Tweet

Michelle Cohen, MD

13 Jul, 12 tweets, 5 min read

Dr. Charles Hoffe tells Laura Lynn Tyler Thompson that after vaccination it’s “absolutely inevitable that blood clots will form” and that “spike proteins will predictably cause blood clots… it is guaranteed.”

MISINFO THREAD

Hoffe’s proof? He’s doing D-dimer tests for pts vaccinated in the past 7 days and claims 62% are positive. D-dimer is a test to investigate blood clots.

D-dimer is ALSO a test that will be false positive for roughly ½ of ppl who take it. It’s a notoriously useless test.

Let me be clear: Hoffe's many claims are pseudoscience.

He uses medical terminology and sounds very technical and erudite, but there’s logic missing in much of what he says and it can be hard to pick up on that without - for example - knowing what a D-dimer is.

Hoffe has claimed (along with other MDs) to be undergoing “silencing” or “canceling” to hide the “truth” from the public. He’s contributed to the explosion of misinfo that fuels COVID vaccine hesitancy.

So who is Laura Lynn Tyler Thompson?

Her podcast Laura Lynn & Friends has platformed many a COVID denialist over this past year. She's also prolifically connected on social media - Parler included obvi.

And don’t forget to visit her store and stock up on some merch!

In case you had any doubts about Laura Lynn's politics, her Twitter makes it REAL CLEAR.

Other notable Laura Lynn & Friends guests include Amanda Vollmer, who it seems is STILL calling herself a naturopath despite receiving a cease & desist from the College of Naturopaths of Ontario last year.

You may remember Vollmer from early in the pandemic when she invited people to her store in violation of public health orders because “germs don’t cause disease.”
globalnews.ca/news/6722026/o…

Of course, I didn’t have to scroll far to find a far right politician in the Laura Lynn & Friends catalog.

Here’s Maxime Bernier. And here’s the rest of his “End the Lockdown Caucus” posing for what I can only assume is their debut album cover.

I’ll finish this thread by the tying the ends together.

One of the videos Hoffe and his fellow anti-vax MDs participated in makes false claims such as the classic “masks trap CO2”, but also newer misinfo like “mRNA vaccines are gene therapy.”
factcheck.afp.com/canadian-docto…

Note from the article linked above who two notable amplifiers of this video were.

None other than End the Lockdown Caucus band members and prominent spreaders of COVID misinfo, Randy Hiller and Derek Sloan.

Vaccine hesitancy has a political aspect that we seem to shy away from discussing in Canada.

I see American media starting to reckon with the impact of Fox News and its many imitators on attitudes towards vaccines, and I think we could use a similar analysis here.

FIN

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More from @DocMCohen

Michelle Cohen, MD

@DocMCohen

23 Feb

When I say that confusion is a tactic, I don’t mean that the Ford government is rubbing its hands with glee as it crafts misleading messaging. The communication failure is much more subtle than that.
🧵 thestar.com/opinion/contri…

We need to remember the toll it takes on people to constantly have to figure out what the new info is, where the real facts are and how to navigate the system. thestar.com/opinion/contri…

This is true not only for patients and families, but for workers in the system as well. This toll drains useful energy that could be spent advocating for oneself, both on a personal level and in an organized way. thestar.com/opinion/contri…

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Michelle Cohen, MD

@DocMCohen

11 Feb

Let’s talk about a common, problematic way that we conceive of “health.” Too often we equate the absence of illness with morality. This leads down many bad paths both on a personal and a policy level.

We need to be reminded periodically that health is not a moral virtue.

THREAD

Diet & lifestyle are probably the most commonly moralized ideas around health. How many times have you heard disparaging comments about “lazy” people who “pop pills”? The notion being that meds are an easy substitute for the hard work of eating “clean” and exercising.

This creates a dichotomy: either you're virtuous don't take meds, or you're sick with vice & meds are the punishment you deserve.

It's a ridiculous idea. MANY conditions have nothing to do with lifestyle or even if they are improved by lifestyle change, meds are still necessary.

Read 17 tweets

Michelle Cohen, MD

@DocMCohen

30 Oct 20

A thread about things male doctors have said to me about the #GenderPayGap and sexism in medicine.

"I do not think the FFS system discriminates against female physicians. I believe it discriminates against all physicians who are taking the time to practice medicine properly"

"If women are only working 4.7% less hours per day, then the only possible explanation for the majority of the 30% difference in FP pay and the 40% difference in specialist pay can be due to seeing less pts per day... There is no other way to explain this."

"I am a male FP. Many of the points in this article are false... My other female colleague, a surgeon, receives all the female breast surgery referrals. Her male colleagues are deprived of this part of their practice."

Read 14 tweets

Michelle Cohen, MD

@DocMCohen

30 Jul 20

@ElainePelley

What happens when certain types of medical work become synonymous with women’s work?

This excellent paper by @ElainePelley & @Molly_Carnes explores the trend of ⬆️gender segregation in medical specialties and downstream impacts.

#WomenInMedicine THREAD
journals.lww.com/academicmedici…

Women have moved into medicine in huge numbers over the past 4 decades. This is usually viewed as a good news story of social progress in a profession that had either banned or severely restricted female entry well into the 1960’s.

The authors begin with a discussion on gender segregation in the broader workforce (in the US). It generally decreased thought the 20th C with the entry of women into the workplace, but then stalled in the mid-90’s and ticked back upwards slightly.

Read 22 tweets

Michelle Cohen, MD

@DocMCohen

4 Jul 20

How is it possible that a surgeon can hang a NOOSE to target a Black colleague and escape penalty?

I'll tell you how: medicine has a deeply bigoted history and an inability to deal with the misconduct of powerful men.

THREAD
cbc.ca/news/canada/ed…

Medicine grew out of an explicitly white supremacist culture, one that quite literally believed racialized people were biologically inferior and treated them as subhuman.

That history is NOT in the distant past. BIPOC people continue to face discrimination in health care daily.

Entry of women and racialized groups into medicine was restricted through much of the 20th C. And while equity & inclusion are popular new mottos in the profession, we still see severe underrepresentation of Black and Indigenous people and a lack of women in medical leadership.

Read 9 tweets

Michelle Cohen, MD

@DocMCohen

15 Jun 20

Thinking a lot today about how Queen's med school instituted a Black student ban in 1918 that remained on the books for 100 yrs (even after Black students were allowed entry in 1965).

What I'm thinking about how the school responded to criticism over that century.
THREAD

Queen's was asked multiple times over many decades why the ban was instituted, what happened to the 15 students expelled, and if the school kept its promise to help those students finish their education elsewhere.

As late as 1988, the school gave false and misleading answers.

That's right. Even AFTER the ban was over (unofficially anyway), and all of the people associated with it were long gone, the school still felt the need to lie about its past so as to protect its reputation.

Always remember that institutions value self-protection over progress.

Read 8 tweets

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