During corona, epidemiologist Amrish Baidjoe insisted on quick action. In the meantime, GP Rob Elens promoted an unproven medicine

After intensivist Diederik Gommers (“Code Black was very close”) and RIVM modeller Jacco Wallinga (“It soon became clear that the virus was reasonably contagious”) earlier this week, general practitioner Rob Elens and epidemiologist Amrish Baidjoe will appear as experts before the parliamentary Corona inquiry committee on Wednesday.

microbiologist and field epidemiologistAmrish Baidjoe

“War is the best breeding ground for infectious diseases,” said microbiologist and field epidemiologist Amrish Baidjoe in April 2022 NRC. He worked in conflict areas for Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross. People live there in unsafe conditions, sometimes sitting close to each other in bomb shelters or sleeping on the street, so acute care ‘rightly’ takes priority over infection control.

Baidjoe was interviewed in 2022 over concerns for Ukrainians. A few months after the start of the large-scale Russian war of invasion of their country, the number of Ukrainians who fled increased. They had a low vaccination rate and their distrust in vaccines was great. But Baidjoe did not believe that corona would flare up again because of these refugees.

Amrish Baidjoe will be heard by the inquiry committee on Wednesday as co-initiator of Red Team Covid 19 NL. This was a group of experts who provided unsolicited advice – as well as strong criticism – on the way the government was combating the corona crisis. “The government pretended to listen and even adopted some of the jargon,” Baidjoe said about the Red Team advice, but did something completely different in practice. “And we don’t want to participate in that game.” The Red Team disbanded in 2022.

Baidjoe and other members of the Red Team often appeared on talk shows. The core of their criticism: the Netherlands always intervened too late with tough measures, while according to the group this would not be necessary if the aim was to have as few infections as possible. “The Red Team mainly stood for early intervention,” said Baidjoe.

Take the decision-making regarding face masks, that Baidjoe in 2022 as an example of hesitant policy. “At the beginning it was said that an extensive study had to be carried out first. While the spread of such a virus continues. You see that scientists are not used to making decisions in a high degree of uncertainty. And unfortunately in an outbreak like this – and in fact any outbreak with a virus – that is not possible.”

He also thought that the government should communicate much more actively and clearly with target groups that are harder to reach. About the live corona press conferences of Prime Minister Mark Rutte (VVD), Healthcare Minister Hugo de Jonge (CDA) and RIVM boss Jaap van Dissel, Baidjoe said: “People may be watching in large numbers, but not in even larger numbers.”

GP Rob Elens

He had extended his hand to meet presenter Jeroen Pauw, the cameras were not yet running. Rob Elens, a general practitioner from the North Limburg village of Meijel, was a guest on the talk show in the first months of the pandemic, it was May 2020. Op1.

At the table recalled Pauw’s introduction from earlier that evening: “You ignore everything?” No, Elens replied, “I’m sometimes called ‘cowboy’, but I’m just a sensible person.” The doctor “had difficulty” with options such as not shaking hands or keeping a distance of one and a half meters.

Virologist Ab Osterhaus, also a guest, thought that was strange for a general practitioner. (“A few more things about which you disagree,” Pauw announced in advance.)

On Wednesday, the committee of inquiry will interrogate Elens, who will be asked by the committee announced as “critical about the corona policy”. Rather than in talk shows or newspapers, the GP gained fame in ‘alternative’ media and on social media platforms during the pandemic. Elens said he had found the medicine against Covid-19: hydroxychloroquine. An antimalarial drug that Donald Trump, then in his first term as president of the United States, also trumpeted as a “miracle drug”. In pleas for hydroxychloroquine on Twitter, Elens was quoted about 2,500 times, it turned out data analysis from Argos Medialogica and Dataschool Utrecht.

According to studies, hydroxychloroquine does not work against corona. The Health Care Inspectorate then whistled Elens back. He was no longer allowed to prescribe the drug due to lack of evidence and concerns about its side effects. The publication of a controversial scientific study recommending the drug in 2020 was canceled in 2024 withdrawn due to the flawed methodology and questionable ethics of the study.

Elens also stated letters who sent patients across the country to their GP. In it, they requested their doctor to administer hydroxychloroquine if they were to “unexpectedly” contract corona. General practitioners reacted angrily. “We as general practitioners do not know better than the virologists and infectiologists who are involved in research on the front line,” said Limburg general practitioner Niels Rossen, for example.

It remains to be seen what tone Elens will take during the interrogation on Wednesday. At alternative medium Café Weltschmerz, which became the go-to during the corona crisis platform for conspiracy theories about the virus, Elens said at the time that he was from the government people was not allowed to heal. “They want to vaccinate everyone. Big pharma!”

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