Thread by @tylerblack32

Yes Tracy, because we actually have expertise in relevant areas, like child development & mental health.

Your awful summary &stance on mental health during covid measures is *not* scientific or expert, and despite no expertise you have been wrongly writing & opining for >1y

/1

https://twitter.com/TracyBethHoeg/status/1496585523959193603

In March 2021, you opined with other MH non-experts Gandhi, Henderson, and Johnson that "COVID-19 deaths in children and adolescents are magnitudes smaller than deaths from suicide, some now driven by school closure"

usatoday.com/story/opinion/…

/1

You and those same non-MH experts testified about harms in April of 2021 to the Sacramento School Board about "harming children."

/2

Your non-mental-health expert credentials in your opinions were used by Senator Cassidy from Louisiana in federal debates to claim that there was "greater risk to life expectancy with schools closed vs schools open,"

/3

congress.gov/117/crec/2021/…

You wrongly wrote in the Washington Post as a non-expert in mental health that mental health emergency room visits surged in 2021 during restrictions.

/4

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…

(by the way, as you had to admit in court that you do not work as an epidemiologist but are a sports medicine physician, and you have never held any government position in which you addressed public policy, another area of your non-expertise)

/5

law.justia.com/cases/new-york…

You selectively presented to the United States congress in your testimony the ER visits in April-Oct 2020 for mental health "increased approximately 24 and 31%, respectively", demonstrating your inexpertise for confusing proportion for count.

/6

energycommerce.house.gov/sites/democrat…

(BTW this one is specifically egregious because, the report you lifted the graph from in your testimony literally has the raw numbers RIGHT ABOVE. The congress didn't notice, but I did).

/7

You wrote a preprint @gorskon called a "dumpster dive" into VAERS to basically give anti-vaxxers the fuel to claim over-exaggerated harms of vaccines (remember, in court you testified do not work as an epidemiologist)

/8

sciencebasedmedicine.org/dumpster-divin…

Its noticed that you got your garbage preprint published in EJCI... "yay peer review...", yet your estimates for 12-15 were 2.5 x higher (162/mill 2nd doses) than the final number (70/mill 2nd doses) from the same data in JAMA. you nailed 16-17ys tho!

jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/…

/9

As you in Dec 2021 tweeted this hot mess out, non-expertly missing that year-to-year comparisons are not helpful (thanks bloomberg!):

In fact per CDC wonder:
2017: 170 F - 352 M (up 29%!)
2018: 211 F (up 24%!) - 394 M
2019: 207 F - 339 M
2020: 211 F - 390 M

/10

Because, Tracy, you have no expertise in Child Mental Health, Suicidology, Child Development, or anything to do with schooling. You are a biased non-expert who is non-expertly, fashion mangling mental health information as you did in #UrgencyOfNormal
/11

https://twitter.com/tylerblack32/status/1486111652076527623

And Tracy, #expertisematters. You do not show the background, training, context or critical reading skills to properly discuss the mental health topics you address. You do not post as a parent, marathoner or a sports medicine doc, you present yourself as a child covid expert.
/12

You have not demonstrated complexity in interpretation of the MMWR you **testified to congress about** despite your lack of expertise.

https://twitter.com/tylerblack32/status/1471525557611474947

/13

You have not demonstrated the ability to properly read and critically interpret parent survey data about mental health.

https://twitter.com/tylerblack32/status/1484571526376706048

/14

You have not demonstrated the ability to fairly categorize the nuances of the information we have coming out of the pandemic.

link.springer.com/article/10.172…

/15

You haven't reported that PREPANDEMIC school days associated with ⬆️ in suicide rates, that may 2020 was the FIRST TIME IN HISTORY we have ever seen a flat monthly suicide rates mar-july in kids, & the suicide rate mar-jun dropped the most when "lockdown" was strongest.
/16

You haven't noted that in Ontario overall emergency presentations fell despite heavy school restrictions in Canada. (and, we will be publishing BC data showing an interesting cohort comparison, as we had open schools since sept 2020!)

/17

You haven't realized that your proclamations of increasing mental health emergency visits did not come to pass (though for some disorders, its up, like EDs and tics in girls 12-17, whereas for bipolar and ADHD its lower and for anxiety its the same)

/18

You have consistently and emphatically proclaimed mental health concepts that you failed to demonstrate the open scientific mind to approach, the academic honesty to cite, or the expertise to understand your own limitations in the surety of your position.

/19

Worst of all, you have completely neglected the significant orphanhood

thelancet.com/journals/lance…

/20

You have completely neglected research that shows many kids, in fact, did better during lockdowns

https://twitter.com/tylerblack32/status/1496291443224236037

/21

So refuting your "up-playing" is NOT downplaying mental health impacts, anyone who follows me for a hot minute knows that I care about how children have been impacted BEFORE and DURING COVID.

https://twitter.com/tylerblack32/status/1486111704165629956

https://twitter.com/tylerblack32/status/1175297211183202307

/22

I'm just tired of armchair pediatric mental health experts like you being treated like the experts you aren't.

So, yeah.

(by the way, I am representing myself here, not Urgency of Equity or any other organization).

/23

In fact, I was thrilled to join UoE just to speak about the complexity of mental health outcomes during the pandemic but to SETTLE DOWN THE MORAL PANIC CREATED BY PEOPLE LIKE YOU.

/fin

(quick note: I am so thankful for support but please be careful to not continue twitters longstanding tradition of making the internet an unsafe place for women with casual references to violence or personal attacks. Assure you I worked very hard to keep this about her stance.)