I was locked out of Twitter a few days ago because of a tweet that linked to another cardiologist’s blog that reviewed myocarditis rates after mrna vaccination. I thought the blog did a nice job of going through some of the reasons why the CDC’s numbers may not be accurate. The Cardiologist, Dr. Verma, in his blog goes onto gives his opinion on what he would do with regards to vaccination based on his interpretation of the data.
In a not-so-distant past, a discussion among experts about matters that effect the public’s health would seem to be to the benefit of the health of the public, but lately, for certain topics, any deviation from consensus appears to be viewed as endangering public health.
Its a remarkable turn of events for an immigrant from India that grew up fearing the censorious religious right. Now there are new priests named Vivek Murthy, Anthony Fauci, and Francis Collins leading a new church of “Science” that determines what acceptable speech is in the public square. Apparently linking to a cardiologist discussing vaccine myocarditis studies and rates is a bridge too far.
This is particularly odd when it comes to COVID because of the surfeit of terrible COVID studies that the CDC has been relying on and publishing for the last 2 years. This is the same CDC that said the science indisputably supported closing schools for an extended period of time and that masks on children were the ticket to stopping transmission of the virus.
CDC director Rochelle Wallensky went on the weekend news shows in the fall of 2021 to tell the nation that schools without mask mandates were 3.5 times more likely to have COVID outbreaks than schools that did have mask mandates. Except as journalist David Zweig writing in the Atlantic discovered, only a small proportion of the schools in the CDC report were actually open during the study period and some of the schools included in the analysis were virtual learning academies. The effect size of masks the CDC director amplified was also wildly higher than any other mask studies to that point.
A better study by Dr. Tracy Hoeg, Josh Stevension, et al. looked at 2 neighboring schools with different mask policies over the course of a year, and found absolutely no difference in cases detected.
Even more damning, COVID cases steeply declined despite the fact that Fargo Public schools made masks optional in the middle of a surge.
At the very least school mask mandates don’t appear to be a slam-dunk when it comes to stopping COVID. And yet questioning extended school closures and mask mandates for children above the age of 2 is still liable to get you banned on twitter, and in 2020 would get you labeled a child murderer.
But fast-forward to 2022, and the New York Times is running an op-ed now that that suggests our school policies during the pandemic were a historically bad idea.
It sure would have been nice for parents to hear the debate about masks and schools in 2020, but a public debate would have meant parents would have been validated being on both sides of the debate. And that the powers that be could not allow.
History will prove them wrong about a lot more. The current version of the CDC that exists will come to be regarded as one of the most incompetent public health agencies ever. Their most recent offering is a study of the longterm effects of COVID in children that is trumpeted as causally linking an acute infection of COVID with clots in the lung because 0.0167% of kids post COVID had a clot, while 0.009% of kids who did not have COVID had a clot.
Imagine if someone ran a study and noted a 0.007% difference of an adverse event between the vaccinated and unvaccinated, and tried to say the vaccine was causing the adverse event. Heads would explode, and whoever dared say such a thing would likely never work in a professional capacity again. But the CDC can say whatever they want.
The only useful thing about the long COVID CDC report, and other terrible similar studies is that it identifies anyone who amplifies the study as an idiot that has no idea how to interpret scientific studies. Its important Twitter doesn’t ban these idiots because it’s a lot more important to know who they are so that the rest of their work can be ignored.
At some point twitter may independently realize just how bad the experts they are using to police truth have been. But even if they do, do they dare question the high priests that wield the power of the State? Not only do the current high priests need to be quarantined in a basement somewhere, strict guardrails need to be established to never allow anyone in their station to have the power to destroy society, manufacture consensus, and quell debate.
Anish Koka is a cardiologist. Follow him on twitter @anish_koka
Lockout update: Twitter tells me that I can return upon deleting my tweet and taking a 12 hour time-out. I’ve appealed. They’ll get to me “when they can”.
Welcome to the club! I honestly don’t trust any physician who has not been in Twitter jail.
Thank you for your work and courage. I look forward to seeing you back on Twitter, you are definitely in the right so they will delay reviewing you.