[deng]

The controversy was that they presented results before even a preprint was available. Even worse, the presentation was done together with a state governor and the preliminary results were used to push a political agenda, mainly the loosening of the current COVID19 restrictions, although it is very clear that Gangelt is not representative for Germany. The dubious PR firm that heavily publicized the study on social media was just icing on the cake. Prof. Drosten has said for quite some time that he estimates the fatality rate to be well below 1%, so the 0,37% from the study are well within his estimates. The real question is how far we are w.r.t. to "herd immunity", and if even a heavily hit town like Gangelt has only 15%, this means that we are far, far away from it.

[SpicyLemonZest]

I don't think it's fair to call that political. Everyone agrees that the current COVID19 restrictions are extraordinarily costly and should be relaxed the second we're able. If he believes he's found new evidence suggesting it's safer than commonly believed to relax the restrictions, of course he'll be desperate to tell people about it.

[tastroder]

I might misread you here but what part of the statements of a politician are not supposed to be political there? The notion that this was based on evidence and marketing the study before it even concluded do not really seem to mix that well. And we're not talking about marketing in terms of a press release that went out to soon or an overeager university press department here, we're talking about a marketing agency campaign including singular topic social media account and sensationalization of the results.

https://www1.wdr.de/nachrichten/landespolitik/heinsberg-prot...