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David Gorski, MD, PhD Profile picture
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26 Oct, 7 tweets, 3 min read
It’s actually the culmination of a long process that dates back to at least 2015, although it arguably started several years before that. I’ve been writing about it since then at least, and regularly since 2015. It is no surprise to me.
Antivaxxers figured out that appealing to “freedom” and “parental rights” were very effective attracting libertarian-leaning small government conservatives. Once in, these conservatives, immersed in Trumpist conspiracy theories, also started to go for antivax conspiracy theories.
As this movement grew, @GOP politicians started pandering to the antivax fringe of the party, and here we are…
One receipt, i was writing about this two and a half years ago as history by that point. respectfulinsolence.com/2019/04/19/gop…
And a month and a half ago, I wrote about how @GOP became antivax. respectfulinsolence.com/2021/09/13/the…
People also forget that there has long been an antivax strain in @GOP.Does anyone remember Rep. Dan Burton, who used to drag @CDCgov officials in front of his committee in the 1990s to ask why they weren't investigating a vaccine-autism as intensely as he thought it needed?
It's just that antivax in @GOP used to be fringe. Not anymore. Now antivax is mainstream @GOP.

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More from @gorskon

David Gorski, MD, PhD Profile picture
26 Oct
@FLSurgeonGen What disingenuous nonsense. How did you manage to get through medical school? After all, your surgery, emergency medicine (trauma, wound suturing, , and OB/GYN rotations required a lot of mask wearing. Did you have a problem communicating on those rotations? How did you pass?
@FLSurgeonGen What about pediatrics? How did you do lumbar punctures? Did you do an oncology rotation during internal medicine? Surely you had to wear a mask and gown up to enter the rooms of several immunosuppressed patients at some point in your clinical rotations?
@FLSurgeonGen Did you do an infectious disease rotation and have to wear a mask and PPE to deal with a contagious patient? On second thought, strike that. You clearly know too little about infectious disease to have done even a medical school clinical elective in ID.
Read 6 tweets
David Gorski, MD, PhD Profile picture
26 Oct
Yup. These attacks based on grants funded by his Institute betray a risible ignorance of the NIH study section system for reviewing grant applications and how the NIH decides which applications are funded.
These cranks seem to assume that an institute director personally decides which grant applications to fund based on cronyism. Come to think of it, their assumption sounds like projection. 2/
Alternatively, they *do* know that NIH study sections and advisory councils, not institute directors, determine which grant applications are funded but lie about Fauci because they know their audience has no idea how NIH grants are evaluated for funding. 3/
Read 5 tweets
David Gorski, MD, PhD Profile picture
12 Oct
This victim shaming of #COVID19 patients is part and parcel with alternative medicine beliefs that I've been discussing for many years, the delusion that, if you only eat the right foods and live the right lifestyle, you can be more or less immune to infectious disease. 1/
Interestingly, Bob Costas, of all people, once nailed the nonsense of this belief when in 2009 @billmaher claimed that because he was so healthy he wouldn't catch the flu on a plane. Costas' retort? "Oh, come on, Superman!" 2/ sciencebasedmedicine.org/oh-come-on-sup…
While it is true that it is better to eat a healthy diet, exercise, and otherwise live a healthy lifestyle than not, it won't make you immune to disease. It might, for instance, decrease your risk of certain cancers, but you can still get cancer. 3/
Read 16 tweets
David Gorski, MD, PhD Profile picture
5 Oct
Indeed. Worse, when this is pointed out to the doctors paddling with the current, inevitably they blame those of us trying to beat back against it for not doing science communication right, as if we are contributing to the river's flow. 1/
The doctors who prefer to rest rather than row have always been with us. Prepandemic, writing for @ScienceBasedMed, @drval coined the term "shruggie" to describe such doctors, most of whom just have a hard time believing how bad the misinformation is. 2/
Shruggies are bad enough, but at least they usually don't actively make things worse. Docs who start paddling with the flow of the river do. And then they blame those trying to stem the tide of misinformation for having "done science communication wrong." 3/3
Read 6 tweets
David Gorski, MD, PhD Profile picture
5 Oct
Yep. I was warning that #VAERS would be misused by antivaxxers this way since before any #CovidVaccine got an EUA, as were others familiar with antivax misinformation. I’ve been writing about how antivaxxers misuse VAERS since around 2006. @OpenVAERS deception is nothing new.
Provaccine advocates found it very frustrating how hardly any of our colleagues listened to took the warnings seriously, even though we had been showing how antivaxxers had been abusing #VAERS this way for two decades at least.
The only difference between disinformation efforts like @OpenVAERS and, pre-pandemic, dumpster diving #VAERS studies by antivax quacks Mark and David Geier claiming to show that vaccines cause autism is scale.
Read 4 tweets
David Gorski, MD, PhD Profile picture
3 Oct
I keep looking at this quote by Dr. Prasad and wondering: What history books on Nazi Germany has he read? Because the ignorance there is astounding. Hitler worked to turn himself into a dictator beginning the day he assumed the office of Chancellor or Germany. 1/
Also, President Hindenberg died in August 1934, a year and a half after Hitler had become Chancellor. (He was very old and in ill health.) The quote above makes it sound as though Hindenberg hung around until 1939, which is ludicrous. 2/
Hindenburg was complicit in Hitler's becoming dictator, too. For example, besides having appointed Hitler as Chancellor after the Nazis won a plurality, he approved the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended various civil liberties. 3/
Read 11 tweets

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