who participate in the competition themselves. Exercise releases a number of chemically active substances that affect the functioning of the brain. Endorphins are released into the human brain during intense sports. Those who take part in sports competitions only by watching them on TV in warm slippers, mostly are forced to get positive emotions through the presence of alcohol. That is why our government is lowering excise duty on alcohol and allowing it to be sold online. Exercise improves the activity of the immune system, reduces the incidence of respiratory and digestive diseases, and also - which is significant - reduces the risk of breast cancer, stomach cancer and colon cancer. And this has been proven by very serious studies.

You are a member of the Executive Committee of the Latvian Olympic Committee.

I was elected there to be someone who defends national sports and children's sports. When I took office, I promised not to go to the Olympics, but to pull the limited amount of sports funding in the direction of national sports. My goal is for each child at school to have one sports or physical education class every day. Here I have the support of Žoržs Tikmers, President of the Latvian Olympic Committee (LOK). He has rowed to the Olympic silver medal and knows that great athletes can be found and Olympic medals can be won for the country if all the children, or at least as many children as possible, play sports. In the LOK, we adopted a strategy: we must ensure that in 2030, 50% of the Latvian population is engaged in sports. At present, there are 17%. The minimum amount is recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) - five times a week for at least half an hour, excluding warm-up and warm-up.

Speaking about the WHO... Do their coronavirus recommendations contain any nonsense?

I think that the government and fanatical panic-mongers should read WHO documents using their brains. The WHO says the virus can infect if you are indoors at a distance of less than one meter and 80 centimeters, face to face for at least 15 minutes. There is not a word that you can get infected by running along Brīvības Street. The major problem with the WHO is that they have to create one document for all countries. But the world is not equally inhabited. First, there are differences between urban and rural areas.

The largest population per square kilometer lives in Cairo - 153,606 people. New York has a population of 38,242 and Mexico City has a population of 31,598 per square kilometer. It should be noted that in New York and Hong Kong, in Shanghai and Beijing, in Mexico City and Mumbai, the population density in the city center also exceeds 100 thousand per square kilometer. Riga has a population of 627,487 per 304 square kilometers, i.e. 2,064 thousand inhabitants per square kilometer. There's a bit of a difference, isn't it? This is the density of cities. What does population density in countries show?

Mongolia has a population of 2 inhabitants per square kilometer, Australia - 3, Canada - 4, Russia - 9, Hong Kong - 6732, Singapore - 7796, Monaco - 18 960, Macao - 20 027. Latvia has a population of 1.92 million (from 2019 official data) per 64 589 square kilometers, which means about 29 inhabitants per square kilometer.

The World Health Organization then has to prepare one document, and they are preparing it for Cairo, Macao and Mumbai, not for Mongolia or Latgale. But our government read this document literally, imposing terrible restrictions limiting children from learning, patients from getting treatment, producers from exporting, and other people from thinking. Everyone has to believe in the government's hypochondriacs and wear masks, as if we were about to get into a crowded Hong Kong subway or an Indian intercity train car.

But why does the whole world, including the people of Latvia, believe in the statements of governments, the press and social networks and panic?

I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories, but I always like to consider - who benefits? I recently looked at the Blumberg Billionaire Index. We know that worldwide turnover and GDP have fallen by at least 10%, and people have become significantly poorer. But not all - the wealth of the world's ten richest people reached $990.7 billion on October 1 - out of a list of 10 richest people in the world, eight of them have become significantly richer this year - the total wealth of the ten richest people has risen $221.87 billion this year.

Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon, has become $78.68 billion richer this year, that is, he has become richer than six Latvian state budgets. Bill Gates and Steve Balmer with Microsoft, Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook, Larry Page with Google, Larry Ellison with Oracle. All these men have significantly increased their wealth this year. All of the above are related to IT technologies. It is possible that the global hysteria due to the pandemic has been created by artificial intelligence, because it would not be easy for a person to design such a grand panic campaign lasting now more than six months.

In any case, in the economic impact the pandemic of 2020 can be summarized like this: the poor became poorer, the middle class became poorer, insignificant production and trade sector millionaires suffered losses that were partly offset by governments at the expense of the population, while the super-rich became significantly richer.

Are you saying that such bursts of panic will be frequent in the future?

No, everything new is actually well-forgotten old. Global business has already trained the human brain and prepared us for this pandemic: we had hepatitis C in 2001, it is still a dangerous disease, but I have not heard the Finance Minister Jānis Reirs say that more money should be given to treat this disease. In 2003, we had prion-borne spongiform encephalopathy, or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which slaughtered 100 thousand cows in England, and the panic was terrible. In 2005 we were reached by SARS, which was in the headlines of the world news, but then became self-limiting, in 2007 the world was scared of bird flu, in 2009 of swine flu, in honor of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, the whole world was frightened by the Zika virus, which is still transmitted by mosquitoes today, but no one is worried about the virus anymore. Of course, you can still remember the fight against the Ebola virus, which is a problem in an endemic area. Please do not cut out my next words: the next pandemic will play out in 2023.

It is quite possible that the planners of this pandemic have miscalculated, and now the institutional and public memory will be too lasting to organize the next pandemic in a year...

So we shouldn’t be afraid of Covid-19?

Do not be afraid, but you need to protect yourself and be prepared to get this virus infection asymptomatically or in a mild form.

The term "asymptomatic" confuses many, as the disease is still a dysfunction of the body, manifested by symptoms.

There are different options: a person can be a simple carrier of a virus, or he can have viremia while feeling well. I will continue on Covid-19. The principles remain the same - to distance oneself, to wash our hands, to leave the premises and not to stay at home, to run - perhaps not immediately go for a marathon, but for an appropriate distance in the forest or along the sea, to promote immunity with vitamin D, with zinc, with roots and vegetables in the diet, to treat your chronic diseases by using medicines as prescribed by a doctor. The main thing - to love your family doctor.

But what about the vaccine? There are very prominent and numerous promises of it.

This subject is big enough for a separate interview. In short, the vaccine will be developed, but it will be insufficiently tested. We will be able to confirm the persistence of the antibodies developed by the vaccine in about five years. Regarding vaccinating children and pregnant women - definitely NO. I will recommend vaccination for sedentary elderly people who are overweight and have three to four chronic diseases and reduced immunity.