Professor Tim Noakes, who has faced backlash after his comments on the novel coronavirus, says while he got some information wrong, one thing remains true: diabetics and those with heart disease are at much greater risk of dying from the disease. The Times reports that Noakes, a retired sports scientist and advocate of the Banting movement, said he was incorrect to refer to COVID-19 as a DNA rather than RNA virus, but “that is beside the point”.
The report says he received a tongue-lashing from journalist and founder of news agency GroundUp, Nathan Geffen, who described the interview with Noakes as “dangerously misleading and containing elementary errors”. But Noakes lashed back, accusing Geffen of having little knowledge of medicine and physiology.
In a follow-up interview on Cape Talk, he said his views about red blood cells were based on hypothesis and later apologised if they caused confusion or harm to listeners. “The beauty of hypothesis is that it drives thinking. You may have someone listening to that CCFM interview who says: ‘I want to be a scientist and want to prove something about red blood cells’. What really worries me is that we are closing down discussion on this important topic.
“If I caused harm or distress … I apologise profusely, because this was never my intention. My intention was to give people hope. And the hope is that there is a small proportion of the population at risk of this disease. That’s the real important point. It is older people who have chronic comorbidities … they are the ones at real risk and the message is that they should be doing something about it, and all of us should try to be metabolically healthier.”
He encouraged people to “keep their eyes open and read” to find out more about COVID-19, “as you will never know who is right”.
[link url="https://select.timeslive.co.za/news/2020-04-17-tim-noakes-says-sorry-for-his-covid-19-comments-well-sort-of/"]Full report in The Times[/link]