Tho I am a surgeon (oral and maxillofacial), I was a history, major in college, primarily driven by the need to understand why “history always repeats itself”.
In this day and age, where the policy makers, the politicians, the medical school faculty, and the journalists have all “learned” from history, and “learned” learned from psychology classes and sociology classes they took as undergrads, they all fail to apply the lessons learned to themselves and their own human nature.
The policies were all instituted under a blanket of ignorant fear (understandable, and perhaps not forgivable) and perpetuated by a lack of humility (the tendency with those of authority NOT to admit they were flat-ass wrong, for fear of loosing their credibility, position, or both)--and one, the other, or both are commonalities in the historical rise of authoritarian or tyrannical regimes--yet our medical school leadership (among others) refuse to see this or acknowledge what they once learned as an undergrad, because of human nature.
No matter how much we “learn” from history, human nature will fuck it up.
And THIS, above all else, is the problem. Until we all can swallow our pride and humbly accept the truths that we have learned from the past, fear will always trump reason and we will always find ourselves repeating the past....
I’m a Nurse Practitioner married to a psychiatrist. My daughter is a just out of residency practicing pediatrician. My sister in law, in Maryland, is head of an ICU there and they were the accepting unit for many Covid cases. Most of our friends are either medical doctors or health care practitioners. None of them did ANY reading, research, or any dives into an alternative view. My current personal MD in Nashville (moved out of California 3 years ago) told me last Friday during my visit in which I told him I would never wear a mask, get any Covid vax, and had done 3 years of research on my own, told me I should get a booster. I politely declined. He’s kind so he let it go, but not before citing CDC guidelines. I can read research papers and abstracts, I can analyze data-I did research for Pfizer in my role in the 90’s at a mental health clinic, on combining 2 of their meds to be a new treatment for schizophrenia. I also was a research assistant with a brilliant but insane MD at UCSF in the 80’s on cocaine use. I didn’t get paid but the clinic or PI got paid handsomely. What many people don’t understand is that unless you’re scientifically curious and want to see RCT and outcomes, from many reputable sources, debates from researchers not paid by pharma (hard to find) MDs don’t do this. They stick to their specialty and just follow edicts from the rotten captured CDC, FDA, and now the White House. I watched it all happen and knew that I couldn’t participate in Tony Fauci and Deborah Birx and the WHO and Bill Gates fraud and lies. When I began a very lonely deep dive on my own starting on Feb 14th 2020, I watched many if not all the info I was researching disappear from every source. Including citizen journalists in China, MD’s in South America, and at least 50 others. My daughter was in medical school in Israel and to my disbelief as a Jew who supports Israel in many ways, Israel had a complete militaristic approach with tracing, apps to alert if you were too close to another or early on to alert if you’d stepped beyond your allowed space. And PLEASE no Israel bashing replies, this isn’t about Israel. To this day, none of my husbands family will even allow me to speak on my views of Covid. Or BLM. OR TRANSGENDERISM. The conversation will be met with “we’re NOT talking about that”. The result for me is a big chasm with my in laws, distrust of everything Covid on MSM, and terrible (deserved) mistrust of the medical world. As a young or even older nurse, I never got the flu shot-primarily because I liked clinical work more than killing even 30 minutes of my day walking or driving to get the flu jab. I never had the flu. Now I refuse the Shingles vaccine. Flu vaccine. Any vaccine a 65 year old reportedly should get according to the CDC. So call me paranoid, idiot, or anti-vaxxer-or delusional conspiracist all day. That happened regularly in Oakland California. And I was spit on, yelled at and cursed. If you choose to follow orders from the CDC, I will certainly not spit on you, or even call you names, hopefully I’ll get the same courtesy. And all I want is my freedom to live as I see fit
I worry for my daughter who has just applied to multiple medical schools (at least she’s not a young male!💔)Will she have the freedom of thought and speech AND “bodily autonomy” (which has historically been a favorite human right by the Left. I guess no longer...)she should have if she pursues this career???
My husband was a prof at Kellogg business school, Northwestern. He got his first 2 shots in April 2021 bc they told him he had to. Then they mandated the booster with a deadline of Jan 31, 2022. He got Covid on Dec 26, 2021. I emailed NU asking if there was any way he could opt out or even delay getting the booster. Every time I just got a canned response.. it's university policy etc. I tried to ask the scientific or medical rationale.. no engagement on that.. just more copy pasted replies. He was 4 months from tenure after 9 years as assistant prof and 14 years of post secondary education to get there and I gave up my career so I could be a stay at home parent and he could focus on his. We both knew that the risks outweighed the benefits for him (42 years old, pretty healthy). But there was no way we could throw it all away when we were SO close after so many years of hard work and sacrifice. Anyways, he decided to get it, clearly due to coercion and not informed consent. It's just hard to fathom how these institutions are behaving.
This is the kind of shit that has to stop NOW, excuse my French. I work in a hospital. I have already told my husband I will refuse to wear a mask again. I live in an area that did not require the first booster so doubt they will mandate that. They will need to call me out in the hall to put a mask on and then fire me when I refuse. I’m done complying with non-sensical nonsense. We ALL need to say we will not comply!
I attended the UPenn HFpEF CME earlier this spring. You would have thought it was a Big Pharma shareholders' retreat. I was so disgusted by it, I didn't even claim the hours. I'm not surprised they followed in lock-step with "Big COVID" and all its tangled web of CDC/Pfizer/White House/celebrity democrat policy circus. What a joke.
It’s been that way for a while. I attended a pain and chemical dependency conference in 2002 or 3 that was sponsored - among others - by Purdue. It was insane. Might as well been a cartel gathering.
Covid shutdown was a mistake economically from which we will never recover. We are already in decline and this political event makes it much worse. Personally, I believe that it was just the CDC covering their manipulations so that Americans didn't think they were fat. If we didn't close down then there would have been many more deaths and so the CDC fraud would have been exposed. But the BMI still dictates. Why not take this down?? Do something that will change our fate. China is laughing.
I am not as optimistic as Dr Prasad. I recently read a very nice short essay in a meeting with my local leaders in medical education and not a one knew what Substack was. These and many of my other providers go right to the CDC for their information on vaccines. It’s depressing!
And if you mention substack they roll their eyes as though you're combing through the dark web for conspiracy theories instead of listening to the experts/following the science. Ugh.
Thank you for posting this note. The problem is likely also at some other medical schools. It is inconsistent with science, with medicine, and with academic freedom.
No, universities will not die any time soon, Vinay. They are vital to our society and to medicine. We do need to hold them accountable to the scientific method. Hospitals continue to encourage or require masking in too many locations. The risks of vaccine to young men are NOT zero and the rare case of myocarditis should lead to the victim to sue institutions that forced the COVID vaccines by mandate.
One of the many things that makes me both sad and furious is that this student (quite rightly, I'm afraid) had to remain anonymous. What kind of Orwellian nonsense has the medical field and the scientific community as a whole adopted? I spent over ten years in medical education including as the director of the family medicine residency at East Tennessee State University and I never dreamed things would devolve to this point. When I left the education arena in 2010 to go into private practice I had no idea we would be at this point a mere 13 years hence. Since I am a shareholder/owner in a single-specialty practice of all relatively like-minded docs, I have been largely insulated from the insanity, but I wonder how much longer we hold out. I am now into the single digits of years before retirement, but I confess at times I feel as if the clock is ticking and the overall quality of the medical care we provide in our region has been on a steady decline due to a myriad of both COVID and non-COVID factors. The list of apparent negative impacts would take pages to detail, but they are very real and growing.
Thank you so much Dr. Prasad for your continued reporting and commentary on these issues. It's reassuring to me at least to know I'm not the only one having these thoughts. Somedays I think that *I* must be the crazy one, so it's nice to know I'm not alone in this. Best wishes!
Welcome to the fascist USA, where big industry collides with gov and Univ! The secular mind, where Reason kings, got so religiously ignorant and naive!
I agree with everything substantive. I know enough about endowments to know that politicians can't "drain" them, as endowments don't belong to them. And retaliation is unethical, even for an imaginary politician.
Tho I am a surgeon (oral and maxillofacial), I was a history, major in college, primarily driven by the need to understand why “history always repeats itself”.
In this day and age, where the policy makers, the politicians, the medical school faculty, and the journalists have all “learned” from history, and “learned” learned from psychology classes and sociology classes they took as undergrads, they all fail to apply the lessons learned to themselves and their own human nature.
The policies were all instituted under a blanket of ignorant fear (understandable, and perhaps not forgivable) and perpetuated by a lack of humility (the tendency with those of authority NOT to admit they were flat-ass wrong, for fear of loosing their credibility, position, or both)--and one, the other, or both are commonalities in the historical rise of authoritarian or tyrannical regimes--yet our medical school leadership (among others) refuse to see this or acknowledge what they once learned as an undergrad, because of human nature.
No matter how much we “learn” from history, human nature will fuck it up.
And THIS, above all else, is the problem. Until we all can swallow our pride and humbly accept the truths that we have learned from the past, fear will always trump reason and we will always find ourselves repeating the past....
And the answer, a simple.
Pharma always learns from the past. They use the lessons to become even more corrupt.
I’m a Nurse Practitioner married to a psychiatrist. My daughter is a just out of residency practicing pediatrician. My sister in law, in Maryland, is head of an ICU there and they were the accepting unit for many Covid cases. Most of our friends are either medical doctors or health care practitioners. None of them did ANY reading, research, or any dives into an alternative view. My current personal MD in Nashville (moved out of California 3 years ago) told me last Friday during my visit in which I told him I would never wear a mask, get any Covid vax, and had done 3 years of research on my own, told me I should get a booster. I politely declined. He’s kind so he let it go, but not before citing CDC guidelines. I can read research papers and abstracts, I can analyze data-I did research for Pfizer in my role in the 90’s at a mental health clinic, on combining 2 of their meds to be a new treatment for schizophrenia. I also was a research assistant with a brilliant but insane MD at UCSF in the 80’s on cocaine use. I didn’t get paid but the clinic or PI got paid handsomely. What many people don’t understand is that unless you’re scientifically curious and want to see RCT and outcomes, from many reputable sources, debates from researchers not paid by pharma (hard to find) MDs don’t do this. They stick to their specialty and just follow edicts from the rotten captured CDC, FDA, and now the White House. I watched it all happen and knew that I couldn’t participate in Tony Fauci and Deborah Birx and the WHO and Bill Gates fraud and lies. When I began a very lonely deep dive on my own starting on Feb 14th 2020, I watched many if not all the info I was researching disappear from every source. Including citizen journalists in China, MD’s in South America, and at least 50 others. My daughter was in medical school in Israel and to my disbelief as a Jew who supports Israel in many ways, Israel had a complete militaristic approach with tracing, apps to alert if you were too close to another or early on to alert if you’d stepped beyond your allowed space. And PLEASE no Israel bashing replies, this isn’t about Israel. To this day, none of my husbands family will even allow me to speak on my views of Covid. Or BLM. OR TRANSGENDERISM. The conversation will be met with “we’re NOT talking about that”. The result for me is a big chasm with my in laws, distrust of everything Covid on MSM, and terrible (deserved) mistrust of the medical world. As a young or even older nurse, I never got the flu shot-primarily because I liked clinical work more than killing even 30 minutes of my day walking or driving to get the flu jab. I never had the flu. Now I refuse the Shingles vaccine. Flu vaccine. Any vaccine a 65 year old reportedly should get according to the CDC. So call me paranoid, idiot, or anti-vaxxer-or delusional conspiracist all day. That happened regularly in Oakland California. And I was spit on, yelled at and cursed. If you choose to follow orders from the CDC, I will certainly not spit on you, or even call you names, hopefully I’ll get the same courtesy. And all I want is my freedom to live as I see fit
I worry for my daughter who has just applied to multiple medical schools (at least she’s not a young male!💔)Will she have the freedom of thought and speech AND “bodily autonomy” (which has historically been a favorite human right by the Left. I guess no longer...)she should have if she pursues this career???
My husband was a prof at Kellogg business school, Northwestern. He got his first 2 shots in April 2021 bc they told him he had to. Then they mandated the booster with a deadline of Jan 31, 2022. He got Covid on Dec 26, 2021. I emailed NU asking if there was any way he could opt out or even delay getting the booster. Every time I just got a canned response.. it's university policy etc. I tried to ask the scientific or medical rationale.. no engagement on that.. just more copy pasted replies. He was 4 months from tenure after 9 years as assistant prof and 14 years of post secondary education to get there and I gave up my career so I could be a stay at home parent and he could focus on his. We both knew that the risks outweighed the benefits for him (42 years old, pretty healthy). But there was no way we could throw it all away when we were SO close after so many years of hard work and sacrifice. Anyways, he decided to get it, clearly due to coercion and not informed consent. It's just hard to fathom how these institutions are behaving.
This is the kind of shit that has to stop NOW, excuse my French. I work in a hospital. I have already told my husband I will refuse to wear a mask again. I live in an area that did not require the first booster so doubt they will mandate that. They will need to call me out in the hall to put a mask on and then fire me when I refuse. I’m done complying with non-sensical nonsense. We ALL need to say we will not comply!
I attended the UPenn HFpEF CME earlier this spring. You would have thought it was a Big Pharma shareholders' retreat. I was so disgusted by it, I didn't even claim the hours. I'm not surprised they followed in lock-step with "Big COVID" and all its tangled web of CDC/Pfizer/White House/celebrity democrat policy circus. What a joke.
It’s been that way for a while. I attended a pain and chemical dependency conference in 2002 or 3 that was sponsored - among others - by Purdue. It was insane. Might as well been a cartel gathering.
So true.
Covid shutdown was a mistake economically from which we will never recover. We are already in decline and this political event makes it much worse. Personally, I believe that it was just the CDC covering their manipulations so that Americans didn't think they were fat. If we didn't close down then there would have been many more deaths and so the CDC fraud would have been exposed. But the BMI still dictates. Why not take this down?? Do something that will change our fate. China is laughing.
Interesting.. I hadn't thought of that..
Robert Kennedy is our only hope.
I am not as optimistic as Dr Prasad. I recently read a very nice short essay in a meeting with my local leaders in medical education and not a one knew what Substack was. These and many of my other providers go right to the CDC for their information on vaccines. It’s depressing!
And if you mention substack they roll their eyes as though you're combing through the dark web for conspiracy theories instead of listening to the experts/following the science. Ugh.
Thank you for posting this note. The problem is likely also at some other medical schools. It is inconsistent with science, with medicine, and with academic freedom.
I’m thinking that if every student forced to get a Covid shot got together with class action lawsuits, that 50 years would be more like 10!
All you who are 'in the know' need to continue with these conversations. It's our only hope I am afraid.
Can we see the Senior Vice Dean's message? Or else paraphrase it?
No, universities will not die any time soon, Vinay. They are vital to our society and to medicine. We do need to hold them accountable to the scientific method. Hospitals continue to encourage or require masking in too many locations. The risks of vaccine to young men are NOT zero and the rare case of myocarditis should lead to the victim to sue institutions that forced the COVID vaccines by mandate.
One of the many things that makes me both sad and furious is that this student (quite rightly, I'm afraid) had to remain anonymous. What kind of Orwellian nonsense has the medical field and the scientific community as a whole adopted? I spent over ten years in medical education including as the director of the family medicine residency at East Tennessee State University and I never dreamed things would devolve to this point. When I left the education arena in 2010 to go into private practice I had no idea we would be at this point a mere 13 years hence. Since I am a shareholder/owner in a single-specialty practice of all relatively like-minded docs, I have been largely insulated from the insanity, but I wonder how much longer we hold out. I am now into the single digits of years before retirement, but I confess at times I feel as if the clock is ticking and the overall quality of the medical care we provide in our region has been on a steady decline due to a myriad of both COVID and non-COVID factors. The list of apparent negative impacts would take pages to detail, but they are very real and growing.
Thank you so much Dr. Prasad for your continued reporting and commentary on these issues. It's reassuring to me at least to know I'm not the only one having these thoughts. Somedays I think that *I* must be the crazy one, so it's nice to know I'm not alone in this. Best wishes!
Welcome to the fascist USA, where big industry collides with gov and Univ! The secular mind, where Reason kings, got so religiously ignorant and naive!
Now the long fight begins.
I agree with everything substantive. I know enough about endowments to know that politicians can't "drain" them, as endowments don't belong to them. And retaliation is unethical, even for an imaginary politician.