Wolfgang Wodarg

Wodarg gained notoriety during public discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic when he argued that SARS-CoV-2 was only one of many similar viruses which usually go undetected as part of an ordinary seasonal period of respiratory infections, and that the worldwide activities to stop the pandemic were "hype" caused by the selective perception of researchers.^[6]

His comments on the COVID-19 pandemic drew criticism from German scientists and some German media outlets. According to the critics, Wodarg's claims largely contradicted the verifiable facts; some of his statements were neither verifiable nor falsifiable; and because the facts Wodarg presented had nothing to do with each other, his statements had proved to be misleading.^{[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][4][16][17][18][19]}

In a December 2020 petition to the European Medicines Agency, Wodarg and former Pfizer scientist Michael Yeadon called for all mRNA vaccine trials to be halted.^[20] Their petition, which suggested without evidence that the vaccines could cause infertility in women by targeting the syncytin-1 protein necessary for placenta formation, soon began circulating on social media.^[21] The misinformation caused by the petition spread from social media into doctors offices, where concerned women began asking their gynecologists if it was true. A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation in January found that 13% of unvaccinated people in the U.S. had heard that COVID-19 vaccines caused infertility.^[22] David Gorski wrote on Science-Based Medicine that Wodarg and Yeadon were "stoking real fear that the new COVID-19 vaccines will make women infertile and [...] doing it based on speculative nonsense".^[23]

Transparency International Germany, on whose board of directors Wodarg serves, distanced itself from his statements on 17 March 2020: "Transparency International Germany rejects board member Dr Wolfgang Wodarg's sweeping criticism of the government measures to protect the population from the coronavirus. (...) Wolfgang Wodarg is speaking on this matter as a private individual and not in his capacity as a member of the Management Board."^[12][24] On 25 March 2020, the board decided to suspend his membership in the association "until further notice", which means that Wodarg can no longer exercise any functions on the board or as head of the health working group for the time being. The Board of Directors will commission an independent committee to look into Wodarg's statements about the coronavirus and to determine whether his behaviour has harmed the interests of Transparency International Germany. Transparency Chairman Hartmut Bäumer said that the reason for this was that Wodarg had expressed his views on "radical media" such as KenFM, Rubikon, Geolitico, and in an interview with Eva Herman; all of "which regularly work with conspiracy theories, with anti-democratic and sometimes anti-Semitic prejudices" and "oppose the basic democratic principles of Transparency"; while "some of them are personally close to the AfD".^[25][26][27]

• Personal website (in German) and (in English)
• Biography from the German Bundestag Archived 10 January 2010 at the Wayback Machine (in German)
• Wolfgang Wodargs Profile from abgeordnetenwatch.de (in German)
• Wolfgang Wodarg in the German National Library catalogue