Atlas got screwed during Covid. He was so disgusted with Birx (and the whole medical “establishment”), he threw up his hands and left the White House. His book is very telling which addresses group think during Covid
Thank you, Vinay, for this article! Scott Atlas sat for a great interview with Melissa Streit of Prager U wherein he outlined exactly what happened when he was at the White House with Trump in the summer of 2020. It’s quite enlightening although unsurprising due to what we know about Fauci, Birx, and Redfield. The university response during the COVID debacle had nothing to do with science or academic freedom and everything to do with fear of losing funding from the government agencies, and the jobs that come from that money. I’m not sure what can be done about this for the future but this behavior has really damaged public perception of our esteemed universities, and rightly so. I know of several families whose high achieving children are choosing not to apply to some of these schools primarily because of their COVID policies and woke ideology that they attempt to impose on their students. I’m not sure that this protest of sorts will have any impact but voting with our pocketbooks is one of the few options available to those of us who want to see something change in academia, as well as supporting people like you and others who have been working tirelessly to shine a light on these bad actors and their support structures. Keep it up!
You nailed it. Fear drove this craziness and helping new med school attendees to stay away from those fearful and woke universities is the best thing we can do about it.
Thank you for defending Scott Atlas-finally. Bob Harrington, Eric Topol and Abraham Verghese participated in the most shameful discussion of "rogue faculty" I have ever heard- I am sure they are referring to SA, JB as inconvenient thorns in their side. ALL faculty should be rogue and have academic freedom to debate the scientific ideas. As much respect as I have for Dr. Verghese and his extraordinary contributions to medicine and the humanity of medicine this was unconscionable. Faculty are not meant to goosestep to the orders of the medical administrators even under pandemic situations. The truthtellers were exiled: Atlas ,Battacharya, Ioannidis, Krause etc. https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/988256
I first met Abraham Verghese when he was in med school in Madras (now Chennai) and I was in college. I have been an admirer through his long career as a doctor and author. Until covid. The extent to which he has disgraced himself is not recoverable. His reputation as a doctor and a scientist is forever tainted.
As for the Stanford faculty especially the med school faculty - they are, too.
I should add the same suspects expressed similar views some time ago in the podcast that Verghese and Topol host, and I believe herrington was a guest. Ridiculous bunch.
So I am a retired cardiologist in Austin, Texas. I am fortunate that my grandkids live a couple miles away. When schools closed we helped them do zoom and it was like getting root canal. We quickly decided this was a colossal waste of time and used means for private tutoring for kids. Other people sent their kids to private schools opened up in store fronts. They charged 10,000 a kid. The private schools At 30,000 a year I don't believe closed . I do remember that Chicago teachers union telling their teachers not to post their vacation photos on Facebook because they were telling the legislature it was unsafe for them to go to school while they were on vacation elsewhere. So did the faculty at Stanford have kids and grandkids who essentially got through the pandemic without missing a beat while they were pronouncing poor kids to stay home and missing two years of school?? If any of them had their kids or grandkids go to private school, they need to publicly apologize..
I mentioned it before, but I wish Trump would have said 1) Mask kids 2) Close school 3) Mandate the jab. Then we would be in a much better place because these lunatics would have demanded the exact opposite.
I have been posting here for some time that Topol is a 100% tool. Why anyone pays any attention to anything he says underscores how broken the system is. He gets mountains of grants (that would be YOUR money) and spends the money on 100% wrongthink. What's not to like? (For him).
Perhaps we need to start doing something more concrete, like writing into the NIH (and other agency) funding laws that if the following people are involved in any way in a project (Topol being exhibit 1) the money will not be allocated. There must be something to be done. This kind of thing is a cancer on all of us.
Vinay, Thank you for not giving up on fixing this for the future. NEVER AGAIN must the stupid policies of 2020-2024 ever happen again.
In Canada, a few places still push mandates. It must end.
Hospitals must STOP mandating medical procedures on staff. Flu shots ALSO do not stop transmission of flu, they're at best 50% efficient at lesser flu in those who do catch it.
End ALL mandates.
The goal of "disease eradication" is not a laudable objective.
The OpEd penned by Mullen, Topol and Verghese in the July 4th issue of the NEJM was a hit piece.
The victim, Scott Atlas was selected due to his opposition to masking, school and institutional closures during the Covid Pandemic. The pen is mightier than the sword was proven as the three cited above used their pens like stilletos to further harm Atlas.
Mullen and Verghese are part of the Stanford faculty and it would have been generous if they had contacted Atlas who was available nearby to share their views before they telegraphed them world wide, they further could have checked with Jay Bhattacharya and John Ionananides who have knowledge equivalent to theirs on economic and other outcomes of Covid outcomes.
The least they can do is apologize and admit publicly that Atlas was correct.
They would then realize that academic collegiality is the shortest route to institutional freedom
This was a delicious bit of verbiage: "Or will the decision be made solely by the Stanford president —— when he isn’t publishing papers with photoshopped western blots— by himself, speaking on behalf of the university”.
Sadly, a lot of snake oil salesman weren’t exposed at the time… It took a few decades, and sometimes even many decades to expose them. Fortunately, today’s people seem to be more aware and snake oil salesman get exposed a bit faster and more fully. Truth will always conquer fear mongering.
I just read the editorial. To me the most interesting statement it made was:
“The second distinction is between expertise and opinion. What constitutes expertise is a thorny question.”
During the pandemic no one was an expert. It was a novel virus that no one seen (except maybe coronavirus researchers), we employed a novel vaccine platform, leveled restrictive measures and no one had been alive during the 1918 pandemic to speak from experience. There was no public hypothesizing only hubris by a few self proclaimed experts.
The universities should weigh in only on that, calling for a “meta analysis of a sort looking at the data and outcomes from mandates, lockdowns, masks and social distancing measures… not what they perceive as right or wrong speech.
Atlas got screwed during Covid. He was so disgusted with Birx (and the whole medical “establishment”), he threw up his hands and left the White House. His book is very telling which addresses group think during Covid
Thank you, Vinay, for this article! Scott Atlas sat for a great interview with Melissa Streit of Prager U wherein he outlined exactly what happened when he was at the White House with Trump in the summer of 2020. It’s quite enlightening although unsurprising due to what we know about Fauci, Birx, and Redfield. The university response during the COVID debacle had nothing to do with science or academic freedom and everything to do with fear of losing funding from the government agencies, and the jobs that come from that money. I’m not sure what can be done about this for the future but this behavior has really damaged public perception of our esteemed universities, and rightly so. I know of several families whose high achieving children are choosing not to apply to some of these schools primarily because of their COVID policies and woke ideology that they attempt to impose on their students. I’m not sure that this protest of sorts will have any impact but voting with our pocketbooks is one of the few options available to those of us who want to see something change in academia, as well as supporting people like you and others who have been working tirelessly to shine a light on these bad actors and their support structures. Keep it up!
You nailed it. Fear drove this craziness and helping new med school attendees to stay away from those fearful and woke universities is the best thing we can do about it.
Thank you for defending Scott Atlas-finally. Bob Harrington, Eric Topol and Abraham Verghese participated in the most shameful discussion of "rogue faculty" I have ever heard- I am sure they are referring to SA, JB as inconvenient thorns in their side. ALL faculty should be rogue and have academic freedom to debate the scientific ideas. As much respect as I have for Dr. Verghese and his extraordinary contributions to medicine and the humanity of medicine this was unconscionable. Faculty are not meant to goosestep to the orders of the medical administrators even under pandemic situations. The truthtellers were exiled: Atlas ,Battacharya, Ioannidis, Krause etc. https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/988256
Yes, I listened to that abominable podcast some time ago. A real disgrace
I first met Abraham Verghese when he was in med school in Madras (now Chennai) and I was in college. I have been an admirer through his long career as a doctor and author. Until covid. The extent to which he has disgraced himself is not recoverable. His reputation as a doctor and a scientist is forever tainted.
As for the Stanford faculty especially the med school faculty - they are, too.
I should add the same suspects expressed similar views some time ago in the podcast that Verghese and Topol host, and I believe herrington was a guest. Ridiculous bunch.
So I am a retired cardiologist in Austin, Texas. I am fortunate that my grandkids live a couple miles away. When schools closed we helped them do zoom and it was like getting root canal. We quickly decided this was a colossal waste of time and used means for private tutoring for kids. Other people sent their kids to private schools opened up in store fronts. They charged 10,000 a kid. The private schools At 30,000 a year I don't believe closed . I do remember that Chicago teachers union telling their teachers not to post their vacation photos on Facebook because they were telling the legislature it was unsafe for them to go to school while they were on vacation elsewhere. So did the faculty at Stanford have kids and grandkids who essentially got through the pandemic without missing a beat while they were pronouncing poor kids to stay home and missing two years of school?? If any of them had their kids or grandkids go to private school, they need to publicly apologize..
I mentioned it before, but I wish Trump would have said 1) Mask kids 2) Close school 3) Mandate the jab. Then we would be in a much better place because these lunatics would have demanded the exact opposite.
I have been posting here for some time that Topol is a 100% tool. Why anyone pays any attention to anything he says underscores how broken the system is. He gets mountains of grants (that would be YOUR money) and spends the money on 100% wrongthink. What's not to like? (For him).
Perhaps we need to start doing something more concrete, like writing into the NIH (and other agency) funding laws that if the following people are involved in any way in a project (Topol being exhibit 1) the money will not be allocated. There must be something to be done. This kind of thing is a cancer on all of us.
Vinay, Thank you for not giving up on fixing this for the future. NEVER AGAIN must the stupid policies of 2020-2024 ever happen again.
In Canada, a few places still push mandates. It must end.
Hospitals must STOP mandating medical procedures on staff. Flu shots ALSO do not stop transmission of flu, they're at best 50% efficient at lesser flu in those who do catch it.
End ALL mandates.
The goal of "disease eradication" is not a laudable objective.
The OpEd penned by Mullen, Topol and Verghese in the July 4th issue of the NEJM was a hit piece.
The victim, Scott Atlas was selected due to his opposition to masking, school and institutional closures during the Covid Pandemic. The pen is mightier than the sword was proven as the three cited above used their pens like stilletos to further harm Atlas.
Mullen and Verghese are part of the Stanford faculty and it would have been generous if they had contacted Atlas who was available nearby to share their views before they telegraphed them world wide, they further could have checked with Jay Bhattacharya and John Ionananides who have knowledge equivalent to theirs on economic and other outcomes of Covid outcomes.
The least they can do is apologize and admit publicly that Atlas was correct.
They would then realize that academic collegiality is the shortest route to institutional freedom
This was a delicious bit of verbiage: "Or will the decision be made solely by the Stanford president —— when he isn’t publishing papers with photoshopped western blots— by himself, speaking on behalf of the university”.
Scott Atlas pwned all the political hacks disguised as experts. He finally walked away, disgusted by the daily debacle of a preening naked emperor.
Sadly, a lot of snake oil salesman weren’t exposed at the time… It took a few decades, and sometimes even many decades to expose them. Fortunately, today’s people seem to be more aware and snake oil salesman get exposed a bit faster and more fully. Truth will always conquer fear mongering.
These people will never get their comeuppance will they? They keep doubling down.
Plenary Session SAVED ME during covid. Thank you Dr.Prasad. ❤️🇨🇦
I just read the editorial. To me the most interesting statement it made was:
“The second distinction is between expertise and opinion. What constitutes expertise is a thorny question.”
During the pandemic no one was an expert. It was a novel virus that no one seen (except maybe coronavirus researchers), we employed a novel vaccine platform, leveled restrictive measures and no one had been alive during the 1918 pandemic to speak from experience. There was no public hypothesizing only hubris by a few self proclaimed experts.
The universities should weigh in only on that, calling for a “meta analysis of a sort looking at the data and outcomes from mandates, lockdowns, masks and social distancing measures… not what they perceive as right or wrong speech.
Here is a link to the article:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2314430