One Of The Lockdowns' Greatest Casualties Could Be Science - Politician
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All on Thu Mar 18 21:05:02 2021
XPost: alt.tv.pol-incorrect, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.usa
XPost: sci.med.diseases
The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns have not only been devastating for
society, they have had a chilling effect on the scientific community.
For science to thrive, opposing ideas must be openly and vigorously
discussed, supported, or countered based on scientific merit.
Instead, some politicians, journalists, and (alas) scientists have
engaged in vicious slander of dissident scientists, spreading damaging conspiracy theories, even with open calls for censorship in place of
debate. In many cases, eminent scientific voices have been effectively silenced, often with gutter tactics. People who oppose lockdowns have
been accused of having blood on their hands, their university positions threatened, with many of our colleagues choosing to stay quiet rather
than face the mob.
We tell the story here of five prominent scientists who have faced the modern-day inquisition.
Dr. Scott Atlas
Dr. Scott Atlas served as a special advisor to the president on COVID
policy between July and November 2020. This would be a difficult job in
normal circumstances when the science is more mature.
With his background in public health policy, Atlas’s advice emphasized balancing risks imposed by viral spread against collateral public
health harms from the lockdowns in a rapidly changing scientific and
policy environment. Scientists who did not share his views had every opportunity to do so responsibly by reporting scientific facts and
conjectures and engaging with his ideas.
Instead, the Journal of the American Medical Association—the flagship
medical journal in the United States—published an opinion article
defaming him without engaging his actual scientific views. The editors
of the journal then refused to publish letters supporting Atlas.
Contrary to his critics, Atlas got the science right. The highest
COVID-19 mortality risk is among nursing home residents. Atlas worked
to ensure federal support for frequent and rapid testing of nursing
home staff, residents, and visitors. While not implemented everywhere,
this initiative alone saved innumerable lives.
Atlas worked hard to make masks available in nursing homes. Atlas was
right to contradict former Centers for Disease Control director Dr.
Robert Redfield’s false assertion that masks are more effective than
vaccines. Atlas advocated for in-person schooling during the pandemic,
a position that even pro-lockdown epidemiologists now endorse.
Dr. John Ioannidis
Dr. John Ioannidis is a world-famous scientist who from the beginning
of the epidemic called for better scientific information to decide
COVID policy. His work, published in the “Bulletin of the World Health Organization,” has helped establish how deadly the virus actually is—an
order of magnitude lower than the conventional narrative implies. For
his work, BuzzFeed News falsely accused him of political bias and
financial conflicts of interest.
In two articles published in Scientific American, two esteemed medical journalists presented evidence against the false charges Ioannidis
faced, while lamenting the slander of scientists as a substitute for
scientific debate. Shockingly, these journalists were then attacked.
The publisher caved and published extensive trivial “corrections” to
their story, none of which contradicted their reporting.
One objection cited the journalists for a conflict of interest because
they cited an article by a different scientist without declaring that
they had previously collaborated with him. Springer Nature owns
Scientific American. If this is a conflict of interest that must be
declared, Springer should issue similar “corrections” for most of the
millions of scientific articles they have published.
Dr. Sunetra Gupta
Oxford University professor Sunetra Gupta, who is one of the world’s
preeminent infectious disease epidemiologists, has been the subject of
vicious attacks by politicians and media pundits with a fraction of her knowledge and wisdom. Gupta has argued throughout the epidemic for
protecting the vulnerable while allowing the disease to be managed in
the rest of society with limited restrictions and minimal harm.
The basis for her ideas is her deep understanding of the science of
epidemics, viral spread, and disease risk. Her sensible ideas, so
contrary to the lockdown policies, have been mischaracterized and
attacked by the U.K. government health minister, Matt Hancock, on the
floor of Parliament. Member of Parliament Neil O’Brien accused her of
telling “tall tales.” Mainstream journalists in the United Kingdom have
called her expertise “spurious” and accused her of making “misleading
claims” akin to conspiracy theories.
Although her detractors conveniently forget, Gupta has repeatedly
argued for better protection of the elderly, with specific suggestions
that could have saved many lives. In early October, Gupta and we
authored the Great Barrington Declaration, hoping to avoid a repeat of
the spring lockdown disaster. Most governments duly ignored her and the
other signatories, and we failed to protect the vulnerable once again.
Dr. Carl Heneghan
Another epidemiologist, Professor Carl Heneghan, who leads the Centre
for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, has been the
subject of similar abuse. Although he has spent his entire career
evaluating and interpreting scientific evidence for scientists and the
public, overwrought critics have called his writings “anti-science” for
daring to point out that the only published randomized study on the
efficacy of face masks calls into question their effectiveness against
COVID-19 infection.
Heneghan has been attacked by U.K. government officials for his
discovery that the U.K. government’s official COVID statistics had
serious errors. Among the errors he discovered include items like bus
accident fatalities labeled COVID deaths and people counted as dying
from COVID months after their recovery from the infection. No doubt
Heneghan’s willingness to tell inconvenient truths contra government
scientists explains the hostility he has received.
Dr. Jonas Ludvigsson
Dr. Jonas Ludvigsson, professor of epidemiology at the prestigious
Karolinska Institute in Sweden, published a ground-breaking study in
the New England Journal of Medicine making it clear that it is safe to
keep schools open during the pandemic, for children and teachers alike.
This work has informed the policy of countries worldwide and states
like Florida in the United States, which have provided safe, in-person instruction for children despite high community caseloads.
For this, Ludvigsson received abuse from both Swedish and international scientists and journalists, to the point he is refocusing his
scientific work away from COVID-19.
We Know Lockdowns Don’t Help, But They Continue
What these scientists have in common is that they have been proved
right. With so many COVID-19 deaths, it should now be obvious to
everyone that lockdown strategies have failed to protect the old.
While anyone can get infected, there is more than a thousand-fold
difference in the risk of death between the old and the young. The
failure to properly exploit this fact about the virus has led to many unnecessary deaths and the biggest public health fiasco in history.
Lockdowns have generated enormous collateral damage across all ages.
Depriving children of face-to-face teaching has hurt not only their
education but also their physical and mental health. Other public
health consequences include missed cancer screenings and treatments,
worse cardiovascular disease outcomes, and deteriorating mental health,
to name a few. Much of this damage will unfold over time, something we
must live and die with for many years to come.
Making the Poor Suffer for Their Egos
While disastrous at the population level, lockdowns have effectively
protected young, low-risk, affluent professionals who can work from
home, such as politicians, journalists, and scientists. They
transferred the disease burden onto older, higher-risk members of the
working class, who have kept society afloat.
Any scientist active on Twiter, Facebook, and other social media must
deal with some unpleasant anonymous trolls, but that goes with the
territory and is not the issue. It is the attacks by politicians,
journalists, and fellow scientists that send a chilling message to
other scientists and journalists to watch their words and self-censor.
This, in turn, damages the public trust in science and public health.
Instead, the field has been left to scientists who agree with the herd
thinking generated by the media. Missing from the policy conversation
is a broader set of scientists who understand there is more to public
health than just infection control and that lockdowns can harm public
health more than they help.
What Can We Do Now?
How do we climb back from this toxic and damaging scientific
environment? How do we ensure that science moves forward through the
open discussion of multiple ideas and perspectives? How can we return
to an academic climate that encourages scientific discourse and
academic freedom? Given the damage done by misguided pandemic policies,
how can we restore the public’s trust in public health?
The responsibility for this rests on everyone in the scientific
community, but especially on scientific leaders such as university
presidents, provosts, and deans, scientific journal publishers and
editors, and the directors of major scientific funding agencies such as
the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases, and the CDC. These leaders need to defend and encourage open scientific debate with multiple perspectives.
On the science, vigorous and hard scientific debate should be
encouraged, but smearing, slander, politicization, and conspiracy
theories that insinuate guilt by association must be combatted and
never tolerated. The future of science and society depends on it. If we
fail, the 300-year Age of Enlightenment will come to an end.
: Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D., is a professor of medicine at Harvard
: University. Jay Bhattacharya, MD, Ph.D., is a professor of
: medicine at Stanford University.
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