PRETORIA – Coetzee, who was the first to spot the variant, said that 99 percent of people who became infected with it had developed only minor symptoms. “It’s similar to a cold or the flu.”

She also revealed that she was being threatened by “scientists”, among others, who had ordered her not to disclose that the new variant only caused mild complaints. They told her to adapt her story: “I then said that Omicron is a harmless disease in South Africa and a very serious disease in Europe because I had to tell European politicians that,” said Coetzee.

Translation: Head of the South African Medical Association and discoverer of the #OmicronVariant Angelique Coetzee

“I was not allowed by scientists and European politicians to say a word about the fact that this new variant causes very mild symptoms.

Coetzee was approached by European “scientists” after she had explained that the panic surrounding Omicron was a “storm in a teacup”. Soon after her statement, the Dutch chairman of the OMT (the health agency dealing with the pandemic in the Netherlands) Jaap van Dissel dismissed her observations by saying that it was “really too early” to tell.

“You don’t know yet what new variants are going to emerge after Omicron,” Van Dissel said.

Even when Coetzee had tried to explain that she had simply been following the WHO guidelines for the definition of a mild disease, politicians continued to put pressure on her to change her statements.

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