Not only do people not believe official agencies anymore, they won’t believe me, a scientist, either. It’s as though we’ve moved into a kind of solipsism where there is not scientific truth or that scientific truth is unknowable.
Poignant article, Vinay. Though I would offer that the mistrust in the CDC's past decisions for current sins IS NOT misplaced. How are the actions of public health officials any different now than how they handled HIV and AIDS in the 1980s? There are many such examples in recent history to make us question even the good data.
Having recently retired from a 20 year career with the State Department. I believe I can offer a perspective on the issues well described by Vinay in this post, and many previous ones. Though never employed by the CDC, FDA, or NIH, I've had numerous interactions with some of their staff over the years. Here are salient points on how these organizations make decisions on authorizations, approvals, non-pharmaceutical public health recommendations and so forth:
- There is a chain of command such that lower employees don't make substantive decisions. There are multiple layers of approvals, often by committee, with final decisions by top officials. There may be a dozen or more separate offices involved in drafting a policy and approving a final decision.
- They have a strong consensus-based institutional culture. It is likely that behind closed doors staffers debate issues. But in the final analysis on public facing health edicts everyone either agrees or shuts up.
I absolutely agree with Vinay that these agencies are responsible for grave malfeasance as described in this post and many earlier ones. However, as I've outlined above, I think Vinay's suggestion to "fire employees responsible for poor decisions" doesn't make sense.
A better remedy goes like this: Use the Office of Inspector General. The OIG has a long history of oversight of federal agencies to prevent or investigate allegations of fraud, waste and abuse. Any federal employee, including the rank and file, has the right to submit an allegation of fraud, waste, or abuse to the OIG who then investigate such claims. The employee's supervisor is not allowed to retaliate by actions such as giving a poor work review or other harassment. To my knowledge, the OIG is not currently set up to investigate claims of scientific malfeasance, which requires specialized expertise. However, if this feature were added, probably by Congressional action, an honest and ethical insider at the CDC or FDA would be emboldened to challenge dubious public health decisions by invoking the OIG's "Bureau of Scientific Affairs". This should be a permanent feature of the OIG. Thus, our PH agencies would be scientifically disciplined so that we wouldn't see a continuation of their dysfunctional behaviors of the past four years.
Thanks for this. Going forward there really should be a neutral science discipline body to review CDC, FDA and even HHS decisions in order to rebuild trust. The pandemic was fraught with bad, non-evidence based decisions that became unjustified policy. The practice of political and not evidence based policy decisions needs to see the light of day.
Absolutely! The impact that these non-elected officials have over our lives is hard the fathom: Loss of livelihood, primary education suspended for years, restrictions on rights such as freedom of speech and association. At the very least, these organizations need to be completely transparent to those who pay their salaries -- we the taxpayers. A scientific watchdog is fully justified as well.
This is a really dark time to be a healthcare provider. Re-earning trust for public health will not happen for me. First the opiate epidemic failure and now this. Public health does not appear to be interested in public health at all!
The CDC has made my job as a pediatrician all that much harder. I did not recommend Covid vaccine for any of my patients, none had serious underlying issues for risk benefit analysis. If the dimwits in Sacramento had succeeded to mandate Covid vaccines for school I was going to underwrite the cost of high quality homeschool for my grandchildren. The refusal of vaccines has escalated dramatically thanks to the CDC gaslighting and plain lying to the public. Having practiced before and after many of the current vaccines came out, I’ve seen the difference they made and really don’t want to go back to the before.
Did you require masks on the kids during Covid? That’s actually what did our pediatricians in. Early on I asked how they could possibly work for elementary school-aged children when they didn’t fit, had gaps, were played with, were CLOTH, blocked speech development, etc. I was told that they “did something”. That was our last visit. I assure you there are desperate parents looking for pediatricians/family practice doctors that felt this way. Advertise it. You will be inundated with patients.
Mask only decreased the concentration of what an infected person sneezed or coughed out. Surgical mask prevents some inhalation of viruses circulating in the air, key word some. The only two RCT on mask effectiveness showed no selective advantage. The CDC retrospective studies purporting an effect, published in their own journal MMRW, were basically a joke. Unfortunately many MDs unless they had graduate degrees in science really don’t know how to read research papers correctly and how to look for poor design, not accounting for confounding varianles and the proper use of statistics according to the methodology of the study, Many pediatricians just blindly accepted the CDC gaslighting and AAP endorsement of the policies. I really believed my contemporaries were smarter than that, but I guess not. I am 70 now and retired.
It's too late. There's nothing FDA/CDC says that I'll believe. Not until the entire departments are bulldozed. The foundation has rotted. Putting some spackle on drywall cracks isn't going to help when the foundation and trusses are rotten to the core.
Please do not let the AAP off the hook for this travesty. The virtue signaling scions of the pediatricians followed the party line without question. No consideration of even mild skepticism for an untested,unproven experimental vaccine. These people should be held to account also. They could have stopped the rush to profit for Pfizer and Moderna. Shameful behavior, similar to teachers unions promoting their own agenda behind the facade of “it’s for the good of the children!”
True. Pediatricians should advertise that they DO NOT blindly follow the advice of the AAP. Put it on posters in the waiting room which will show that your practice doesn’t blindly follow big organizations. Show them you have a critically-thinking practice.
Vinay, they lost parents are two points prior to this:
1. Pediatricians pestering parents to get the Hep B series for infants with absolutely no risk "because your kid might have sex when he's 15." I've been told this twice by two different pediatricians - two different kids. My husband and I specifically got tested to make sure we didn't have Hep B, asked all our family for which Hepatitis they'd had if they'd had it, and weren't getting a nanny nor putting the kid into daycare. Why in the world would you give a one day old infant a vaccine for which they have absolutely no risk? Sex at 15 isn't a good reason. And then when you find out that immunity doesn't last for many of the vaccines before 1 year, you feel lied to.
2. The Chicken pox vaccine. Previously known as "an itchy nuisance", the risks were very low of bad stuff other than scarring. Once the vaccine was introduced, all of a sudden, chicken pox because this horrible deadly disease. Don't think people didn't notice that.
Dr P, they can’t predict anything without a bs computer model! They confidently predict thousands of dead kids from COVID because they programmed a bs model about it… but they didn’t program a bs model to predict what happens to their credibility when all their bs predictions are wrong. It’s not their fault, really. It’s like expecting a puppy to act like a human. Science! Sigh..,
Not only do people not believe official agencies anymore, they won’t believe me, a scientist, either. It’s as though we’ve moved into a kind of solipsism where there is not scientific truth or that scientific truth is unknowable.
Poignant article, Vinay. Though I would offer that the mistrust in the CDC's past decisions for current sins IS NOT misplaced. How are the actions of public health officials any different now than how they handled HIV and AIDS in the 1980s? There are many such examples in recent history to make us question even the good data.
Having recently retired from a 20 year career with the State Department. I believe I can offer a perspective on the issues well described by Vinay in this post, and many previous ones. Though never employed by the CDC, FDA, or NIH, I've had numerous interactions with some of their staff over the years. Here are salient points on how these organizations make decisions on authorizations, approvals, non-pharmaceutical public health recommendations and so forth:
- There is a chain of command such that lower employees don't make substantive decisions. There are multiple layers of approvals, often by committee, with final decisions by top officials. There may be a dozen or more separate offices involved in drafting a policy and approving a final decision.
- They have a strong consensus-based institutional culture. It is likely that behind closed doors staffers debate issues. But in the final analysis on public facing health edicts everyone either agrees or shuts up.
I absolutely agree with Vinay that these agencies are responsible for grave malfeasance as described in this post and many earlier ones. However, as I've outlined above, I think Vinay's suggestion to "fire employees responsible for poor decisions" doesn't make sense.
A better remedy goes like this: Use the Office of Inspector General. The OIG has a long history of oversight of federal agencies to prevent or investigate allegations of fraud, waste and abuse. Any federal employee, including the rank and file, has the right to submit an allegation of fraud, waste, or abuse to the OIG who then investigate such claims. The employee's supervisor is not allowed to retaliate by actions such as giving a poor work review or other harassment. To my knowledge, the OIG is not currently set up to investigate claims of scientific malfeasance, which requires specialized expertise. However, if this feature were added, probably by Congressional action, an honest and ethical insider at the CDC or FDA would be emboldened to challenge dubious public health decisions by invoking the OIG's "Bureau of Scientific Affairs". This should be a permanent feature of the OIG. Thus, our PH agencies would be scientifically disciplined so that we wouldn't see a continuation of their dysfunctional behaviors of the past four years.
Thanks for this. Going forward there really should be a neutral science discipline body to review CDC, FDA and even HHS decisions in order to rebuild trust. The pandemic was fraught with bad, non-evidence based decisions that became unjustified policy. The practice of political and not evidence based policy decisions needs to see the light of day.
Absolutely! The impact that these non-elected officials have over our lives is hard the fathom: Loss of livelihood, primary education suspended for years, restrictions on rights such as freedom of speech and association. At the very least, these organizations need to be completely transparent to those who pay their salaries -- we the taxpayers. A scientific watchdog is fully justified as well.
This is a really dark time to be a healthcare provider. Re-earning trust for public health will not happen for me. First the opiate epidemic failure and now this. Public health does not appear to be interested in public health at all!
The CDC has made my job as a pediatrician all that much harder. I did not recommend Covid vaccine for any of my patients, none had serious underlying issues for risk benefit analysis. If the dimwits in Sacramento had succeeded to mandate Covid vaccines for school I was going to underwrite the cost of high quality homeschool for my grandchildren. The refusal of vaccines has escalated dramatically thanks to the CDC gaslighting and plain lying to the public. Having practiced before and after many of the current vaccines came out, I’ve seen the difference they made and really don’t want to go back to the before.
Did you require masks on the kids during Covid? That’s actually what did our pediatricians in. Early on I asked how they could possibly work for elementary school-aged children when they didn’t fit, had gaps, were played with, were CLOTH, blocked speech development, etc. I was told that they “did something”. That was our last visit. I assure you there are desperate parents looking for pediatricians/family practice doctors that felt this way. Advertise it. You will be inundated with patients.
Mask only decreased the concentration of what an infected person sneezed or coughed out. Surgical mask prevents some inhalation of viruses circulating in the air, key word some. The only two RCT on mask effectiveness showed no selective advantage. The CDC retrospective studies purporting an effect, published in their own journal MMRW, were basically a joke. Unfortunately many MDs unless they had graduate degrees in science really don’t know how to read research papers correctly and how to look for poor design, not accounting for confounding varianles and the proper use of statistics according to the methodology of the study, Many pediatricians just blindly accepted the CDC gaslighting and AAP endorsement of the policies. I really believed my contemporaries were smarter than that, but I guess not. I am 70 now and retired.
It's too late. There's nothing FDA/CDC says that I'll believe. Not until the entire departments are bulldozed. The foundation has rotted. Putting some spackle on drywall cracks isn't going to help when the foundation and trusses are rotten to the core.
Yes. Hoo-Ray. Another "house cleaning" is overdue in Atlanta.
Please do not let the AAP off the hook for this travesty. The virtue signaling scions of the pediatricians followed the party line without question. No consideration of even mild skepticism for an untested,unproven experimental vaccine. These people should be held to account also. They could have stopped the rush to profit for Pfizer and Moderna. Shameful behavior, similar to teachers unions promoting their own agenda behind the facade of “it’s for the good of the children!”
True. Pediatricians should advertise that they DO NOT blindly follow the advice of the AAP. Put it on posters in the waiting room which will show that your practice doesn’t blindly follow big organizations. Show them you have a critically-thinking practice.
Vinay, they lost parents are two points prior to this:
1. Pediatricians pestering parents to get the Hep B series for infants with absolutely no risk "because your kid might have sex when he's 15." I've been told this twice by two different pediatricians - two different kids. My husband and I specifically got tested to make sure we didn't have Hep B, asked all our family for which Hepatitis they'd had if they'd had it, and weren't getting a nanny nor putting the kid into daycare. Why in the world would you give a one day old infant a vaccine for which they have absolutely no risk? Sex at 15 isn't a good reason. And then when you find out that immunity doesn't last for many of the vaccines before 1 year, you feel lied to.
2. The Chicken pox vaccine. Previously known as "an itchy nuisance", the risks were very low of bad stuff other than scarring. Once the vaccine was introduced, all of a sudden, chicken pox because this horrible deadly disease. Don't think people didn't notice that.
Dr P, they can’t predict anything without a bs computer model! They confidently predict thousands of dead kids from COVID because they programmed a bs model about it… but they didn’t program a bs model to predict what happens to their credibility when all their bs predictions are wrong. It’s not their fault, really. It’s like expecting a puppy to act like a human. Science! Sigh..,
Garbage in = garbage out.
Speaking of puppies, they totally “crate-trained” children with the masking and “social distancing” BS
Puppies aren’t little people? 😲