In my testimony to the US Congress from March 2023, I described how the US public establishment spread disinformation and created an illusion of scientific consensus to justify lockdowns, all while censoring outside voices that sought to correct them. pic.twitter.com/D9q4tnD2r2
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) July 4, 2023
In my testimony to the US Congress from March 2023, I described how the US public establishment spread disinformation and created an illusion of scientific consensus to justify lockdowns, all while censoring outside voices that sought to correct them.
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) July 4, 2023What this case has revealed is that a dozen federal agencies, including the CDC, the Office of the Surgeon General, and the White House pressured social media companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter to censor and deboost even true speech that contradicted federal pandemic priorities, including especially inconvenient facts about the covid vaccines such as its inefficacy against covid disease transmission.
After the publication of the Great Barrington Declaration, we were repeatedly censored on social media. Immediately after publication, Google deboosted search results, pointing users to media hit pieces critical of it and placing the link to the actual declaration lower on this list of results. A prominent online discussion site, Reddit, removed links to the Declaration from COVID-19 policy discussion fora. In February 2021, Facebook removed the Great Barrington Declaration page without explanation before restoring it a week later.
On March 18, 2021, Dr. Scott Atlas of Stanford University, Dr. Kulldorff, Dr. Gupta, and I participated in a two-hour roundtable discussion with Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida. During the discussion, the participants (including me) questioned the efficacy and appropriateness of requiring children to wear face masks. I pointed out an incontrovertible fact -- that no randomized studies demonstrate that masking children slows or stops the spread of covid.
The March 18, 2021 roundtable discussion video was promptly censored on social media. YouTube removed the video, claiming that it "contradicts the consensus of local and global health authorities regarding the efficacy of masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19." Notably, the opposite is now true—doubting the efficacy of masks, especially cloth masks, is (if anything) the new consensus. ,
This suppression of scientific discussion online clearly violates the U.S. first amendment. But perhaps even more importantly, the censorship of scientific discussion permitted a policy environment where clear scientific truths were muddled, and as a result, destructive and ineffective policies persisted much longer than they would have otherwise.
And here's part 2, which includes some thoughts on needed reforms so that in the future social media can serve as a check on public health overreach rather than an amplifier. https://t.co/qZI5hNZk0U
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) July 4, 2023
A second clear example comes from public health bureaucrats consistently overstating the vaccine's effectiveness in stopping disease transmission. The initial randomized trials did not examine protection against infection or transmission as an endpoint of the trial. Though the trials demonstrated ~95% efficacy versus symptomatic disease, the median follow-up time was only two months after vaccination, not enough time to observe whether the vaccine waned in efficacy versus infection or whether the vaccines would hold up against new variants.
Despite this uncertainty, many public health bureaucrats told the public categorically that the covid vaccines would prevent people from becoming infected and transmitting the disease to others. Over time in 2021, careful epidemiological data from around the world demonstrated conclusively that vaccine protection against covid infection wanes rapidly after full vaccination. People observed with their own eyes that vaccination does not prevent infection, as many vaccinated people became infected.
Overclaiming of covid vaccine effectiveness has led many people to distrust public health messaging on the essential childhood vaccines and scientifically justified claims by public health officials regarding the efficacy of the covid vaccines to protect against severe disease and death from covid infection.
No comments:
Post a Comment