It was a tough time: This spring summer I saw a deliberate anti-science disinformation campaign emerging from the White House, and how it was both targeting scientists (me) and decimating Hispanic and other low-income communities. To say nothing I felt was morally indefensible
I’m in a scary place, definitely out of my comfort zone, but having the support of my family and the scientific community (including many govt scientists who feel similarly threatened), gives me a lot courage to keep going.
Back in May in a paper published in @MicrobesInfect I predicted the attacks on science and scientists would escalate in the weeks prior to the 2020 US presidential election, and pretty much that’s what’s happening.
Also troubling is the accelerating globalization of anti-science and links to QAnon and neo-nazi political activities. I have a new paper out in @MicrobesInfect this coming week..
I took some comfort in the writings of Elie Wiesel, Abba Eban, others, and that helped. Here's what EW said in his @NobelPrize acceptance speech on Dec 10, 1986 in Oslo, Norway. L'Shana Tova
Another reminder: in U.S. we must now expect a regular cadence of pandemic threats: SARS in 2002, SARS-2/Covid in 2019, likely SARS-3; avian flu; Nipah; Ebola 2014, 2019; Zika 2016, soon dengue, YF. So we can’t screw around, the Trump Admin needs serious players for CDC, FDA, NIH
The Trump Administration and the Republican-led Congress must take this seriously. If we’re going to have a chance vs this onslaught of pandemic threats - and they are coming - we cannot waste time with ideologues, lightweights, propagandists, and antivaccine activists
In his first term in office: they missed the entry of the SARS-2 virus into NYC from Southern Europe bc they focused on travel from China, couldn’t organize testing and tracing, lost time and lives bc of fake hydroxychloroquine cures that didn’t work. We can’t do that again
1/n I’m concerned: the health disinformation empire has begun accelerating with this new RFK Jr GOP partnership, also worried about the muted/invisible response from our U.S. HHS agencies, health professional societies/academic health centers. Troubling pics in this thread…
1/n Tomorrow or soon, I will do a Tweet X thread on how the antivaccine, health & wellness, nutrition supplements industries joined forces with far right American politics to generate “crisis of chronic illness” propaganda. It’s an interesting story 25+ years in the making
2/n This is a slide from a PowerPoint I made years ago, looking at how the antivaccine movement has evolved (or devolved), it ends with "Chronic illness", which is really a desperation measure from the antivaccine movement after the scientific community debunked everything else
3/n I call it “moving the goalposts” or “whack-a-mole” and it stems from my Rachel book written in 2018. What happens is antivaccine groups make an outlandish assertion about a vaccine(s), we debunk it, and so they just make up something else, we debunk again and repeat…
1/n Pediatricians 'exhausted' as vaccinations drop in DeSantis' Florida.
As I sometimes say, this situation was both predicted and predictable. My papers attached. I’m so concerned about our fragile vaccine ecosystem both in U.S. and globally tallahassee.com/story/news/loc…
1/n Texas has an economy/population roughly the size of Canada. However there were 50,000 Covid deaths in Canada vs 100,000 in Texas. The reason: widespread COVID vaccine refusal in TX, 40,000-50,000 victims of a national/political health disinformation campaign. Paper attached
My goodness what’s happening at @Stanford? This is awful, a full on anti-science agenda (and revisionist history), tone deaf to how this kind of rhetoric contributed to the deaths of thousands of Americans during the pandemic by convincing them to shun vaccines or minimize Covid
The program indicates the new Stanford President will headline the symposium. While I’m all for free speech, this type of anti-science aggression doesn’t have to be promoted by the Stanford leadership, given the chilling message it sends to the serious science faculty/students
Therefore I hope the Stanford President reconsiders and instead focuses his attention on the important scientific projects underway on his campus, and not this nonsense