Expert pathologist Dr Roger Hodkinson (above) told government officials in Alberta during a November 13 zoom conference call that the current COVID-19 crisis is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public.”
Hodkinson was speaking via telephone during an Edmonton City Council Community and Public Services Committee meeting last Friday regarding the Alberta city's move to extend its face-covering bylaw.
Hodkinson warned what he was about to say was "lay language and blunt" and "counter-narrative," so he began with a summary of his credentials to reassure committee members he was not a "quack."
Hodkinson is a medical specialist in pathology, which includes virology, who trained at Cambridge University in England. A Royal College certified pathologist in Canada, he is ex-president of the pathology section of the Medical Association, former chairman of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Examination Committee in Ottawa. He has also served as a pathologist with the Medical Examiner’s Office in Edmonton determining cause of death, and as Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Alberta.
Hodkinson is in good standing with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, and has been recognized by the Court of Queen’s Bench in Alberta as an expert in pathology.
Hodkinson is also Executive Chairman of Bio-ID Diagnostics, a company that produces COVID-19 tests - so he has little to gain personally from calling BS on the coronavirus scaremongering.
Hodkinson pointed out that, thanks to his role as CEO of a biotech company that manufactures COVID tests, "I might know a little bit about all this."
"The bottom line is this," said Hodkinson after listing his credentials, "there is utterly unfounded public hysteria driven by the media and politicians, it’s outrageous, this is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public."
"There is absolutely nothing that can be done to contain this virus other than protecting older, more vulnerable people," he said. "It should be thought of as nothing other than a bad flu season," said Hodkinson. "This is not ebola. It's not SARS. It's politics playing medicine, and that's a very dangerous game."
"There is no action of any kind needed other than what happened last year when we got unwell," he said. "We stayed home, we took chicken noodle soup, we didn’t visit granny, and we decided when we would return to work. We didn’t need anyone to tell us."
“Masks are utterly useless. There is no evidence base for their effectiveness whatsoever,” he said.
“Paper masks and fabric masks are simply virtue signalling. They’re not even worn effectively most of the time. It’s utterly ridiculous. Seeing these unfortunate, uneducated people – I’m not saying that in a pejorative sense – seeing these people walking around like lemmings obeying without any knowledge base to put the mask on their face.”
A randomized, controlled Danish study published recently in the Annals of Internal Medicine found a recommendation to wear surgical masks when outside the home did not produce a statistically significant reduction in COVID-19 infection compared with no mask recommendation.
This adds to the already significant volume of evidence suggesting masks offer little if any benefit in preventing the spread of COVID-19.
In fact, a study in Vietnam found health care workers wearing cloth masks had an increased risk of infection compared to those wearing medical masks and a "usual practice" group (some of whom wore masks and some didn't).
"Social distancing is also useless," said Hodkinson, "because covid is spread by aerosols, which travel 30 meters or so before landing."
"And closures have had such terrible, unintended consequences," Hodkinson said, "everywhere should be open tomorrow, as was stated in the Great Barrington Declaration" (a petition launched by Stanford, Harvard and Oxford epidemiologists arguing for not restricting the healthy while protecting the vulnerable).
"And a word on testing," added Hodkinson. Reminding the committee he was in the business of COVID-19 testing, "I do want to emphasize that positive test results do not, underlined in neon, mean a clinical infection. It's simply driving public hysteria and all testing should stop unless you're presenting to hospital with some respiratory problem."
Hodkinson said all that should be done is "to protect the vulnerable and give them all, in the nursing homes that are under your control, 3 to 5,000 international units of vitamin D every day which has been shown to radically reduce the likelihood of infection."
"And I would remind you all that using the province's own statistics, the risk of death under 65 in this province is one in 300,000 ... one in 300,000 ... you've got to get a grip on this. The scale of the response you are undertaking, with no evidence for it,
