Sucharit Bhakdi

Sucharit Bhakdi (born Sucharit Punyaratabandhu, 1 November 1946, in Washington, D.C.) is a retired Thai-German microbiologist. In 2020 Bhakdi became a prominent exponent of ideas about the coronavirus pandemic that ran counter to the scientific consensus.
He was a professor at the University of Mainz, where from 1991 to 2012 he was head of the Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene.
Early life and education.
Bhakdi's parents are Thai diplomats. In an interview, Bhakdi stated that his mother studied at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Bhakdi studied at the Universities of Bonn, Gießen, Mainz and Copenhagen, and at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg.
He studied medicine at the University of Bonn from 1963 to 1970, during part of which (from 1966 to 1970) he was a scholarship holder of the German Academic Exchange Service. Bhakdi worked for a while as a private assistant to the internal medicine specialist Walter Siegenthaler. In February 1971 he received his doctorate in medicine. From 1972 to 1978, he studied at the Max Planck Institute for Immunobiology in Freiburg on scholarships from the Max Planck Society at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology in Freiburg and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
He worked at the University of Copenhagen for a year before moving to the Institute of Medical Microbiology at the Justus Liebig University in Gießen, where he worked from 1977 to 1990. In July 1979 he habilitated.
Scientific and medical career.
Bhakdi was appointed C2 professor at Gießen in 1982. He spent a further year in Copenhagen and became C3 professor of medical microbiology (at Gießen again) in 1987 before being appointed to the University of Mainz in 1990. From 1991 he headed the Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene as a C4 professor.
Bhakdi retired on 1 April 2012. Since 2016 he has been a visiting scholar at the University of Kiel.
Prior to his retirement, Bhakdi produced scientific work in fields such as bacteriology and atherosclerosis, and published multiple scientific articles in these areas. Awards he received include the Order of Merit of Rhineland-Palatinate.
Memberships and functions.
In autumn 2020 he was one of the first signatories of the "appeal for free debating spaces" ( Appells für freie Debattenräume).
He was Editor in Chief of "Medical Microbiology and Immunology" from 1990 to 2012.
Prominence during COVID-19 pandemic.
During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Bhakdi started a YouTube channel proposing that the number of deaths stemming from SARS-CoV-2 infection had been overstated. In November 2020 his account was terminated for violating YouTube's community guidelines.
He has been criticised for his theses on the COVID-19 pandemic; according to , they are considered unscientific by a majority of experts.
Bhakdi's criticisms of the COVID-19 pandemic response.
His criticisms of states' (most particularly Germany's) reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic have included: 
Responses to Bhakdi's criticisms.
Bhakdi's claims, in particular in his YouTube videos and in the book "Corona Fehlalarm?", have been extensively fact-checked and found to be variously unsubstantiated, misleading, or false. 
In Germany, fact-checking activity has included articles at dpa, SWR3 and the German non-profit correctiv.org. On the basis of fact checks by Correctiv, ZDF, die Welt, Der Spiegel and Bayerischer Rundfunk, the Süddeutsche Zeitung summed up: "What Wodarg and Bhakdi say is not completely wrong, but they mix facts with speculation and disinformation." 
Correctiv fact-checked one of Bhakdi's YouTube videos, and found a number of problematic claims, including the claim that any COVID-19 vaccine would be "pointless", and that the virus posed no more threat than influenza. 
Writing for "Foreign Policy", Tyson Barker (Head of DGAP's Technology & Global Affairs Program) described Bhakdi as a prominent example from a "crop of debunked but credentialed so-called experts minting conspiracy theories and undermining fact-based information". 
In October 2020 the University of Mainz issued a statement to the effect that it does not support Bhakdi's views.
Awards.
Negative award.
Following the publicity accorded to Bhakdi's statements and publications regarding Covid-19 during 2020, the Gesellschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften (English: "Society for the Scientific Investigation of Pseudosciences") named him as winner of the 2020 Goldenes Brett.