Despite doing everything WRONG, I avoided the most highly-contagious aerosolized respiratory virus on Earth for 2+ years.
Bobby W says this profound moral failure REQUIRES a 25 tweet 🧵
1/25
With a Biomedical Science degree and having read Richard Preston's "The Hot Zone" (origins of ebola) one too many times in high school, I was always paranoid of pandemics.
I kept a hazmat suit, box of latex gloves and N95s in my house for years.
2/25
When the WHO declared a Global Pandemic in March 2020, I knew the enemy:
A mild respiratory virus of very little risk to the vast majority of kids and adults.
I threw away my gloves and hazmat suit (they were old and expired anyway) and donated my N95s to the hospital.
3/25
I even read the 'ol Imperial College Doomsday Report that convinced everyone to shut down the world for "just 2 weeks to slow the spread..."
...although apparently I was the only one who made it to Fig. 4 where it actually said "keep doing this forever and ever and ever?"
4/25
I also sorta wondered if everyone had gone blind in their right eye?
No one could see what happened 6 months after complete suppression? The surge is...bigger.
Realized I wasn't the only one, though, and found #covidtwitter
There are so many tangents I could go on about the fraud that kept us in this mess for the past 2 years,
...but it's more fun to just sample a few memes and visuals and move on.
7/25
Okay, maybe a few more...
8/25
The point being I, like many, knew the government response to the pandemic was a farce from the start:
1. Create irrational fear of a pandemic virus. 2. Promise the ability to end a pandemic virus (no precedent in human history). 3. Never admit failure, just blame public.
9/25
So no, it wasn't hard to choose not to be scared.
Instead, we went to:
✅restaurants
✅movies
✅bars
✅Arizona (2X), and
✅Texas (2X)...even for Thanksgiving!
10/25
We even went to THE BEACH.
AKA: "ONE OF THE MOST DANGEROUS PLACES TO BE" 🤪
...according to one of the top experts* in the world.
*not exactly an expert on the virus (obviously).
11/25
...and this is just what we did in 2020.
All along the way, we never got covid. 🤷♂️
Not b/c we thought we wouldn't.
But because postponing life to avoid the inevitable is not just insane, but harmful...to our species.
12/25
And far more harmful than covid, of course.
Many just refused to see it because we were told that only covid mattered.
13/25
Sadly I had a feeling 2021 wasn't going to get any better because public health officials were still giving false promises that you could still avoid the inevitable...
Boy I wish I hadn't been so right about that.
14/25
Some people bought the lie, which at least helped them temporarily return to normal for a few months...
15/25
...before the house of cards came crashing down.
This would have been the key moment to pivot back to "well we're all eventually going to get infected," but they failed (yet again).
Simply too difficult to admit the mounting consequences were all unnecessary.
16/25
Of course the idea that kids were ever at significant risk or had any reason to wear masks was always the greatest fallacy from the start, not just b/c it was a complete lie but b/c they were also subjected to the worst restrictions...many still in place.
Unforgiveable.
17/25
And the idea that masks could do anything was laughable, but apparently our inability to teach history, coupled with an acute case of "Do SOMETHINGitis!" really put us on the wrong track.
(Imagine being the CDC still trying to prove cloth mask mandate work...in 2022) 😂
18/25
This is all to say, in summary, I've spent the past 841 days doing basically zip, zero, zilch, nada to avoid getting covid.
Well, alright...I'm not dumb enough to go maskless to an indoor football game in February or anything, but no one is THAT dumb.
19/25
(And by "zip, zero, zilch, nada," that includes my decision to get vaccinated, which I knew wouldn't keep me from getting it.
I only did to avoid getting crap from my wife about the inevitable week of covid-induced man flu I would have suffered from w/o it).
20/25
Except of course, I just spent 4 days with covid-induced man flu, no thanks to the immune-evading BA.5 variant that looked around for antibodies and, seeing none, invited itself right in.
21/25
Not sure I would have survived a long weekend with covid w/o a few key therapeutics:
1. Advil 2. Zinc 3. Star Wars Marathon on TNT 4. My Pillow's Patented Fill 5. Indiana Jones Marathon on Showtime 6. Starbucks Venti Pike Place Roast w/ 2 Splenda
22/25
Oh and how could I forget #7. Paxlovi...
Lolcatz no. You think I want to do this for ANOTHER 5 days AND have it be WORSE?
Who would do THAT? Oh right...🤣
23/25
Having miraculously survived what Dr. Eric Topol just called "THE WORST VERSION OF THE VIRUS THAT WE'VE SEEN"
...has unfortunately only stroked my ego more.
(Of course it's the least deadly and most people have no symptoms, but facts are irrelevant in newspapers.)
24/25
Yes, at the very least I deserve an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle.
But I will settle for a story quote where I will both thank and blame the vaccine - while also telling people to get their 5th booster - all in the same breath.
I will also settle for the t-shirt.
25/25
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🧵In Fauci-esque fashion, San Diego's dying newspaper @sdut pens a swan song for the retiring public health officer who got everything wrong and harmed millions of San Diegans.
Let's take a final journey through yet another attempt to rewrite pandemic history...
"I do not regret any...orders or decisions that were made, not at all."
Like Fauci, "Dr" Wilma Wooten stands by everything she did, which included:
1. Stay at home orders. 2. Mask mandates. 3. School closures. 4. Gym closures. 5. Restaurant closures. 6. Vax mandates.
2/11
For those keeping score at home, she went 0/6 on these, without even getting into the generational harm caused to children, adults, minorities, the poor, businesses, civil liberties, and trust in public health.
Even the mainstream media has admitted this horrible failure.
We first have a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and "investigative reporter" deliberately cutting off the story before it mentions the age-adjusted mortality.
@latimes RT'd this.😬
How biased and incomplete were his decades of investigative reports?
The @ACLUVA has been bragging that due to their Virginia lawsuit settlement, parents demanding peers mask around their at-risk child is a reasonable accommodation.
But that's not what their settlement says...at all. In fact, it's almost the opposite. 🤔
Yesterday the CA Senate held a hearing on “Lessons Learned From Covid,” with politicians screaming about misinformation and public health officials lamenting their credibility issues.
But they made a mistake. They invited Michael Osterholm.
1/6
Osterholm made several points that public health officials don’t like to hear:
“The 3 most important words I own today are ‘I don’t know.’”
“We have far too often felt the need to have all the answers.”
Remember the last time a PH official said THAT? Yeah, me neither.
2/6
When he expressed concern in Jan 2021 that new variants might evade immunity and prolong the pandemic, he was “taken to the woodshed” by colleagues and canceled by the media who didn’t like his message (remember this is when Biden promised to “defeat” covid in 100 days).
This is an interesting take from an expert who told a judge that "all masks" work when in fact she knows they don't. The only scientific uncertainty appears to be in her head.
And there is no "minimum standard" for masks. Any 'ol cloth or surgical mask will do: cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/D…
@CAPublicHealth doesn't even care if it fits, as with this child:
(amazingly, @CAPublicHealth DELETED this tweet after it appeared in the Plaintiff's exhibits)