70 Shocking Anti-Science Moments: A Wake-Up Call from the COVID Era - from Jay Bhattacharya
In October 2022, our friend and current NIH nominee Jay Bhattacharya shared a powerful list of 70 anti-science incidents that unfolded during the Covid years. Two years later, it's time to revisit these moments.
If you're struggling to articulate just how damaging the policies were, this list provides a clear and compelling reminder of where the focus needs to be.
White washing the harm done to children by school closures by glibly asserting that 'kids are resilient' is anti-science.
Institutionalized hypochondria is anti-science.
Forcing school kids to eat six feet apart from each other, outdoors and in silence was anti-science.
Zoom school is anti-science.
Vaccine mandates have demolished public trust in vaccines and are anti-science.
Ignoring immunity after covid recovery is anti-science
Zero covid is anti-science.
Censorship of scientific debate is anti-science. Literally.
Masking toddlers is anti-science.
Vaccine discrimination is socially divisive and is anti- science
Ignoring legitimate vaccine injury is anti-science.
Arbitrarily dividing society into essential and non-essential is anti-science.
Declaring oneself to be The Science itself is anti-science.
Ignoring age-stratification in risk in determining pandemic policy and vaccine recommendations is anti-science.
Politically partisan public health is anti-science
Ignoring the obvious and devastating economic costs of policy is anti-science.
Lockdowns and other trickle down epidemiology are anti-science.
Policing private doctor patient communication for non-CDC approved content is anti-science.
Panicked killing of the Danish mink was anti-science. Public health apologizing for the mistake is pro-science.
Mask mandates are anti- science.
Sending covid infected patients back to nursing homes to keep hospital beds empty was anti-science.
Jumping off the sidewalk to avoid the breath of an unmasked person walking by is anti-science.
Closing international borders to keep a virus out when the virus is already established in-country is anti-science.
It is hard to overstate the corruption inside the CDC. The US CDC is, in effect, acting like the marketing arm of big pharma. Anti-science.
Contact tracing to contain a highly infectious and aerosolized respiratory virus is anti-science.
Shutting down kids' sports is anti-science.
Instituting lockdowns & restrictions on the basis of overly-simplistic covid models is anti-science.
Redefining health to be synonymous with the avoidance of a single infectious disease is anti-science.
Redefining herd immunity to exclude immunity conferred by disease recovery is anti-science.
Insinuating that the lab leak hypothesis is a racist conspiracy theory is anti-science.
Science bureaucrats using their power to smear scientists who disagree with them is anti-science.
Six-foot social distancing is anti-science.
Pausing childhood vaccination programs and tuberculosis treatment in poor countries because of fear of covid led to many unnecessary deaths and is anti-science.
Pretending there is a scientific consensus on lockdown and so much else when there is not a scientific consensus (especially while censoring skeptical voices) is anti-science.
Science & medicine are the common inheritance of all, regardless of party. Medical and scientific professional societies officially endorsing political candidates and thereby alienating half the population is anti-science.
Public health experts have an obligation to speak respectfully with everyone, including people who oppose their recommendations (such as on vaccines). Guilt-by-association attacks on experts who fulfill this obligation are anti-science.
Public health shaming people for not following public health diktats is anti-science.
Not rapidly running randomized trials to evaluate off-patent early treatment options and denigrating doctors and patients who tried them ("horse paste") when better options were not available is anti-science.
Requiring waiters to mask to serve unmasked patrons is anti-science.
Not letting family members visit dying relatives is anti-science.
Pharmaceutical company funding of on-air news media and professional medical organizations is anti-science.
Not permitting healthy people to leave home for more than an hour, even for exercise, is anti-science.
Noble lies are bad public health practice and anti-science.
Asserting that a vaccine stops disease transmission when it does not stop transmission is anti-science.
Jailing and fining anti-lockdown truckers and religious leaders in the name of public health is anti-science.
Scicomm journalists picking sides in a scientific debate by smearing scientists who disagree with powerful science bureaucrats is anti-science.
Correct scientific arguments can come from anywhere. Excluding people from a scientific debate on the basis of a supposed lack of expertise or wrong expertise is anti-science.
Misinformation science in service of suppression of open scientific discussion is anti-science.
Fact-checkers of a public scientific debate who are not subject to fact-checks are anti-science.
Tuning a PCR test so that dead viral particles register as positive for the virus, and then force quarantining someone on the basis of that result is anti-science.
Thinking that scientific expertise is sufficient to decide complicated social issues involving competing values is anti-science.
Denial of learning loss caused by school closures and the generational inequality it has induced is anti-science.
Thinking that printing trillions to pay businesses to stay closed did not create tremendous inflationary pressure is anti-science.
Pretending that lockdowns, which broke global supply chains, cannot possibly have contributed to supply chain disruptions is anti-science.
Using the precautionary principle to avoid requiring extraordinary policy measures like lockdowns to undergo a rigorous cost-benefit analysis that appropriately accounts for uncertainty is anti-science.
Swiss-cheese science, deployed to avoid the high standards of evidence-based medicine, is anti-science.
A Ministry of Truth is anti-science.
The FDA acting like it is in thrall to Pfizer is anti-science.
Subsidizing funerals for people who die with covid, but not for anyone else is anti-science.
Preventing Novak Djokovic and other unvaccinated foreign visitors from entering the US is anti-science.
A healthcare decision for hundreds of millions of people by executive order of the President is anti-science.
Firing people for not undergoing a medical procedure is anti-science. Not hiring them back when it is clear the medical procedure confers a personal benefit and little public benefit is also anti-science.
Locking thousands of people in low-income public housing for days without time to buy food is a violation of human rights and anti-science.
Denial of learning loss due to useless and harmful school closures is anti-science
Leaving nursing home residents with dementia to die of thirst, malnutrition, and neglect because of fear of covid by staff is anti-science.
The WHO pushing a policy guaranteed to starve countless poor children in poor countries is anti-science.
Ordering nearly a half billion migrant workers working in the big cities to scramble home overnight to comply with lockdown orders, killing a thousand en route within a few days, is anti-science.
Robbing some of the poorest children in the world of two full years of education is anti-science.
Stickers to keep people from sitting together with friends on benches is anti-science.
News media embracing the illusion that politicians and public health have control over the spread of a highly infectious virus that we have no technology to stop is anti-science.
We can add another 70 easily. The people behind the Covid scam must be held accountable; otherwise, we will experience this anti-human behavior again.
We haven't had true drug science in decades. If we did, big pharma would be out of business.