Not sure from this article if Dr. Offit is for or against public debate about vaccine safety and efficacy. In my opinion, the ONLY way public health authorities can regain their lost credibility is by being totally honest with the public, including not censoring good faith debate by competent scientists and physicians.
You are absolutely right. He certainly seems to be suggesting that - at least selectively- suppressing scientific results is in the public interest. If one believes in the idea that “sunshine is the best disinfectant” then sharing information is paramount. It’s absolutely essential to promote trust that public health authorities preface all their recommendations by a disclaimer that the recommendations are based on what they - in their informed, educated OPINION - believe to be best approach given all available research. And, that as further information becomes available, the recommendations will be revised if necessary. And when any such recommendations are revised they should provide a straightforward explanation of why. They SHOULD NOT assume that their audience is incapable of understanding nuances of conclusions and thus merit condescending, incomplete proclamations. It would also be appropriate to emphasize that they will be following those recommendations themselves AND DO SO. If the CDC et al had done these things from the beginning, it would have been much harder for those spreading lies and conspiracy theories to find as large an audience as they did and still are. Once trust is gone it is very hard to restore.
It's not so much the idea of suppressing scientific data as it is in controlling the messaging. To paraphrase, "Those who like sausage and love science should watch neither being made." As scientists, we're amazingly precise in some areas, and sloppy in others. Our public communications, especially our debates, have epitomized "Sloppy" but the data have, overall, been well-presented. I'll note there are some sterling examples of studies, published by reputable sources, where the science was done poorly, and there's been an outcry by my colleagues (and me) in those cases.
"It’s absolutely essential to promote trust that public health authorities preface all their recommendations by a disclaimer that the recommendations are based on what they - in their informed, educated OPINION - believe to be best approach given all available research."
This statement is absolutely spot-on, but at the start of the pandemic we were used to providing our data and making recommendations based on those data. A pandemic can change the way we understand data, though. In 2020, both laboratory and clinical data were coming in fast and furious. I've stated before that, based on new information from both the clinical realm and published research data, I could change my opinion, well considered and not haphazard, several times in a day, as more information made one or more conditions more clear. My job then was to debate colleagues and reach consensus, often a messy process: My sources differed from theirs, and we were geographically dispersed. Our debates were on social media groups because they were the fastest way to disseminate something to the entire operational discussion group. Unfortunately, that also meant, because we didn't discourage others from joining (one exception: a clinical peer group where we were candidly discussing care and therapy options), because we'd never thought about the impact of someone unfamiliar with our process listening in.
I spent most of the pandemic advising a rather large, national not-for-profit. In that role, and in most of my social media interactions, a change of position was accompanied by citations and a summation of the article(s) and peer interactions that affected my changed position. Even with that, too many accused me of "lying" because what I'd said, literally one or two days earlier, had changed. They ignored the inclusion of new data affecting my opinions. To your point, most of the people both in the organization and on social media who were making claims about my veracity fell into three camps: Those who had decided what was "fact" in a fast-paced world; Those who didn't bother to follow the citations I provided but merely noted my position had shifted; or, Those who did not understand the nuance of the conclusions.
CDC, in 2020, was a completely different institution from the one I first met in the mid-1990s. In 2017, with the advent of Redfield, and with tremendous budget cuts for the organization on the horizon, a significant portion of senior scientific leadership, people with 30+ years in the agency, retired. In a number of areas, much less experienced personnel found themselves running groups and major research elements. In addition, in the 2020 timeframe, political appointees were interfering with the messaging, rewriting communications that were clearer and much more strident with something that was more politically acceptable. The outcry from my community was unheeded: It didn't meet the messaging requirements of the Administration at the time. I must also note that we've taken exception to positions taken in this regard by the current Administration. To the point, this Pandemic isn't over because the virus is still deciding what to do with us. But back on-topic, when Nancy Messonnier was disciplined for her pronouncement that the outbreak was going to be more serious than people were being told.
...or anyone for that matter. Only allowing good faith debate by those deemed appropriate, "competent scientists and physicians" as you say, is also going to cause issues. People without those specific credentials can and should also be allowed to engage in good faith debate without being censored.
Many life insurance companies reported very high numbers of excess deaths among those who got the Covid vaccine, much higher than the numbers of those who died of Covid.
Agreed, however, at this point in addition to answering questions posed by scientists they should be accountable to citizens too. Anyone can get educated, all you have to do is read. You can gain an in-depth understanding without being a so called scientist.
Don't be ridiculous. Jay Battacharya and Martin Kulldorff are literally suing the government over this exact thing. The government was explicitly "requesting" tech companies remove both specific posts by scientists and doctors as well as remove them entirely from their platforms.
Jay has been involved in a number of statements that fail to remain consistent with clinical findings and good research practice. Kullfdorff and Prasad follow in the same mold. Can't recall seeing anything substantive from Malone, but there are plenty of people with strong training who not only disagree with what credible scientists have found and are reporting, but are doing so in manners that mislead the public. I've seen no evidence of censorship, outside of, say, Messonnier's silencing at CDC in 2020 by the Trump administration, and shunting Birx off into oblivion rather than letting her pursue data-driven leads.
I did not say anything about the consistency of the statements of these people or that you should take what they say with any weight, that is entirely up to you.
Social media has been censoring (deleting, shadow banning and demonetizing) these scientists and physicians for the past three years at “request” (actually threats and bullying) of the US government.
You must have some bit in your brain that can understand that it is unconstitutional for the government to attempt to restrict the speech of individuals in almost any capacity even if they do so by "requesting" the speech be censored and regardless of how successful or not they may be at it. You don't get to decide that you think someone is saying things too dangerous and that makes this go away. It is true there are some exceptions but they are very limited and nothing that someone like Jay Battacharya for instance was saying falls into those exceptions. The fact that you see him speak somewhere is completely irrelevant to any of this.
Robert Malone is interested in one thing, his bank account. His deliberate, wrong and misleading claims should make him liable, but firtunately he can hide behind the unregulated social media environment!
Just inverted from reality. The NIH, along with Big Pharma is interested in one thing, their bank account. Their deliberate, wrong and misleading claims could make them liable, but fortunately they can hide behind the censorious media environment that they paid for.
You seem to have common sense. Obviously that is not what Dr Offit is proposing. He believes in public debate only if the public responds positively about what they heard in the debate. Not sure how that can ever be accomplished successfully.
“We should be able to trust that those involved in public health are trying to get it right even when they might not get it right the first time.”
You are right....we should be able to do so. But time and again, public health has proven itself untrustworthy. Anyone who has a scientific background and is paying attention know much of what comes out of our regulatory agencies is more propaganda than it is science.
How many studies in MMWR, for example, are so obviously cherry picked to promote the agencies' policy interests? When time proves them wrong, why are they not then withdrawn? The problem is not that public health gets things wrong - people are very forgiving when humility it put to the fore. They are much less so when they double and triple down on errors and omissions.
The past few years have been a case study of attempting to minimize dissent and oversell the benefits of mRNA. How has this worked out? Why has the FDA not publicized the results of the required studies on myocarditis performed by the sponsors, even when requested by FOIA? This obfuscation and ivory tower mentality will only increase distrust in vaccines, and for better or worse, those that promote them.
For a moment I had your comment asking about the source of my statement saying that I had twice read that (some time ago), there had been eight million Covid deaths worldwide and eleven million from the vaccine. I looked again and found this. That comment of yours had been subsumed in my inbox by others without my being able to scroll up to find it the way I used to. This present comment is directed to the commenter who uses the nym Mike Stevens or Mike S, in case it is moved. If it’s deleted I’ll try to convey it to you another way.
This is Dr John Campbell reporting on Aug 2 on a WHO report showing just short of 15 million excess deaths worldwide. I started to watch it, and will continue to do so. One interesting chart shows very low rates of Covid deaths in Africa, prob bcz of its young demographic, but a high spiky line above that one showing excess mortality there. Because many were given the vaccine although they were at low risk of dying from Covid.
Dad gum it, as my father used to say. I can’t attach a screen shot showing the chart with the almost 15 million excess deaths. I’ll do it at another site. You gave me instructions many years ago when that woman was denying that my quote about the low number of measles encephalitis cases given in that book by Mikaela Glockler was authentic. But I couldn’t do it until I had an iphone.
You will say that the excess deaths are not proven to be from the vaccine, but are really Covid deaths. We really also don’t know exactly how many deaths were caused by Covid. I got the book by Ed Dowd on Kindle. Many, many, many short reports outlining the basic facts on the sudden deaths of many, many, many individuals who had gotten the Covid vaccine. Who were engaged in normal activities, not being sick with Covid or anything else. Jeff Childers at Coffee and Covid asked on Thursday the opinion of readers of his putting a red X over his daily photos of a handful of people suddenly killed by the vaccine.
She’s Australian? She’s really creepy, very condescending. She’s obviously an industry shill.
I thought it was telling that John changed his posture, which few have. I started watching him in early 2021. At that time he was very enthusiastic about the vaccine, said it was safe and effective. I put up one of my long comments. A couple of days later, he said on his program that he had been shocked by the comments he had gotten and advised that parents not let their children read them. I, in turn, was shocked, and ho
Got cut off for some reason. Hoped he weren’t referring to my comment, which was, as always, decorously expressed. And then over time he completely changed his stance. He got three Pfizers that year, the third in November. As you did. You started in December, I in May, I think he in April, maybe March, with a long gap before the second. So he supported the vaccine through 2021, as I did. His change in orientation was slow and sincere.
Did you see the Ben Shapiro video yesterday, The Face of Evil? Free, unlike his expensive program. It is difficult to find words to throw at something of that magnitude of evil. He kept saying Look, look, as painful as it is, look! Everyone must look. I wish the IDF would get on with Project Scorched Earth. Netanyahu told them Saturday to get out, so now let’s do it.
There will be differences of opinion but forcing people to take an experimental drug goes against long standing international treaties. treating people with Midazolam that are not at the end of life. Misleading people about drugs like ivermectin that it is only for farm animals, that’s a lie. Fauci openly admitting that he lied to the public (you will probably say they were noble lies) about masks not working then saying they work, saying that we need 70% for herd immunity when he saw polling that 50% would get the shot, and when he saw polling at 60% figured he could nudge it to 80-85%. These are lies he basically bragged about. But at the same time would stand up there and say he was the science, obvious his practices were political not scientific. How about DARPA documenting after SARS1 that both ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine were both powerful treatments preventatively and therapeutically and then destroying the drugs’ reputation in 2020 so they wouldn’t interfere with emergency use approval of the new gene therapies.
If you can’t see the blatant corruption or likely part of the problem.
Never said its "only for farm animals" you made that up and just made yourself non credible! They're not Gene Therapies Comrade! Just killed any credibility Dag!
Or the clever marketing campaign by the FDA, come on people, you’re not a horse. And it wasn’t to just remind people to not take the animal version of the drug. The marketing worked, I remember asking people what they thought of the Ivermectin thing, and they would say what? And then you could follow up with, you know, the horse paste, and they say, oh yes, the horse paste, what about it.
You don’t remember CNN going on about Joe Rogan taking horse paste? If you if look up gene therapy it consists of DNA and RNA. Now there wasn’t supposed to be DNA in the shots but unfortunately the scaled up production process (ie Process 2) not the shots from the clinical trial but the shots the public received have DNA contamination.
Myocarditis is caused by the virus and many other viruses too. The vaccine is SO RARE it didn't show up in original studies. Whats .MMWR? NO ones perfect but we expect Doctors to be!
Myocarditis in under 25 year olds was rare pre covid 6 cases per million per year. It increase a bit in 2020 but took off in a big way post mRNA. It was so rare no one was familiar with it back then, now it’s like common knowledge. Good thing it was rare because again pre covid of those that incurred myocarditis 20% went on to die over the next 5 years. Perhaps that’s why we keep seeing these young died suddenly cases even though many of these people are 2 years since a shot, but that would place them in the middle of the 5 year window. Look up some papers on what we knew about myocarditis pre 2020.
Don’t you just love a recent discovery that the shots used in the trial were made from a different process utilizing PCR where as the shots the public got we made from the scaled up manufacturing process utilizing E. Coli. There was no clinical trial conducted for the shot the public received. Even in the short phase 3 trial that got cancelled after two months that was supposed to run for four years had more all cause injuries and deaths on the shot side than the placebo. Sure would be nice to have that control group longer to see if anything developed from a never before used product.
The next focus will be cancer, the discovered DNA contamination in the mRNA shots included SV40 resulting most likely from the scaled up manufacturing process (the shots used for the public) that they appear to not have worked out how to remove the DNA may explain the emergence of rapid late stage cancers we are seeing.
Sure be nice if the Gov’ts would share the information like cause of death by age, Canada finally posted 2021, but there are probably deaths that are still waiting to be categorized that will be added to the tallies later. Still nothing for 2022.
The moment we stop debate is the moment we lose scientific integrity and trust in public health. If we sacrifice integrity and trust for policy compliance, we will soon have neither.
Well that’s super. Who have you debated, publicly or privately?
How about RFK Jr? You could tackle these “false & misleading claims” you say he makes. (What are they, by the way?)
A quick read of the FDA briefing documents from Pfizer told me all I needed to know about these vaccines. And that anyone championing them didn’t have health as their primary concern, but money.
Dr Offit obviously does not believe in public debate since he refuses to debate anyone who questions vaccine safety and efficacy. Dr Peter McCollough is willing to debate him.
Provide nothing of substance, just personal attacks, the good news is you are losing the battle of trust. People have caught on to the the tactics of pharma manipulation . The more drugs society takes the less healthy it has become. The connection is common sense. Have you watched Pain Killer, well you could make the same movie for Satins, covid shots, etc.
Dr. Offit, I agree with your points here, but you've not really made your position on this thorny problem clear. Should scientists openly debate the interpretations of vaccine studies and the policies that are shaped by those studies, and let the chips fall where they may? Or not? My belief is, "yes," we should have that open debate, especially given the surge in distrust of US public health officials that has occurred over the last three years. Yes, there would be downsides to doing that, but the consequences of the alternative (i.e., stifling public debate) would, in the long run, be much worse.
The only reason to debate in public is to argue for policy, and in this country, policy is ultimately the Provence of citizens. Policy narrows and simplifies the conclusions of science, forcing a recommendation to do this thing or to do that thing. If scientists cannot find a way to make the consequences clear, they have no business meddling in the making of decisions.
Everyone wants to be healthy and to have a stable climate. Science can contribute to knowledge of causes, but it is really bad at making policy. In the case of covid vaccines, the original claim of science was that vaccines could stop the transmission of the virus and bring three pandemic to an end. That turned out to be a false claim, and it has poisoned the perception of science.
Every time science speaks ex cathedral, it risks being counterproductive, and risks destroying its reputation.
They have earned their negative reputation. The Covid vaccine clinical trials were never designed to study whether the injections stopped infection or transmission. This was never made clear to the public. Instead people were lied to by the CDC, Fauci, media, doctors, scientists, politicians, business owners, celebrities, etc.
The initial studies showed a 60-80% reduction in symptomatic infection, which was presumed to equate to preventing transmission; the relevance of asymptomatic transmission wasn’t clearly determined at that point.
Current transmission reduction is of the order of 30% for Omicron subvariants.
Vaccines were Never sold as Transmission Stoppers, they were sold as Death preventers and Hospital overrun preventers. Masks, distancing, staying outdoors are transmission helpers. All vaccines help decrease disease severity, they only help transmission while neutralizing antibodies are around. For covid the average is 3 months, but that number could change Tomorrow which is what non science people, including MD'S DONT comprehend well!
I have to disagree. I participated in several biology forums during the early months of the vaccine, and the hope was that vaccinating enough people would end the pandemic. Your version emerged six months or so later.
I the first months, breakthrough infections were thought to be rare.
Excellent post. I hope that you will stick to the side of free and open scientific debate and discussion and eradication of censorship, whatever the cost. It is the only way to ensure scientific progress and restore the trust of the public. The backlash against vaccines was driven largely by censorship of critics, failure to address quickly and convincingly signals of adverse events, and the disastrous attempt to illegally mandate them. Also, the false claim that "Science" guided much bad, authoritarian covid policy. The damage will take many years to undo. "Trust the Science" is one of the worst, anti-science slogans ever devised. Keep telling the truth as you see it. I hope more of your colleagues will do the same.
The utter arrogance to believe that there are only a select few elites that have the ability of rational thought, and that their job as public health experts is to keep the rest of us in the dark, and ignore their conflicts of interest and corruption. This is exactly why trust in the medical institutions is at an all-time low, and only honest public debate is going to rectify that.
Your position is not supported by reality. When “The Science” is propagating narratives that they know to be untrue, while there are outside political and economic pressures to align behind scientific discovery that only supports the preferred tyrannical policy prescriptions and censoring credible, accurate ideas that don’t align, it’s hard to argue that they’re just looking out for you. Rather than make an affirmative counter argument, they hide behind censorship and bootlicking media, while taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in actual grift from Big Pharma.
In this instance, the grifters and con men are the ones wearing the fancy white coat.
You're right. Anthony Fauci should have never been allowed media exposure, and should actually be in prison for crimes against humanity. He grifted the system for millions of dollars.
And excess mortality has increased significantly since the vaccine was introduced. Provide links to your data, or you're just spouting disinformation. According to your own standards, you should be banned from public discussion.
I see your grasp on reality is tenuous, and you have lost all ability to even copy and paste to defend your misinformation.
I can’t send someone to prison by suing them - that’s to DOJ’s job. Unfortunately, they’re too busy silencing dissent and protecting the regime.
It’s not debatable that excess mortality spiked significantly in 2022, above both 2020 and 2021. Covid is significantly less deadly today than it was in 2020, and almost 100% of the population has natural immunity. Your jibberish doesn’t hold any water at all.
To be clear, all of those deaths (whether by Covid or the vaccine or unhealthy health decisions during the lockdown period) are on the hands of Anthony Fauci and the Big Pharma corporations that own him.
They have certainly given us good reason to believe that the only science they are following is “political science”. None of those people give a rats behind about you or I.
You get that information off instagram? Thats a great source in your world, im sure! For a guy worth 35 million he lives in a dump. Thers a good video of him being stalked by a right wing nut job at his townhome. Ya i said a attached home, cause thats how multimillionaires roll! .." Here's your sign!"
Paul: "Scientists welcome this scrutiny.". Not true of a single person from the "Narrative" side, that I could find. I gave up after challenging 16 doctors to debate me on childhood vaccine mandates; doctors who had publicly admonished parents for even considering not vaccinating their children/
Not true Albus. The Narrative side refuses to discuss the issues at conferences too. Dr. Setty tried at the 23rd World Vaccine Congress . Read his account if you have a few minutes.
From the link Setty says he heard a range of views expressed. And that some would talk with him—- even though he is not a scientist and clearly is very lost on many important topics!
People tried to express their views but the moderator shut them down. You think Dr. Setty is lost? He is most definitely not lost. Being very smart and having an engineering background gives him an advantage over people who have been in the biological sciences only.
That’s like saying a doctor has an advantage over structural engineers when debating bridge design because they only have engineering expertise but the doctor has expertise in biomedical science.
I disagree, Mike. Engineers are much better, on average, than doctors at quantitative analysis which is a very important component of understanding this. The fact that Dr. Setty is both gives him an advantage.
I was a physics instructor at USC for a year before medical school. My understanding of physics gave me a tremendous advantage over all other doctors in understanding the nature of a 100nm virus. I was able to correct the "experts" on 16 major calls they had wrong before the data even came out, simply by reasoning from first principles, 100% mistake free.
I was first on those 16 (why masks don't work, lockdowns, the correct IFR, the origin of the virus, etc.) and "only" on 4, meaning the general medical community still hasn't caught on. I understand the medical science, but it was the physics that set me apart, especially early on.
I don't think you're interpreting his experience right. The moderators shut down discussion. The lady he wanted to talk to brushed him off. Please show me one debate over the science and policy issues (other than mine with Dr. Bhattacharya). I'd like to watch it.
I the fifth Harry Potter movie there is a perfect portrayal of an authority figure talking down to people. Everyone in a position of authority should study this for clues as to why ordinary people resent being dismissed as unable to have informed opinions.
Yes! Bring on the debate. The public absolutely deserves to be part of the conversation and to be armed with information to make an informed decision. Consider broaching media personalities who would welcome this type of forum, whether Megyn Kelly, Bill Maher or Joe Rogan. Their personal biases are irrelevant. Each of them is more than capable of hosting this discussion!
What I find insulting is that the vaccine cheerleaders refuse to speak to anyone on the other side. The public is not a load of dolts, you know. But their actions and words assure us that we are.
Yes, it was disappointing that Dr. Peter Hotez, after complaining that no one would engage, refused to engage with Kennedy on Joe Rogan even when he was offered well over a million dollars to use to fund pro-vaccine enterprises.
Of course they were, he knew he would lose the debate. Why would he choose to make himself and his viewpoint look ridiculous? If he had good points to make, they would be discernibly good no matter the format.
I am not aware of any rules which would have been set which would set at naught what he might say. Are you? What might they have been?
I watched about half of it. Hotez was upset that orfinary people think that vaccines cause autism. They do. The hep-B vaccine at birth caused vaccine encephalitis in my newborn daughter. Four days and nights of constant, inconsolable, high-pitched screaming. The DTaP booster at 18 months erased the two words which she had finally started to say, and she was diagnosed with autism two months later. Dr. Hotez has a daughter, Rachel, with PDD, on the autism spectrum. He insists that vaccines did not cause her autism. I wondered why he believed that. Had she not gotten any vaccines? I looked it up. She has gotten a lot, as was to be expected. She was born in October, 1992. The hep-B vaccine began to be given at birth to all newborns in the US, exposed to hep-B or not, beginning in 1991. It took almist ten years for it to be mandated in every state. I don’t know if Rachel got the first dose at birth, but she eventually got three doses.
However, Hotez says that she was very stiff when held and had a high-pitched piercing cry which all the neighbors could hear. Otherwise known as le cri encephalique. Frequent in infants reacting to one of the vaccines, usually the hep-B or DTaP.
Rachel got all the recommended doses of both those vaccines. She screamed for months. How can Hotez prove that they did not cause her autism?
If Hotez wants people to believe that vaccines do not cause autism, allergies, autoimmune disease, seizure disorders, SIDS, etc., then obviously he needs to present his evidence. Just saying No, they don’t, is not going to convince anybody, and only the most negligent parents would believe his baseless assertions.
Maybe you live in planet Academia, but try and come down talk science to people on the streets of planet Earth. Unfortunatelly there's is only a certain amount of simplification you can make when addressing the public, oversimplification often makes things worst. That's reality, no use in pretending everybody took courses in biology or in biomathematics. And then, of course, there's the Joe Rogan's of this world who are on a mission.
Your condescension and insulting attitude about what people can really understand is exactly what has created - or at least greatly increased -the lack of public confidence in the “authorities”. Listen to yourself for a moment. and consider how you would react if somebody told you (or even implied) that you were too stupid to understand something.
And I agree with you. That's why condescension, as I said above, is so corrosive to trust the in the source of the information. Very few people react positively to being treated as too stupid to understand the facts.
This is true. Not everyone will be able to understand the science on a deep level. But that is no excuse for the "sit down, shut up, and get your vaccines on schedule" attitude that so prevalent on the PV side. I get a really strong authoritarian vibe from many PV internet posters. Questioning of vaccines should be welcomed and addressed honestly, providing estimates of risks of all types and acknowledgement of uncertainties.
Mary Ann is right that the public is not a load of dolts. Some of us are actually highly educated and able to understand what the science actually says. I'm a professional statistician with a Ph.D., but I'm been told many times I don't understand the science when I disagree on a basic assumption underlying the analysis. Then told I'm AV and accused of lying when I say I'm not. And my opinion dismissed because I'm a lying AVer.
IMO, there are gaps in the evidence for many aspects of safety with regard to vaccinations. I also assume the actual vaccine risks are higher than the official statistics indicate due to the way they compute those statistics. While I'm not AV, I've been known to skip or delay some vaccinations as I don't think that every recommendation for the general public is also a good choice for me individually.
BTW, I'm not a fan of Joe Rogan, but I don't sense he's on a mission the way RFK, Jr. and Del Bigtree are. Have I missed where he's fervently AV?
I gather Dr Offit wants public scientific debate only with scientists who are mostly in agreement with him and only if there are no people watching and listening who question the safety and efficacy of vaccines. This is not realistic. This is why there is distrust.
Given the fact that he sits on the FDA Advisory Committee of 21 people and does not always vote with the majority when it comes to vaccines, I would have to disagree with that premise. What drew me to his Substack is that he is an independent thinker with a plethora of knowledge in his field. Take a listen or watch his interviews for more info if you’re curious about his stance.
Or read his books , vaccinated was great! He spouts out the good, the bad , the ugly. Dont want to ruin it but roughly 100 million more children made it to adulthood thanks in part to vaccines developed by 1 doctor!
What ever amount of money you believe people are making taking a skeptical position to the Pharma enterprise, it would be a drop in the bucket compared to the amount pharma has extracted from the tax payer. Arguing someone isn’t credible because they are compensated for their efforts would put Pharma right a the top of that list.
Thank you. As a member of the public making health decisions, I'm counting on a robust and public discussion by scientists about public health policy, especially in the ever-shifting world of Covi2
“We should be able to have these debates in public.” If that’s the case, why won’t you debate Bret Weinstein or Pierre Kory or, even better, Peter McCullough? Bring it.
Who said anything about requiring debate? Let me be clear: the public deserved to hear all sides of the covid story from masking to lockdowns to vaccines. But we heard only from one side. The opposition was censored and canceled. Peter Hotez, for example, won’t debate anyone who disagrees with him, in spite of the fact that others are openly willing to talk to him. The media refuses to cover any other perspective than the official version. Offit himself doesn’t have to debate 50 dissenting opinions, he needs only debate one other person who disagrees with him. Read what I said up there: I used the word “or.”
But if the pro-vax authorities refuse to debate vaccine critics, it must be because they realize that they cannot win on the merits, but only by compulsion.
I agree with Mike H; starting the argument in 2022 is missing the years leading up to the increasingly divided public. Had the NIH/CDC been as honest as possible from the beginning, there would not be the skepticism that was the prism through which the public viewed recommendations coming from these agencies in 2022. For example, the resignation of scientists disagreeing with initial vaccine recs was for me a red flag moment. Behind the recommendations, we need to be transparent about the motives leading to the recommendations.
You are mixing up stupidity and ignorance. Very different things. My point is that people are vastely ignorant regarding science, not stupid. Not necessarily their fault, mostly lack of opportunities or interest in diving into science. And science has become more and more and more complex ever. I am totally ignorant regarding so many issues but do not take offense if someone in the know finds it hopeless to try and explain me rocket science in 10 minutes. This person probably tried before but failed, or worst, got misunderstood. To make it worst, there are (too many) people in the US who still think the world is flat and evolution should be substituted by criationism in school. Way too many.
Interesting conundrum that applies to other areas of science that directly affect people. An argument for or against string theory, relativity, the Big Bang etc can be restricted to academic journals because they don’t impact on everyday life. No one cares if Professor X argues against these whilst Dr Y argues for them.
However, when these arguments directly affect people’s lives, be it vaccines, climate change, GMO crops etc. then they do become important. The problem arises when debate is stifled because the science is settled, (e.g. anthropogenic climate change) or the topic is hijacked by the extremes (e.g. vaccination). None of this is black and white but finding the middle ground becomes very difficult and the discussion becomes confusing because it is polarised.
Taking the example of the covid vaccines, there’s a tendency for the issues that do exist with it being minimised or even not acknowledged on one hand and it being the sole topic on the other, ne’er the twain shall meet.
From a non American perspective this appears to be a divide that is political rather than scientific, perhaps more than it is here in the U.K.
Dr John Campbell, who originally supported the vaccine, and Andrew Bridgen, both Brits, have shown the issues to be primarily political in the UK as well.
Yes. I think the distinction is when “the science” is used to inform policy decisions that have profound impacts on our lives, and our basic freedoms. When they’re demanding extraordinary control over our lives, people will settle for nothing but honest, public debate.
V-Safe was primarily used by Democrat vaccine supporters, but when its reports were ultimately compelled to be released under the Freedom of Information Act, a third of the reports were of severe adverse reactions and seven percent reported having to seek professional medical attention, often in hospitals.
That’s what it was designed to do. The program was cancelled about a month ago because a huge percentage, unprecedented, reported both severe adverse reactions and seeking medical attention hoping fruitlessly to treat them.
I was slightly mistaken. 7.7% had to seek medical attention for the reactions the V-Safe respondents experienced from the covid vaccine. This only came to light a year ago and only under legal compulsion. A couple of months ago, V-Safe suspended its program designed to assure the safety of the vaccine. It turned out to do the opposite.
Not sure from this article if Dr. Offit is for or against public debate about vaccine safety and efficacy. In my opinion, the ONLY way public health authorities can regain their lost credibility is by being totally honest with the public, including not censoring good faith debate by competent scientists and physicians.
You are absolutely right. He certainly seems to be suggesting that - at least selectively- suppressing scientific results is in the public interest. If one believes in the idea that “sunshine is the best disinfectant” then sharing information is paramount. It’s absolutely essential to promote trust that public health authorities preface all their recommendations by a disclaimer that the recommendations are based on what they - in their informed, educated OPINION - believe to be best approach given all available research. And, that as further information becomes available, the recommendations will be revised if necessary. And when any such recommendations are revised they should provide a straightforward explanation of why. They SHOULD NOT assume that their audience is incapable of understanding nuances of conclusions and thus merit condescending, incomplete proclamations. It would also be appropriate to emphasize that they will be following those recommendations themselves AND DO SO. If the CDC et al had done these things from the beginning, it would have been much harder for those spreading lies and conspiracy theories to find as large an audience as they did and still are. Once trust is gone it is very hard to restore.
It's not so much the idea of suppressing scientific data as it is in controlling the messaging. To paraphrase, "Those who like sausage and love science should watch neither being made." As scientists, we're amazingly precise in some areas, and sloppy in others. Our public communications, especially our debates, have epitomized "Sloppy" but the data have, overall, been well-presented. I'll note there are some sterling examples of studies, published by reputable sources, where the science was done poorly, and there's been an outcry by my colleagues (and me) in those cases.
"It’s absolutely essential to promote trust that public health authorities preface all their recommendations by a disclaimer that the recommendations are based on what they - in their informed, educated OPINION - believe to be best approach given all available research."
This statement is absolutely spot-on, but at the start of the pandemic we were used to providing our data and making recommendations based on those data. A pandemic can change the way we understand data, though. In 2020, both laboratory and clinical data were coming in fast and furious. I've stated before that, based on new information from both the clinical realm and published research data, I could change my opinion, well considered and not haphazard, several times in a day, as more information made one or more conditions more clear. My job then was to debate colleagues and reach consensus, often a messy process: My sources differed from theirs, and we were geographically dispersed. Our debates were on social media groups because they were the fastest way to disseminate something to the entire operational discussion group. Unfortunately, that also meant, because we didn't discourage others from joining (one exception: a clinical peer group where we were candidly discussing care and therapy options), because we'd never thought about the impact of someone unfamiliar with our process listening in.
I spent most of the pandemic advising a rather large, national not-for-profit. In that role, and in most of my social media interactions, a change of position was accompanied by citations and a summation of the article(s) and peer interactions that affected my changed position. Even with that, too many accused me of "lying" because what I'd said, literally one or two days earlier, had changed. They ignored the inclusion of new data affecting my opinions. To your point, most of the people both in the organization and on social media who were making claims about my veracity fell into three camps: Those who had decided what was "fact" in a fast-paced world; Those who didn't bother to follow the citations I provided but merely noted my position had shifted; or, Those who did not understand the nuance of the conclusions.
CDC, in 2020, was a completely different institution from the one I first met in the mid-1990s. In 2017, with the advent of Redfield, and with tremendous budget cuts for the organization on the horizon, a significant portion of senior scientific leadership, people with 30+ years in the agency, retired. In a number of areas, much less experienced personnel found themselves running groups and major research elements. In addition, in the 2020 timeframe, political appointees were interfering with the messaging, rewriting communications that were clearer and much more strident with something that was more politically acceptable. The outcry from my community was unheeded: It didn't meet the messaging requirements of the Administration at the time. I must also note that we've taken exception to positions taken in this regard by the current Administration. To the point, this Pandemic isn't over because the virus is still deciding what to do with us. But back on-topic, when Nancy Messonnier was disciplined for her pronouncement that the outbreak was going to be more serious than people were being told.
I recommend you look at a few articles.
https://www.npr.org/2021/05/07/994685964/cdc-official-who-warned-americans-coronavirus-could-cause-severe-disruption-resi
https://www.wsj.com/articles/health-chiefs-early-missteps-set-back-coronavirus-response-11587570514
...or anyone for that matter. Only allowing good faith debate by those deemed appropriate, "competent scientists and physicians" as you say, is also going to cause issues. People without those specific credentials can and should also be allowed to engage in good faith debate without being censored.
As is your right. Others may suspect vested interests as tainting expressed expert opinion and consider a wider range of discussion.
Good point.
Life and healthcare insurance companies have a strong vested interest.
And their data demonstrates how safe and effective vaccines are.
Many life insurance companies reported very high numbers of excess deaths among those who got the Covid vaccine, much higher than the numbers of those who died of Covid.
Care to cite your source for this information.
No the have not!
I did not say you are not free to make your own decisions about what information you trust and why.
nwmt
What?
Agreed, however, at this point in addition to answering questions posed by scientists they should be accountable to citizens too. Anyone can get educated, all you have to do is read. You can gain an in-depth understanding without being a so called scientist.
And yet..,..over and over here you have just not managed to read the posted links…
I could not agree more.
That really should be true, and yet there are many examples here where Dag just couldn’t read the links provided to him….
Can you send the link to the covid natural origins paper again please.
Could you be more precise please
Please give some examples of censored, competent scientists.
Thanks
Jay Battacharya, Robert Malone, Pierre Kory, and many others.
Who is censoring them? Why is it I see and read about them wherever I look?
Malone is a bit of a crank now, though he was a competent scientist once. Kory went down the rabbit hole right after the pandemic hit.
Don't be ridiculous. Jay Battacharya and Martin Kulldorff are literally suing the government over this exact thing. The government was explicitly "requesting" tech companies remove both specific posts by scientists and doctors as well as remove them entirely from their platforms.
Jay has been involved in a number of statements that fail to remain consistent with clinical findings and good research practice. Kullfdorff and Prasad follow in the same mold. Can't recall seeing anything substantive from Malone, but there are plenty of people with strong training who not only disagree with what credible scientists have found and are reporting, but are doing so in manners that mislead the public. I've seen no evidence of censorship, outside of, say, Messonnier's silencing at CDC in 2020 by the Trump administration, and shunting Birx off into oblivion rather than letting her pursue data-driven leads.
I did not say anything about the consistency of the statements of these people or that you should take what they say with any weight, that is entirely up to you.
Social media has been censoring (deleting, shadow banning and demonetizing) these scientists and physicians for the past three years at “request” (actually threats and bullying) of the US government.
Well, it seems thst “censorship” hasn’t worked if that’s what was attempted.
Some extreme disinformation has been removed, but the individuals who spout this seem free to continue their self promotion pretty much unchecked.
…It’s odd to see their faces pretty much everywhere whining “I’m censored! And now the whole world knows it!”
You must have some bit in your brain that can understand that it is unconstitutional for the government to attempt to restrict the speech of individuals in almost any capacity even if they do so by "requesting" the speech be censored and regardless of how successful or not they may be at it. You don't get to decide that you think someone is saying things too dangerous and that makes this go away. It is true there are some exceptions but they are very limited and nothing that someone like Jay Battacharya for instance was saying falls into those exceptions. The fact that you see him speak somewhere is completely irrelevant to any of this.
https://twitter.com/michaelpsenger/status/1471973647476609028/photo/1
Battacharya and Kory are not scientists.
Malone trained as a scientist, but in recent years has been just a grifter and liar. E.g. he is lying about how he invented mRNA vaccines.
Robert Malone is interested in one thing, his bank account. His deliberate, wrong and misleading claims should make him liable, but firtunately he can hide behind the unregulated social media environment!
Just inverted from reality. The NIH, along with Big Pharma is interested in one thing, their bank account. Their deliberate, wrong and misleading claims could make them liable, but fortunately they can hide behind the censorious media environment that they paid for.
How can anyone be honest in a system of medicine (Capitalistic Allopathy) born of corruption?
You seem to have common sense. Obviously that is not what Dr Offit is proposing. He believes in public debate only if the public responds positively about what they heard in the debate. Not sure how that can ever be accomplished successfully.
Nope .
He believes in honest/competent public debate.
Not free marketing for grifters.
“We should be able to trust that those involved in public health are trying to get it right even when they might not get it right the first time.”
You are right....we should be able to do so. But time and again, public health has proven itself untrustworthy. Anyone who has a scientific background and is paying attention know much of what comes out of our regulatory agencies is more propaganda than it is science.
How many studies in MMWR, for example, are so obviously cherry picked to promote the agencies' policy interests? When time proves them wrong, why are they not then withdrawn? The problem is not that public health gets things wrong - people are very forgiving when humility it put to the fore. They are much less so when they double and triple down on errors and omissions.
The past few years have been a case study of attempting to minimize dissent and oversell the benefits of mRNA. How has this worked out? Why has the FDA not publicized the results of the required studies on myocarditis performed by the sponsors, even when requested by FOIA? This obfuscation and ivory tower mentality will only increase distrust in vaccines, and for better or worse, those that promote them.
And yet you couldn’t give one specific example of public health misconduct.
And the usual refrain:
“We want myocarditis studies!”
…here they are.
“Are they independent studies? Bet they aren’t!”
…yes they are.
“Oh, ok then,…Errr We want studies done by the Pharma sponsors!”
For a moment I had your comment asking about the source of my statement saying that I had twice read that (some time ago), there had been eight million Covid deaths worldwide and eleven million from the vaccine. I looked again and found this. That comment of yours had been subsumed in my inbox by others without my being able to scroll up to find it the way I used to. This present comment is directed to the commenter who uses the nym Mike Stevens or Mike S, in case it is moved. If it’s deleted I’ll try to convey it to you another way.
This is Dr John Campbell reporting on Aug 2 on a WHO report showing just short of 15 million excess deaths worldwide. I started to watch it, and will continue to do so. One interesting chart shows very low rates of Covid deaths in Africa, prob bcz of its young demographic, but a high spiky line above that one showing excess mortality there. Because many were given the vaccine although they were at low risk of dying from Covid.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hVX-jK90HCM
Dad gum it, as my father used to say. I can’t attach a screen shot showing the chart with the almost 15 million excess deaths. I’ll do it at another site. You gave me instructions many years ago when that woman was denying that my quote about the low number of measles encephalitis cases given in that book by Mikaela Glockler was authentic. But I couldn’t do it until I had an iphone.
You will say that the excess deaths are not proven to be from the vaccine, but are really Covid deaths. We really also don’t know exactly how many deaths were caused by Covid. I got the book by Ed Dowd on Kindle. Many, many, many short reports outlining the basic facts on the sudden deaths of many, many, many individuals who had gotten the Covid vaccine. Who were engaged in normal activities, not being sick with Covid or anything else. Jeff Childers at Coffee and Covid asked on Thursday the opinion of readers of his putting a red X over his daily photos of a handful of people suddenly killed by the vaccine.
Campbells data is flawed, badly. He’s not a reliable source.
Here’s a debunking of that nonsense by a proper scientist.
https://youtu.be/3j2K5pjySF0?feature=shared
You can’t attach screenshots here, but can on most Disqus forums.
re: Dowd's claims: https://www.factcheck.org/2023/04/scicheck-no-evidence-excess-deaths-linked-to-vaccines-contrary-to-claims-online/
Thanks, good analysis
Just like all the other times, all you have done is to demonstrate that the anti vacc fraud preys upon folks that can’t do basic math.
https://rumble.com/v37x6xl-new-e.u.-statistics-prove-covid-vaccine-has-killed-millions-warns-dr.-john-.html
It would be hard to find where I was a minute ago. Clicking on my avatar doesn’t take me to my old comments.
Please look at Susan Oliver’s debunking of this nonsense. I posted a link upthread.
She’s Australian? She’s really creepy, very condescending. She’s obviously an industry shill.
I thought it was telling that John changed his posture, which few have. I started watching him in early 2021. At that time he was very enthusiastic about the vaccine, said it was safe and effective. I put up one of my long comments. A couple of days later, he said on his program that he had been shocked by the comments he had gotten and advised that parents not let their children read them. I, in turn, was shocked, and ho
Got cut off for some reason. Hoped he weren’t referring to my comment, which was, as always, decorously expressed. And then over time he completely changed his stance. He got three Pfizers that year, the third in November. As you did. You started in December, I in May, I think he in April, maybe March, with a long gap before the second. So he supported the vaccine through 2021, as I did. His change in orientation was slow and sincere.
I trust him, but do not trust her. I just found this, using Yandex: https://probabilityandlaw.blogspot.com/2022/06/response-to-susan-oliver-video.html?m=1
Did you see the Ben Shapiro video yesterday, The Face of Evil? Free, unlike his expensive program. It is difficult to find words to throw at something of that magnitude of evil. He kept saying Look, look, as painful as it is, look! Everyone must look. I wish the IDF would get on with Project Scorched Earth. Netanyahu told them Saturday to get out, so now let’s do it.
A jury of 12 year olds would convict of perjury anyone that presented such crap .
There will be differences of opinion but forcing people to take an experimental drug goes against long standing international treaties. treating people with Midazolam that are not at the end of life. Misleading people about drugs like ivermectin that it is only for farm animals, that’s a lie. Fauci openly admitting that he lied to the public (you will probably say they were noble lies) about masks not working then saying they work, saying that we need 70% for herd immunity when he saw polling that 50% would get the shot, and when he saw polling at 60% figured he could nudge it to 80-85%. These are lies he basically bragged about. But at the same time would stand up there and say he was the science, obvious his practices were political not scientific. How about DARPA documenting after SARS1 that both ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine were both powerful treatments preventatively and therapeutically and then destroying the drugs’ reputation in 2020 so they wouldn’t interfere with emergency use approval of the new gene therapies.
If you can’t see the blatant corruption or likely part of the problem.
Your first sentence: The vaccines are NOT experimental, vaccines are NOT drugs, and NO treaties were broken.
Not an opinion, just a fact, your postings are BS and not functionally literate.
Never said its "only for farm animals" you made that up and just made yourself non credible! They're not Gene Therapies Comrade! Just killed any credibility Dag!
Or the clever marketing campaign by the FDA, come on people, you’re not a horse. And it wasn’t to just remind people to not take the animal version of the drug. The marketing worked, I remember asking people what they thought of the Ivermectin thing, and they would say what? And then you could follow up with, you know, the horse paste, and they say, oh yes, the horse paste, what about it.
People were using the unsafe veterinary formulation—- the folks that can’t count and see that ivermectin was a fraud!
You don’t remember CNN going on about Joe Rogan taking horse paste? If you if look up gene therapy it consists of DNA and RNA. Now there wasn’t supposed to be DNA in the shots but unfortunately the scaled up production process (ie Process 2) not the shots from the clinical trial but the shots the public received have DNA contamination.
I’ve posted the definition of gene therapy many times…. Clearly the words were just too difficult for you.
DNA is supposed to be in the vaccines… that is why there are regulations and specifications.
It is illegal to provide contaminated vaccines.
No one is in Court suing over contaminated vaccines, because that is a lie predicated on folks being too stupid to read!
See Missouri vs Biden.
Wasn’t it stayed by the SCOTUS?
Only 1 lawsuit? You need atleast 60 per GOP Guidelines to reach the truth
Myocarditis is caused by the virus and many other viruses too. The vaccine is SO RARE it didn't show up in original studies. Whats .MMWR? NO ones perfect but we expect Doctors to be!
Myocarditis in under 25 year olds was rare pre covid 6 cases per million per year. It increase a bit in 2020 but took off in a big way post mRNA. It was so rare no one was familiar with it back then, now it’s like common knowledge. Good thing it was rare because again pre covid of those that incurred myocarditis 20% went on to die over the next 5 years. Perhaps that’s why we keep seeing these young died suddenly cases even though many of these people are 2 years since a shot, but that would place them in the middle of the 5 year window. Look up some papers on what we knew about myocarditis pre 2020.
Don’t you just love a recent discovery that the shots used in the trial were made from a different process utilizing PCR where as the shots the public got we made from the scaled up manufacturing process utilizing E. Coli. There was no clinical trial conducted for the shot the public received. Even in the short phase 3 trial that got cancelled after two months that was supposed to run for four years had more all cause injuries and deaths on the shot side than the placebo. Sure would be nice to have that control group longer to see if anything developed from a never before used product.
The next focus will be cancer, the discovered DNA contamination in the mRNA shots included SV40 resulting most likely from the scaled up manufacturing process (the shots used for the public) that they appear to not have worked out how to remove the DNA may explain the emergence of rapid late stage cancers we are seeing.
Sure be nice if the Gov’ts would share the information like cause of death by age, Canada finally posted 2021, but there are probably deaths that are still waiting to be categorized that will be added to the tallies later. Still nothing for 2022.
Biggest public health screw up of all time.
Your first sentence is wrong and innumerate and your post got worse from there.
I think you didn’t provide any links because you know your assertions are BS.
Still battling zero.
The moment we stop debate is the moment we lose scientific integrity and trust in public health. If we sacrifice integrity and trust for policy compliance, we will soon have neither.
Well stated. Dr Offit obviously does not believe in public debate.
Nope. He doesn’t believe In giving grifters free marketing.
The debates happen all the time in public.
The anti vacc just don’t talk about where.
Well that’s super. Who have you debated, publicly or privately?
How about RFK Jr? You could tackle these “false & misleading claims” you say he makes. (What are they, by the way?)
A quick read of the FDA briefing documents from Pfizer told me all I needed to know about these vaccines. And that anyone championing them didn’t have health as their primary concern, but money.
Dr Offit obviously does not believe in public debate since he refuses to debate anyone who questions vaccine safety and efficacy. Dr Peter McCollough is willing to debate him.
PM is a biz man who makes money by scamming people. It is to see this fact if you try.
We have already proven here that RFKjr is a grifter who preys upon folks too clueless to read.
Wow ... now thats a lie. Albus the AI bot boy that tries to, ineptly, protect offits hinder. What a sad sac he is.
Provide nothing of substance, just personal attacks, the good news is you are losing the battle of trust. People have caught on to the the tactics of pharma manipulation . The more drugs society takes the less healthy it has become. The connection is common sense. Have you watched Pain Killer, well you could make the same movie for Satins, covid shots, etc.
Nope!
I have given you many examples where RJK jr lies and scams folks too clueless to read.
You have proven you will just mindlessly support any anti vacc lie no matter how stupid!
Dr. Offit, I agree with your points here, but you've not really made your position on this thorny problem clear. Should scientists openly debate the interpretations of vaccine studies and the policies that are shaped by those studies, and let the chips fall where they may? Or not? My belief is, "yes," we should have that open debate, especially given the surge in distrust of US public health officials that has occurred over the last three years. Yes, there would be downsides to doing that, but the consequences of the alternative (i.e., stifling public debate) would, in the long run, be much worse.
Well said...wish I could Like 3 times!
The only reason to debate in public is to argue for policy, and in this country, policy is ultimately the Provence of citizens. Policy narrows and simplifies the conclusions of science, forcing a recommendation to do this thing or to do that thing. If scientists cannot find a way to make the consequences clear, they have no business meddling in the making of decisions.
Everyone wants to be healthy and to have a stable climate. Science can contribute to knowledge of causes, but it is really bad at making policy. In the case of covid vaccines, the original claim of science was that vaccines could stop the transmission of the virus and bring three pandemic to an end. That turned out to be a false claim, and it has poisoned the perception of science.
Every time science speaks ex cathedral, it risks being counterproductive, and risks destroying its reputation.
They have earned their negative reputation. The Covid vaccine clinical trials were never designed to study whether the injections stopped infection or transmission. This was never made clear to the public. Instead people were lied to by the CDC, Fauci, media, doctors, scientists, politicians, business owners, celebrities, etc.
The initial studies showed a 60-80% reduction in symptomatic infection, which was presumed to equate to preventing transmission; the relevance of asymptomatic transmission wasn’t clearly determined at that point.
Current transmission reduction is of the order of 30% for Omicron subvariants.
They never designed the clinical trials to test for infection or transmission efficacy, yet they marketed them as effective at preventing the spread.
Have you not reas how they manipulated the data? None of this turns out to be true IRL.
Do you not care what the facts are?
Nope.
Folks like CDC, Fauci etc know what the definition of vaccine is.
A good example of how the anti vacc arguments fall apart if you just think a bit.
In this paper that Fauci co-authored, he states that vaccines for flu, Covid, etc. are a failure.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9832587/
Vaccines were Never sold as Transmission Stoppers, they were sold as Death preventers and Hospital overrun preventers. Masks, distancing, staying outdoors are transmission helpers. All vaccines help decrease disease severity, they only help transmission while neutralizing antibodies are around. For covid the average is 3 months, but that number could change Tomorrow which is what non science people, including MD'S DONT comprehend well!
I have to disagree. I participated in several biology forums during the early months of the vaccine, and the hope was that vaccinating enough people would end the pandemic. Your version emerged six months or so later.
I the first months, breakthrough infections were thought to be rare.
Vaccines were absolutely sold as that as is in thr EUA. God youre lies are laughable
Excellent post. I hope that you will stick to the side of free and open scientific debate and discussion and eradication of censorship, whatever the cost. It is the only way to ensure scientific progress and restore the trust of the public. The backlash against vaccines was driven largely by censorship of critics, failure to address quickly and convincingly signals of adverse events, and the disastrous attempt to illegally mandate them. Also, the false claim that "Science" guided much bad, authoritarian covid policy. The damage will take many years to undo. "Trust the Science" is one of the worst, anti-science slogans ever devised. Keep telling the truth as you see it. I hope more of your colleagues will do the same.
Again no specifics from,
How about you start with the adverse events signal?
Mandates like the Army draft are not illegal.
The utter arrogance to believe that there are only a select few elites that have the ability of rational thought, and that their job as public health experts is to keep the rest of us in the dark, and ignore their conflicts of interest and corruption. This is exactly why trust in the medical institutions is at an all-time low, and only honest public debate is going to rectify that.
He is not saying you should be keep in the dark.
He is saying he shouldn’t help grifters con you.
Your position is not supported by reality. When “The Science” is propagating narratives that they know to be untrue, while there are outside political and economic pressures to align behind scientific discovery that only supports the preferred tyrannical policy prescriptions and censoring credible, accurate ideas that don’t align, it’s hard to argue that they’re just looking out for you. Rather than make an affirmative counter argument, they hide behind censorship and bootlicking media, while taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in actual grift from Big Pharma.
In this instance, the grifters and con men are the ones wearing the fancy white coat.
Except you have completely misrepresented the facts.
There is lots of open discussion and disagreement. Doesn’t mean we should give grifters media exposure.
And the world wide experiences of life and health insurance companies show that the scientists got the vaccines right.
You're right. Anthony Fauci should have never been allowed media exposure, and should actually be in prison for crimes against humanity. He grifted the system for millions of dollars.
And excess mortality has increased significantly since the vaccine was introduced. Provide links to your data, or you're just spouting disinformation. According to your own standards, you should be banned from public discussion.
1. Then you should sue Dr Fauci. If you won’t make your claims under oath, then that would be an admission that you know your claims aren’t true.
2. Below I have provided links from life insurance companies— they find being unvaccinated is a huge risk for death/ disability.
How about you? Have you provided any data?
I see your grasp on reality is tenuous, and you have lost all ability to even copy and paste to defend your misinformation.
I can’t send someone to prison by suing them - that’s to DOJ’s job. Unfortunately, they’re too busy silencing dissent and protecting the regime.
It’s not debatable that excess mortality spiked significantly in 2022, above both 2020 and 2021. Covid is significantly less deadly today than it was in 2020, and almost 100% of the population has natural immunity. Your jibberish doesn’t hold any water at all.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-64209221
To be clear, all of those deaths (whether by Covid or the vaccine or unhealthy health decisions during the lockdown period) are on the hands of Anthony Fauci and the Big Pharma corporations that own him.
They have certainly given us good reason to believe that the only science they are following is “political science”. None of those people give a rats behind about you or I.
Oh ya, Hotez developing a PATENT FREE vaccine which he cant make money on makes him my number one Crook!
Hes developing that for his own PR campaign. Gross.
You get that information off instagram? Thats a great source in your world, im sure! For a guy worth 35 million he lives in a dump. Thers a good video of him being stalked by a right wing nut job at his townhome. Ya i said a attached home, cause thats how multimillionaires roll! .." Here's your sign!"
You looking in a mirror, SD?
Paul: "Scientists welcome this scrutiny.". Not true of a single person from the "Narrative" side, that I could find. I gave up after challenging 16 doctors to debate me on childhood vaccine mandates; doctors who had publicly admonished parents for even considering not vaccinating their children/
Nope.
The scrutiny comes in journals and at conferences.
Feel free to show up and make your case!
Not true Albus. The Narrative side refuses to discuss the issues at conferences too. Dr. Setty tried at the 23rd World Vaccine Congress . Read his account if you have a few minutes.
It wasn't until Dr. Bhattacharya and I discussed/debated everything (we agreed on some of it) that the world had anything like this kind of head to head discussion, that I know of and it took us 24 hours to get through it all. Here is Dr. Setty's attempt to engave the Narrative side in a discussion: https://madhavasetty.substack.com/p/from-the-belly-of-the-beast?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Thanks,
From the link Setty says he heard a range of views expressed. And that some would talk with him—- even though he is not a scientist and clearly is very lost on many important topics!
People tried to express their views but the moderator shut them down. You think Dr. Setty is lost? He is most definitely not lost. Being very smart and having an engineering background gives him an advantage over people who have been in the biological sciences only.
That’s like saying a doctor has an advantage over structural engineers when debating bridge design because they only have engineering expertise but the doctor has expertise in biomedical science.
I disagree, Mike. Engineers are much better, on average, than doctors at quantitative analysis which is a very important component of understanding this. The fact that Dr. Setty is both gives him an advantage.
I was a physics instructor at USC for a year before medical school. My understanding of physics gave me a tremendous advantage over all other doctors in understanding the nature of a 100nm virus. I was able to correct the "experts" on 16 major calls they had wrong before the data even came out, simply by reasoning from first principles, 100% mistake free.
I was first on those 16 (why masks don't work, lockdowns, the correct IFR, the origin of the virus, etc.) and "only" on 4, meaning the general medical community still hasn't caught on. I understand the medical science, but it was the physics that set me apart, especially early on.
I think your link is clear.
Setty was able to attend, able to ask questions, and says he heard a range of opinions expressed.
Your link exactly supports my POV.
Do you think a scientist can treat patients and not make medical errors?
Of course Setty gets the science wrong. He makes obvious errors in the link.
I don't think you're interpreting his experience right. The moderators shut down discussion. The lady he wanted to talk to brushed him off. Please show me one debate over the science and policy issues (other than mine with Dr. Bhattacharya). I'd like to watch it.
I the fifth Harry Potter movie there is a perfect portrayal of an authority figure talking down to people. Everyone in a position of authority should study this for clues as to why ordinary people resent being dismissed as unable to have informed opinions.
There are some helpful logic primers on line. You might want to review them.
Yes! Bring on the debate. The public absolutely deserves to be part of the conversation and to be armed with information to make an informed decision. Consider broaching media personalities who would welcome this type of forum, whether Megyn Kelly, Bill Maher or Joe Rogan. Their personal biases are irrelevant. Each of them is more than capable of hosting this discussion!
What I find insulting is that the vaccine cheerleaders refuse to speak to anyone on the other side. The public is not a load of dolts, you know. But their actions and words assure us that we are.
Yes, it was disappointing that Dr. Peter Hotez, after complaining that no one would engage, refused to engage with Kennedy on Joe Rogan even when he was offered well over a million dollars to use to fund pro-vaccine enterprises.
Hotez’s reasons for turning down the debate which was to be conducted by RFKjr and with rules set by him were quite understandable.
Of course they were, he knew he would lose the debate. Why would he choose to make himself and his viewpoint look ridiculous? If he had good points to make, they would be discernibly good no matter the format.
I am not aware of any rules which would have been set which would set at naught what he might say. Are you? What might they have been?
See here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FVSYe9DIYuE
I watched about half of it. Hotez was upset that orfinary people think that vaccines cause autism. They do. The hep-B vaccine at birth caused vaccine encephalitis in my newborn daughter. Four days and nights of constant, inconsolable, high-pitched screaming. The DTaP booster at 18 months erased the two words which she had finally started to say, and she was diagnosed with autism two months later. Dr. Hotez has a daughter, Rachel, with PDD, on the autism spectrum. He insists that vaccines did not cause her autism. I wondered why he believed that. Had she not gotten any vaccines? I looked it up. She has gotten a lot, as was to be expected. She was born in October, 1992. The hep-B vaccine began to be given at birth to all newborns in the US, exposed to hep-B or not, beginning in 1991. It took almist ten years for it to be mandated in every state. I don’t know if Rachel got the first dose at birth, but she eventually got three doses.
However, Hotez says that she was very stiff when held and had a high-pitched piercing cry which all the neighbors could hear. Otherwise known as le cri encephalique. Frequent in infants reacting to one of the vaccines, usually the hep-B or DTaP.
Rachel got all the recommended doses of both those vaccines. She screamed for months. How can Hotez prove that they did not cause her autism?
If Hotez wants people to believe that vaccines do not cause autism, allergies, autoimmune disease, seizure disorders, SIDS, etc., then obviously he needs to present his evidence. Just saying No, they don’t, is not going to convince anybody, and only the most negligent parents would believe his baseless assertions.
Of course we have previous examples posted here where such “debates” were demonstrated to be nothing more than anti vaccs preying upon fools.
Maybe he has learned to not trust grifters….
Scientists speak all the time with other scientists that dissagree with them.
Your ignorance doesn’t change this fact,
Maybe you live in planet Academia, but try and come down talk science to people on the streets of planet Earth. Unfortunatelly there's is only a certain amount of simplification you can make when addressing the public, oversimplification often makes things worst. That's reality, no use in pretending everybody took courses in biology or in biomathematics. And then, of course, there's the Joe Rogan's of this world who are on a mission.
Your condescension and insulting attitude about what people can really understand is exactly what has created - or at least greatly increased -the lack of public confidence in the “authorities”. Listen to yourself for a moment. and consider how you would react if somebody told you (or even implied) that you were too stupid to understand something.
And yet you didn’t actually address his point.
My 2 cents; if non-scientist is willing to try, you can effectively communicate a lot of science,
And I agree with you. That's why condescension, as I said above, is so corrosive to trust the in the source of the information. Very few people react positively to being treated as too stupid to understand the facts.
The key part is that some folks have proven that they don’t care what the facts are.
This is true. Not everyone will be able to understand the science on a deep level. But that is no excuse for the "sit down, shut up, and get your vaccines on schedule" attitude that so prevalent on the PV side. I get a really strong authoritarian vibe from many PV internet posters. Questioning of vaccines should be welcomed and addressed honestly, providing estimates of risks of all types and acknowledgement of uncertainties.
Mary Ann is right that the public is not a load of dolts. Some of us are actually highly educated and able to understand what the science actually says. I'm a professional statistician with a Ph.D., but I'm been told many times I don't understand the science when I disagree on a basic assumption underlying the analysis. Then told I'm AV and accused of lying when I say I'm not. And my opinion dismissed because I'm a lying AVer.
IMO, there are gaps in the evidence for many aspects of safety with regard to vaccinations. I also assume the actual vaccine risks are higher than the official statistics indicate due to the way they compute those statistics. While I'm not AV, I've been known to skip or delay some vaccinations as I don't think that every recommendation for the general public is also a good choice for me individually.
BTW, I'm not a fan of Joe Rogan, but I don't sense he's on a mission the way RFK, Jr. and Del Bigtree are. Have I missed where he's fervently AV?
" And then, of course, there's the Joe Rogan's of this world who are on a mission."
What exactly is this mission?
To make as much money as possible regardless of right or wrong.
...and you must be the guy capable of picking the people out that are on that mission so we should come to you for the list I suppose.
I gather Dr Offit wants public scientific debate only with scientists who are mostly in agreement with him and only if there are no people watching and listening who question the safety and efficacy of vaccines. This is not realistic. This is why there is distrust.
Given the fact that he sits on the FDA Advisory Committee of 21 people and does not always vote with the majority when it comes to vaccines, I would have to disagree with that premise. What drew me to his Substack is that he is an independent thinker with a plethora of knowledge in his field. Take a listen or watch his interviews for more info if you’re curious about his stance.
Or read his books , vaccinated was great! He spouts out the good, the bad , the ugly. Dont want to ruin it but roughly 100 million more children made it to adulthood thanks in part to vaccines developed by 1 doctor!
No, he doesn’t want to give grifters more marketing.
What ever amount of money you believe people are making taking a skeptical position to the Pharma enterprise, it would be a drop in the bucket compared to the amount pharma has extracted from the tax payer. Arguing someone isn’t credible because they are compensated for their efforts would put Pharma right a the top of that list.
Better question: Why won’t any of your listed business people make that claims in court, under oath?
Thank you. As a member of the public making health decisions, I'm counting on a robust and public discussion by scientists about public health policy, especially in the ever-shifting world of Covi2
“We should be able to have these debates in public.” If that’s the case, why won’t you debate Bret Weinstein or Pierre Kory or, even better, Peter McCullough? Bring it.
Sorry-nobody is required to debate every person with an opinion. Literally, no one has time for that.
Who said anything about requiring debate? Let me be clear: the public deserved to hear all sides of the covid story from masking to lockdowns to vaccines. But we heard only from one side. The opposition was censored and canceled. Peter Hotez, for example, won’t debate anyone who disagrees with him, in spite of the fact that others are openly willing to talk to him. The media refuses to cover any other perspective than the official version. Offit himself doesn’t have to debate 50 dissenting opinions, he needs only debate one other person who disagrees with him. Read what I said up there: I used the word “or.”
Offit has, in Court, unlike all your grifters!
Court is not a public debate.
Silence!
You missed the point.
All these anti vacc biz people make inflammatory claims, but they won’t do so under oath where perjury applies.
Apparently they know they are selling lies….
good news is it's a free country & I don't have to debate you, either. have a nice day.
Dr Peter McCollough is the most published scientist on Covid-19. He also has been treating Covid patients. Offit has the time to debate him.
Do you not care what the facts are?
He is not a scientist,
He is an exposed fraudster.
But if the pro-vax authorities refuse to debate vaccine critics, it must be because they realize that they cannot win on the merits, but only by compulsion.
Sane people don’t give frauds a bigger stage,
I agree with Mike H; starting the argument in 2022 is missing the years leading up to the increasingly divided public. Had the NIH/CDC been as honest as possible from the beginning, there would not be the skepticism that was the prism through which the public viewed recommendations coming from these agencies in 2022. For example, the resignation of scientists disagreeing with initial vaccine recs was for me a red flag moment. Behind the recommendations, we need to be transparent about the motives leading to the recommendations.
You are mixing up stupidity and ignorance. Very different things. My point is that people are vastely ignorant regarding science, not stupid. Not necessarily their fault, mostly lack of opportunities or interest in diving into science. And science has become more and more and more complex ever. I am totally ignorant regarding so many issues but do not take offense if someone in the know finds it hopeless to try and explain me rocket science in 10 minutes. This person probably tried before but failed, or worst, got misunderstood. To make it worst, there are (too many) people in the US who still think the world is flat and evolution should be substituted by criationism in school. Way too many.
Interesting conundrum that applies to other areas of science that directly affect people. An argument for or against string theory, relativity, the Big Bang etc can be restricted to academic journals because they don’t impact on everyday life. No one cares if Professor X argues against these whilst Dr Y argues for them.
However, when these arguments directly affect people’s lives, be it vaccines, climate change, GMO crops etc. then they do become important. The problem arises when debate is stifled because the science is settled, (e.g. anthropogenic climate change) or the topic is hijacked by the extremes (e.g. vaccination). None of this is black and white but finding the middle ground becomes very difficult and the discussion becomes confusing because it is polarised.
Taking the example of the covid vaccines, there’s a tendency for the issues that do exist with it being minimised or even not acknowledged on one hand and it being the sole topic on the other, ne’er the twain shall meet.
From a non American perspective this appears to be a divide that is political rather than scientific, perhaps more than it is here in the U.K.
Dr John Campbell, who originally supported the vaccine, and Andrew Bridgen, both Brits, have shown the issues to be primarily political in the UK as well.
Nope, they have shown they can scam some people all of the time.
Yes. I think the distinction is when “the science” is used to inform policy decisions that have profound impacts on our lives, and our basic freedoms. When they’re demanding extraordinary control over our lives, people will settle for nothing but honest, public debate.
In the US there is lots of data.
Once the vaccines came out, republicans started dying more often the democrats.
The numbers are large enough that it will push narrow republican victories to democratic wins.
V-Safe was primarily used by Democrat vaccine supporters, but when its reports were ultimately compelled to be released under the Freedom of Information Act, a third of the reports were of severe adverse reactions and seven percent reported having to seek professional medical attention, often in hospitals.
V-safe does not measure vaccine reactions!
That’s what it was designed to do. The program was cancelled about a month ago because a huge percentage, unprecedented, reported both severe adverse reactions and seeking medical attention hoping fruitlessly to treat them.
It is impossible for it to measure reactions.
You are just making things up again.
No, that’s not what was found.
Nope
https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1319230/pg1
I was slightly mistaken. 7.7% had to seek medical attention for the reactions the V-Safe respondents experienced from the covid vaccine. This only came to light a year ago and only under legal compulsion. A couple of months ago, V-Safe suspended its program designed to assure the safety of the vaccine. It turned out to do the opposite.
100% wrong, it did measure reactions.