I am writing live from Stanford campus where I am at an all day conference run by Jay Bhattacharya on the pandemic. Here are some reflections
First, the conference has people with diverse views. Including some who support vaccine mandates, school closure, and masking- at least in part.
Their new talking point is: we did the best with what we knew at the time. This is false. At the time, if you reviewed the evidence, these were errors, and that is why many of us opposed the policies at the time. To me this is the crux of disagreement, and why I think there remains dishonesty in the popular media narrative.
Second, many people discuss the need to rebuild trust in public health. But a conference attendee made a good point to me: distrust in public health is good.
If public health chooses to operate based on no or low credibility science, we should distrust them. I see no concerted effort to test ongoing policies— like fall boosters or annual masking— as such, why should people trust those who set these recommendations and policies?
Third, one recurring point is: we must remember how scared we were in March 2020. This is used as an excuse for closing parks or beaches. But the counterargument to this is that fear itself was a construction of the media and press conferences with Brix and Fauci. Had there been more balanced reporting, particularly around children, people would have been less fearful.
I will send more updates as I get them
The coronavirus was manufactured in the lab.
The Covid fear was manufactured by the media.
The consensus around lockdowns, masking and vaccine mandates was manufactured by the government, media, and public health agencies.
Now they are trying to manufacture trust in public health. That may be the hardest of them all.
Yes I agree completely. We cannot let "public health" get away with these ridiculous statements about "doing the best with what we knew at the time." Many of us knew better in March and April 2020, and it got more obvious after that. There are many examples of egregious decisions by PH "experts" but few were as horrendous as mandates of a poorly tested new technology "vaccine" that caused obvious harms with little evidence of efficacy, for young healthy people! What is even more outrageous is the persistence of pushing this flawed science on the public even today. Thanks for continuing to bring this to our attention.