The CDC just called and left a message since I didn’t answer. They are conducting a national survey about vaccinations for COVID and other diseases affecting adults, teens, and children. Debating whether it’s worth it to call back and participate…
I thank you for sharing your educated logic. You make sense.
By using their professional authority to motivate people not to mask or get vaccinated. See: EXCESS DEATH RATES FOR REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC by Jacob Wallace, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Jason L. Schwartz, NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, Working Paper 30512, http://www.nber.org/papers/w30512 . This is just one example.
ABSTRACT: Political affiliation has emerged as a potential risk factor for COVID-19, amid evidence that
Republican-leaning counties have had higher COVID-19 death rates than Democrat- leaning
counties and evidence of a link between political party affiliation and vaccination views. This
study constructs an individual-level dataset with political affiliation and excess death rates during
the COVID-19 pandemic via a linkage of 2017 voter registration in Ohio and Florida to mortality
data from 2018 to 2021. We estimate substantially higher excess death rates for registered
Republicans when compared to registered Democrats, with almost all of the difference
concentrated in the period after vaccines were widely available in our study states. Overall, the
excess death rate for Republicans was 5.4 percentage points (pp), or 76%, higher than the excess
death rate for Democrats. Post- vaccines, the excess death rate gap between Republicans and
Democrats widened from 1.6 pp (22% of the Democrat excess death rate) to 10.4 pp (153% of the
Democrat excess death rate). The gap in excess death rates between Republicans and Democrats
is concentrated in counties with low vaccination rates and only materializes after vaccines
I wish every college would host such a debate, or even earnestly poll their students regarding views on vaccine mandates. My Yale student has post grad plans to pursue an MD/PhD… I’m trying to make the case for a JD/PhD because I fear for her future fertility with the non-stop vaccine push while in med school (the C19 shot she got really messed with her cycle).
Hi Dr.Prasad. I appreciate your intellect and approach. I doubt we would agree on any political ponit - mine are grounded in - to enforce the law, don't pollute, taxation is theft and all politics corrupts etc etc.
Notwithstanding that - I value you as a human being and your qualifications - I think you will go a lot further than your already enviable track record!.
I would very much appreciate your medical expertise in the area of clotting and the "hierarchy of risk" for each component of the C19 mRNA/viral vector injections - compared to the SARS-COV2 virus.
It's a pity that we cannot extend the C19 debate to more town halls and campuses with regulators. politicians, manufacturers, lawyers, judges and those in the "freedom movement". Shouting past each other seems to result in even greater harms.
Be god to get your views on the Senate hearing chaired by Johnson last week too!
Dr. Prasad, how did you get the invite to debate? From what positions you took early in 2020 regarding masks, lockdowns, school closures, the mod RNA vaccines, etc. have you changed? I asked Dr. Cifu the same questions when I discovered inconsistencies in his two videos, "Medical Reversals and COVID-19 Policy" in which he seemed to take the Narrative side, primarily and, "I Still can't be rational about Covid" in which he claimed to be anti-Narrative (primarily), all along.
The public would benefit greatly if people who changed along the way would explain what made them see the light and change their way of thinking, which is very hard to do for most people.
There is no shame in changing one's mind and if someone as smart about medicine as you changed his position on something, anyone could. Dr. Bhattacharya told me he is impressed more by someone who changed their mind than someone who never had to because he was right on everything from the beginning. If you wish to answer privately, my email is Rsheftall@alum.mit.edu. Thanks.
PS: Two doctors I graduated with are trying to get my medical school to agree to allow me to speak on Covid topics this coming Fall
I gave a Pediatrics Grand Rounds at my institution last January on the impact of covid policies on children. Spoiler alert, they were devastating. I was so nervous leading up to the talk but had a mostly good response. One student wrote a scathing review full of covidian tropes and called my talk disinformation but far more people thanked me for sharing the information.
Thank you for speaking up. That takes bravery as I'm sure you are greatly outnumbered. There are way too many pediatricians taking their marching orders from Big Pharma.
You are an optimist. With governments starting to create laws banning free speech for “misinformation” and information that is factually correct but goes against the current desired political narrative, the future looks bleak unless people are courageous enough to speak out now. It’s not about your political leaning, that’s what they use to get the populace fighting against each other instead of noticing the freedom we take for granted being taken away from all of us. Bidens “disinformation governance board” shockingly Orwellian, was so obvious thankfully enough people spoke out against it. But the globalists are just being more subtle so the average person is left unaware that they are not being informed of the erosion of free speech. Irelands “Hate speech laws” so broad that you could be jailed for memes some government employees disapprove of. Physicians’s have already lost jobs over discussing their measured analyses of “sensitive” topics. Canada froze bank accounts of people who donated to the protesting truckers! These people could not pay their mortgages, buy food, etc. Dictatorship activity is happening around us. It’s too close to home. Free speech is truly our only avenue to retain our freedoms.
I’m glad to hear the universities are starting to open up the floor to such debates. Even if it is 4 years too late. I’ve been of the view that it would take 10 years for public opinion to turn against the CoVid narrative. We seem to be on schedule to get there on time.
I do not know where you learned about ventilators, but their use is an common, invasive, intense and last resort technology that has grave implications for the patient and for prognosis. They are not used casually. I have never seen a case of "ventilator overuse" in 40 years of medicine.
You may have never seen an overuse case. But there are many reports from the early days of the Covid pandemic that hospitals were putting Covid patients on vents immediately. The story goes that the hospital staff was so scared of getting infected by the virus that they put people on the vents. I guess the idea was to keep the people from breathing into the air.
Now, I didn't see this myself, but this was what has been reported.
My brother-in-law had a friend who had to be admitted to the hospital in 2020. His friend ended up on a vent for some reason. He was terrified because he wasn't sure he would make it but he was lucky and survived. I wish I could remember more of the details.
Do you remember when Cuomo was going on and on about how many ventilators they were going to need? It sure sounded like it was standard operating procedure for the time.
My father was on a vent in 1980 when he had sepsis (which killed him). They told us how hard it was to wean a person off a vent.
And just to add a little incentive to place people on ventilators the government gave a cash bonus for hospitals that did so. I believe it was something between $30,000 and $40,000. Since almost all doctors are now employees of corporate organizations that own the hospitals, many were happy to go along with it. But you are probably wasting your time arguing with anyone that has MPH after their name.
With all due respect clinically I cannot image a scenario where hospital personnel would think their risk was lowered by intubating (which is known to be a very high risk procedure) and ventilating a patient. And yes every time a patient is intubated the doc prays there is enough pulmonary function to be able to wean the patient - and that is where the great skills and experience of good and trusted docs comes in. Treating serious disease is an arduous and difficult task. Medical personnel need trust not take downs by wild rumors.
With all due respect, at your age, I assume that you were not working in the hospitals in 2020.
Nurses are starting to come out with stories of what was going on in the hospitals. The protocols that were being followed were insane and not best practices. I suggest you read some of the reports that Steve Kirsch has been providing.
Here is an article from 2020 that explains that vents were overused and that staff were treating Covid patients as if they had ARDS:
There was a lot of discussion at the beginning of the pandemic that hospital staff was panicking. I recall reading an article in a mainstream publication a few months in that said that they had been venting people out of fear. Not easily found now but if I do find it, I will post the link.
Sorry, altho Steve Kirsch may be a boy wonder in IT and $, and initially been altruistic his opinions and commentary on many aspects of COVID have no credibility in the vast house of everyday medical care.
"credibility in the vast house of everyday medical care?" That is code for SOC. Standard of care. Which is code for do not stray from the conventional dogma. Medicine only advances with challenges to the common "wisdom." The point of this entire blog and exercise is opening a scientific debate and discussion that has been systematically banned.
This should not be an ad homonum exercise. I spent many years not only as a clinician, but also as a state regulator of MD licenses, and as a hospital bioethics consultant stretching and challenging standards of care to benefit patients. The issue is not challenging conventional dogma, but improving care and outcomes. Unfortunately in 2020 this took place in the face of a challenging tsunami of confusion and failure.
I said nothing about whether or not Kirsch is credible. I said that they wouldn't let him speak at MIT, even in the building named for him. They could have insisted on someone with a different view point being there to challenge him.
You don't have to consider Kirsch credible to listen to the interviews of nurses about what was happening in the hospitals in 2020.
Kirsch aside, the "vast house of everyday medical care" was corrupted during Covid evidently because of money, ego and a struggle for power.
Mimi, all or much of what you are saying about vent use is correct but your Kirsch facts are a little off. If I remember correctly. he donated $2 million to MIT and got an auditorium named after him. No chance a building would get named after you for only $2 million. As for his speech in the auditorium bearing his name, he made an effort to get someone to debate him but failed. Many of us have tried and failed to get anyone to debate us. I challenged 16 pediatricians who had come out publicly in favor of childhood vaccine mandates but they all declined. I challenged Dr. Paul Offit to debate me on origins of the virus and the number who actually died FRON COVID after he made claims that I found preposterous. He didn't even respond which led to an amusing exchange in the comment sections under his posts which was not very complimentary of Dr. Offit. Unfortunately, there was no way around it and I'm sure it will continue.
The harms - even deaths - caused by Kirsh, Atlas, Redfield, Gold Kennedy and others are well documented. In 2020 the politics and programs dealing with COVID were often wrong and wrong headed (and continue to be in my opinion). I am also well aware of major "corrupt" and money grubbing or legally protective dysfunctional behavior by hospitals but I cannot believe hospital medical personnel were so conspiratorially selfish. AND if they existed they were but a small number among the thousands of nurses, doc, resp therapists, and aides who gave selflessly in 2020 at substantial personal risk while the system failed them.
At the beginning, I liked listening to Rutherford. But at some point during one of Bob Wachter's Grand Rounds broadcasts, Rutherford said something that was a bald faced lie. I can't remember what it was, but I do remember a lot of people on Twitter discussing it. I never paid attention to him again. Wachter lost me when he praised Andy Slavitt.
Dr. Wachter is a strict Narrative supporter. He was wrong on everything. Slavitt was deep into censorship, labeling posts as "misinformation" when he couldn't possibly know, having almost no medical knowledge. On his team were a media guy and a lawyer who also had/have no medical knowledge.
I followed Wachter at first because like most people I didn't really know what was going on. I followed a lot of different people at the beginning.
After Slavitt said something about having his son stay in the basement when he came home to keep everybody safe from Covid, I knew *he* was a total nutcase. And Wachter coming out to support Slavitt showed that his sanity was questionable too.
Doesn't your friend and colleague Adam Cifu work at University of Chicago?! That's where the next debate needs to happen. From their site: "Free Expression: A University of Chicago Core Value -- An education that fosters free expression empowers students to engage with challenging ideas – in college and throughout their lives."
Really interesting article written by former Harvard professor.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/harvard-tramples-the-truth
The CDC just called and left a message since I didn’t answer. They are conducting a national survey about vaccinations for COVID and other diseases affecting adults, teens, and children. Debating whether it’s worth it to call back and participate…
I thank you for sharing your educated logic. You make sense.
The CDC called.... LOL. Science has called, but the CDC isn't answering.
By using their professional authority to motivate people not to mask or get vaccinated. See: EXCESS DEATH RATES FOR REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC by Jacob Wallace, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Jason L. Schwartz, NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, Working Paper 30512, http://www.nber.org/papers/w30512 . This is just one example.
ABSTRACT: Political affiliation has emerged as a potential risk factor for COVID-19, amid evidence that
Republican-leaning counties have had higher COVID-19 death rates than Democrat- leaning
counties and evidence of a link between political party affiliation and vaccination views. This
study constructs an individual-level dataset with political affiliation and excess death rates during
the COVID-19 pandemic via a linkage of 2017 voter registration in Ohio and Florida to mortality
data from 2018 to 2021. We estimate substantially higher excess death rates for registered
Republicans when compared to registered Democrats, with almost all of the difference
concentrated in the period after vaccines were widely available in our study states. Overall, the
excess death rate for Republicans was 5.4 percentage points (pp), or 76%, higher than the excess
death rate for Democrats. Post- vaccines, the excess death rate gap between Republicans and
Democrats widened from 1.6 pp (22% of the Democrat excess death rate) to 10.4 pp (153% of the
Democrat excess death rate). The gap in excess death rates between Republicans and Democrats
is concentrated in counties with low vaccination rates and only materializes after vaccines
became widely available.
Garbage science. Republicans are more rural, Democrats more urban... in the end, MORE Democrats have died than Republicans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xtjLbZ5pYs
Was the debate recorded and if so where is it available?
I wish every college would host such a debate, or even earnestly poll their students regarding views on vaccine mandates. My Yale student has post grad plans to pursue an MD/PhD… I’m trying to make the case for a JD/PhD because I fear for her future fertility with the non-stop vaccine push while in med school (the C19 shot she got really messed with her cycle).
Hi Dr.Prasad. I appreciate your intellect and approach. I doubt we would agree on any political ponit - mine are grounded in - to enforce the law, don't pollute, taxation is theft and all politics corrupts etc etc.
Notwithstanding that - I value you as a human being and your qualifications - I think you will go a lot further than your already enviable track record!.
I would very much appreciate your medical expertise in the area of clotting and the "hierarchy of risk" for each component of the C19 mRNA/viral vector injections - compared to the SARS-COV2 virus.
Here's a tease (with my cover note).
https://peterhalligan.substack.com/cp/142273937#details
It's a pity that we cannot extend the C19 debate to more town halls and campuses with regulators. politicians, manufacturers, lawyers, judges and those in the "freedom movement". Shouting past each other seems to result in even greater harms.
Be god to get your views on the Senate hearing chaired by Johnson last week too!
Dr. Prasad, how did you get the invite to debate? From what positions you took early in 2020 regarding masks, lockdowns, school closures, the mod RNA vaccines, etc. have you changed? I asked Dr. Cifu the same questions when I discovered inconsistencies in his two videos, "Medical Reversals and COVID-19 Policy" in which he seemed to take the Narrative side, primarily and, "I Still can't be rational about Covid" in which he claimed to be anti-Narrative (primarily), all along.
The public would benefit greatly if people who changed along the way would explain what made them see the light and change their way of thinking, which is very hard to do for most people.
There is no shame in changing one's mind and if someone as smart about medicine as you changed his position on something, anyone could. Dr. Bhattacharya told me he is impressed more by someone who changed their mind than someone who never had to because he was right on everything from the beginning. If you wish to answer privately, my email is Rsheftall@alum.mit.edu. Thanks.
PS: Two doctors I graduated with are trying to get my medical school to agree to allow me to speak on Covid topics this coming Fall
I gave a Pediatrics Grand Rounds at my institution last January on the impact of covid policies on children. Spoiler alert, they were devastating. I was so nervous leading up to the talk but had a mostly good response. One student wrote a scathing review full of covidian tropes and called my talk disinformation but far more people thanked me for sharing the information.
Thank you for speaking up. That takes bravery as I'm sure you are greatly outnumbered. There are way too many pediatricians taking their marching orders from Big Pharma.
You are an optimist. With governments starting to create laws banning free speech for “misinformation” and information that is factually correct but goes against the current desired political narrative, the future looks bleak unless people are courageous enough to speak out now. It’s not about your political leaning, that’s what they use to get the populace fighting against each other instead of noticing the freedom we take for granted being taken away from all of us. Bidens “disinformation governance board” shockingly Orwellian, was so obvious thankfully enough people spoke out against it. But the globalists are just being more subtle so the average person is left unaware that they are not being informed of the erosion of free speech. Irelands “Hate speech laws” so broad that you could be jailed for memes some government employees disapprove of. Physicians’s have already lost jobs over discussing their measured analyses of “sensitive” topics. Canada froze bank accounts of people who donated to the protesting truckers! These people could not pay their mortgages, buy food, etc. Dictatorship activity is happening around us. It’s too close to home. Free speech is truly our only avenue to retain our freedoms.
I’m glad to hear the universities are starting to open up the floor to such debates. Even if it is 4 years too late. I’ve been of the view that it would take 10 years for public opinion to turn against the CoVid narrative. We seem to be on schedule to get there on time.
I do not know where you learned about ventilators, but their use is an common, invasive, intense and last resort technology that has grave implications for the patient and for prognosis. They are not used casually. I have never seen a case of "ventilator overuse" in 40 years of medicine.
You may have never seen an overuse case. But there are many reports from the early days of the Covid pandemic that hospitals were putting Covid patients on vents immediately. The story goes that the hospital staff was so scared of getting infected by the virus that they put people on the vents. I guess the idea was to keep the people from breathing into the air.
Now, I didn't see this myself, but this was what has been reported.
My brother-in-law had a friend who had to be admitted to the hospital in 2020. His friend ended up on a vent for some reason. He was terrified because he wasn't sure he would make it but he was lucky and survived. I wish I could remember more of the details.
Do you remember when Cuomo was going on and on about how many ventilators they were going to need? It sure sounded like it was standard operating procedure for the time.
My father was on a vent in 1980 when he had sepsis (which killed him). They told us how hard it was to wean a person off a vent.
And just to add a little incentive to place people on ventilators the government gave a cash bonus for hospitals that did so. I believe it was something between $30,000 and $40,000. Since almost all doctors are now employees of corporate organizations that own the hospitals, many were happy to go along with it. But you are probably wasting your time arguing with anyone that has MPH after their name.
With all due respect clinically I cannot image a scenario where hospital personnel would think their risk was lowered by intubating (which is known to be a very high risk procedure) and ventilating a patient. And yes every time a patient is intubated the doc prays there is enough pulmonary function to be able to wean the patient - and that is where the great skills and experience of good and trusted docs comes in. Treating serious disease is an arduous and difficult task. Medical personnel need trust not take downs by wild rumors.
With all due respect, at your age, I assume that you were not working in the hospitals in 2020.
Nurses are starting to come out with stories of what was going on in the hospitals. The protocols that were being followed were insane and not best practices. I suggest you read some of the reports that Steve Kirsch has been providing.
Here is an article from 2020 that explains that vents were overused and that staff were treating Covid patients as if they had ARDS:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ventilators-covid-overuse-1.5534097
There was a lot of discussion at the beginning of the pandemic that hospital staff was panicking. I recall reading an article in a mainstream publication a few months in that said that they had been venting people out of fear. Not easily found now but if I do find it, I will post the link.
Sorry, altho Steve Kirsch may be a boy wonder in IT and $, and initially been altruistic his opinions and commentary on many aspects of COVID have no credibility in the vast house of everyday medical care.
See the link- it is a news article that has nothing to do with Kirsh.
"credibility in the vast house of everyday medical care?" That is code for SOC. Standard of care. Which is code for do not stray from the conventional dogma. Medicine only advances with challenges to the common "wisdom." The point of this entire blog and exercise is opening a scientific debate and discussion that has been systematically banned.
50 years of medical practice has taught me this.
This should not be an ad homonum exercise. I spent many years not only as a clinician, but also as a state regulator of MD licenses, and as a hospital bioethics consultant stretching and challenging standards of care to benefit patients. The issue is not challenging conventional dogma, but improving care and outcomes. Unfortunately in 2020 this took place in the face of a challenging tsunami of confusion and failure.
I said nothing about whether or not Kirsch is credible. I said that they wouldn't let him speak at MIT, even in the building named for him. They could have insisted on someone with a different view point being there to challenge him.
You don't have to consider Kirsch credible to listen to the interviews of nurses about what was happening in the hospitals in 2020.
Kirsch aside, the "vast house of everyday medical care" was corrupted during Covid evidently because of money, ego and a struggle for power.
Mimi, all or much of what you are saying about vent use is correct but your Kirsch facts are a little off. If I remember correctly. he donated $2 million to MIT and got an auditorium named after him. No chance a building would get named after you for only $2 million. As for his speech in the auditorium bearing his name, he made an effort to get someone to debate him but failed. Many of us have tried and failed to get anyone to debate us. I challenged 16 pediatricians who had come out publicly in favor of childhood vaccine mandates but they all declined. I challenged Dr. Paul Offit to debate me on origins of the virus and the number who actually died FRON COVID after he made claims that I found preposterous. He didn't even respond which led to an amusing exchange in the comment sections under his posts which was not very complimentary of Dr. Offit. Unfortunately, there was no way around it and I'm sure it will continue.
The harms - even deaths - caused by Kirsh, Atlas, Redfield, Gold Kennedy and others are well documented. In 2020 the politics and programs dealing with COVID were often wrong and wrong headed (and continue to be in my opinion). I am also well aware of major "corrupt" and money grubbing or legally protective dysfunctional behavior by hospitals but I cannot believe hospital medical personnel were so conspiratorially selfish. AND if they existed they were but a small number among the thousands of nurses, doc, resp therapists, and aides who gave selflessly in 2020 at substantial personal risk while the system failed them.
Is there a video anywhere of either the George Rutherford or Peko Hosoi debates? I could not find them on YouTube.
At the beginning, I liked listening to Rutherford. But at some point during one of Bob Wachter's Grand Rounds broadcasts, Rutherford said something that was a bald faced lie. I can't remember what it was, but I do remember a lot of people on Twitter discussing it. I never paid attention to him again. Wachter lost me when he praised Andy Slavitt.
Dr. Wachter is a strict Narrative supporter. He was wrong on everything. Slavitt was deep into censorship, labeling posts as "misinformation" when he couldn't possibly know, having almost no medical knowledge. On his team were a media guy and a lawyer who also had/have no medical knowledge.
I followed Wachter at first because like most people I didn't really know what was going on. I followed a lot of different people at the beginning.
After Slavitt said something about having his son stay in the basement when he came home to keep everybody safe from Covid, I knew *he* was a total nutcase. And Wachter coming out to support Slavitt showed that his sanity was questionable too.
Doesn't your friend and colleague Adam Cifu work at University of Chicago?! That's where the next debate needs to happen. From their site: "Free Expression: A University of Chicago Core Value -- An education that fosters free expression empowers students to engage with challenging ideas – in college and throughout their lives."
Universities can’t/won’t host COVID debates — they might have to acknowledge their complicity in non-evidence based policies and censorship.
Awesome. Thank you for all your work.
Kudos to the students for inviting you, and thank you for going!