Hannah Arendt warned us of these men. I’ve battled them for years, mostly with victories. But now they have tens of millions of dollars in far right support and organization and the scientists are a minor nuisance goodreads.com/book/show/3969…
They proclaim scientists as enemy of the people, and they proceed as such. My ancient predecessors called it out 80 years ago foreignaffairs.com/articles/1941-…
I’ve now updated it and called it out. Since June we’ve lost 100,000 American lives from antiscience aggression from the far right political extremism and I’ve documented every life lost journals.plos.org/plosbiology/ar…
The cost of fake health/medical freedom ideologies that seek to discredit vaccines, substitute ivermectin + other phony cures, and promote an aggressive antiscience from the political right. 90,000-100,000 deaths from antiscience this summer despite the availability of vaccines
Many thanks to Brian Williams for hosting me on @11thHour making a few points tonight. First on the mix and match study published today I thought we should be careful about being too negative with the @JNJNews boost here’s why…
The original phase 1-2 studies published in @nejm were very promising with 2 doses giving very high neutralizing antibodies but with a delayed rise at 2-3 months, so by calling the study sooner you tend to bias against seeing the best effect nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…
Based on trajectories, our self-defeating vaccine defiance + health freedom rhetoric, by the end of 2021 Texas could overtake California to lead the nation in COVID19 deaths. It’s not too late to halt the death and destruction, but so far I’ve not seen much enthusiasm for this
Here are the @IHME_UW projections for Texas, placing us at around 80,000 deaths by the end of 2021. California pretty close, but of course California has a population of 40 million compared to Texas at 29 million covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-…
...in terms of hospitalizations, chronic disabilities, and deaths, COVID-19 has become one of the greatest humanitarian tragedies in the history of modern Texas.
1/4 Many thanks @PamelaBrownCNN for hosting me this Sunday evening. I said we need to be careful about optimistic COVID19 projections on the Sunday AM talk shows today, here’s what I’m thinking:
2/4 First at this time last year we were also declining from our Southern surge and things we’re looking up. But then after Halloween 2020 our deadliest surge of all, the third surge began to accelerate in Nov Dec
3/4 I’m staring in horror in what’s now happening in Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, hearing first hand from @mtosterholm what’s happening there. I worry that’s the tip of the spear for the fall surge
Being asked about some of my pre-pandemic articles warning about the the rise of the antivaccine lobby and links to political extremism on the right. Will post a few in this thread. This one from @PLOS@PLOSMedicine in 2016 journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/a…
Death toll resulting from the ivermectin-antimask-antivaccine antiscience aggression launched by the political right, conservative news outlets, even elected members of US Congress, red state Gov’s in 2020-21 will haunt our nation for years, if not decades nytimes.com/2021/10/03/us/…