Thread by @PesteMagazine

Presenting the first Public Health Disservice Awards, aka The Snowzzies, hosted by @NeoliberalSnow. We convened an advisory committee and held a public nomination process. We then invited experts to honor the recipients with essays.

Here are your winners. 🧵

He has no relevant expertise or knowledge. But still he wrote in the NYT things like Omicron is mild, which justified lifting mitigation efforts. His cruelty born out of hubris earns him the Snowzzie for Being Center of the Universe. He is David Leonhardt.
pestemag.com/featured-posts…

.@PesteMagazine Center of the Universe Award to Leonhardt: for how he has “obscured the ongoing toll of sickness, death and disability from the pandemic, erased the real impact on black and brown Americans.” Honoring him is Gregg Gonsalves @gregggonsalves
pestemag.com/featured-posts…

Remember David Leonhardt said, Omicron is mild, “which he used to justify lifting of pandemic mitigation efforts last winter, as thousands died across America for several months, making it one of the most deadly periods of the entire pandemic.” pestemag.com/featured-posts…

She said an unvaccinated child is like a vaccinated grandma. Her advice led to recommendations against distancing and masking in schools, as she dismissed worker concerns. For this and more, she won a @PesteMagazine Disservice Award. She is @ProfEmilyOster
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The Snowzzie for Public Health Disservice by a Non-Public Health Profession goes to Oster for the “individualist, ableist, anti-poor, anti-Black policies wrought by her ‘evidence-based parenting’ advocacy.” Honoring her is Adia Benton ( @Ethnography911 ). pestemag.com/the-snowzzies/…

"Oster has often missed the mark — particularly when her aim has been to rationalize inequality and obscure relations of power," Benton notes. Oster uses 'data' to justify her selfish advice that ignores concerns about community health. pestemag.com/the-snowzzies/…

To @ProfEmilyOster's offer of “pandemic amnesty," Adia Benton writes, “Those of us who opposed the individualist, ableist, anti-poor, anti-Black policies wrought by her ‘evidence-based parenting’ advocacy during a public health crisis have rejected her offer of amnesty.”

Emily Oster (@ProfEmilyOster), an economist, also infamously argued against AIDS drugs for people in Africa. Paul Farmer, who dedicated his life to helping provide the highest quality healthcare for the impoverished, explains why Oster’s cruel position makes zero sense:

The @PesteMagazine #Snowzzies Award for CREATIVE LICENSE IN PUBLIC HEALTH COMMUNICATION. For achievement in miscommunication to the disservice of public health in 2022. And the Snowzzie goes to … The @MTA. Honoring the recipient is Nate Holdren @n_hold
pestemag.com/the-snowzzies/…

The @PesteMagazine #Snowzzies Special Consideration Award aka The Dishonorable Mention. And the Snowzzie goes to … Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis). Honoring the recipient is Sean Kennedy (@phealthsean).
pestemag.com/the-snowzzies/…

The @PesteMagazine #Snowzzies Clown Car Award, for a group or organization that has gone above and beyond to provide a disservice to public health in 2022. There has been a tie. The Clown Car Award goes to … UCSF and Stanford.

The ultimate UCSF vs. Stanford thread, setting out the the great debate over which group was the best at making public health worse in 2022, is here:

https://twitter.com/NeoliberalSnow/status/1605366378013376512?s=20&t=QglXg1gBTRb4CpT5Vmv8FA

UCSF shares with Stanford this year’s Snowzzie Award for Achievement in Public Health Disservice by a Group or Organization aka The Clown Car Award. Honoring UCSF is David Gorski (@gorskon).
pestemag.com/the-snowzzies/…

UCSF, of course, has one thing Stanford does not: Vinay Prasad (@VPrasadMDMPH). Prasad ridicules people for trying to protect themselves from covid. He demanded a RCT for masks and even ivermectin in the year 2022. He is for open schools and against vaccines for children.

In a legendary performance of public health disservice, UCSF’s @Bob_Wachter said it was "a lot to ask" everyone on a plane to wear a mask to protect "a small number of babies.”

UCSF’s Gandhi has repeatedly downplayed the role of masks, including pitting masks against fixing “structural issues in the U.S.,” as if doing more than one public health intervention at a time cancel each other out.

https://twitter.com/MonicaGandhi9/status/1567981139775877120

Stanford shares with UCSF this year’s @PesteMagazine Snowzzie Award for Achievement in Public Health Disservice by a Group or Organization aka The Clown Car Award. Honoring Stanford is Justin Feldman (@jfeldman_epi).
pestemag.com/the-snowzzies/…

"When Trump assured the public the pandemic was under control in Feb 2020, White House advisors told their rich friends on the board of Stanford’s Hoover Institution that all was not well. A major stock selloff ensued. But don’t worry ­­– it wasn’t technically insider trading."

"What happens when you take a prestigious institute of higher education, plant a right-wing think tank on its campus, and grant tenure to a flock of iconoclastic libertarians who I can only imagine dream of bathing in the blood of the poor?" asks Feldman. You get Stanford.

Stanford, of course, has in its clown car the fan favorite for the Public Health Disservice Award for Creative License in Communication: John “Death is a Beautiful Woman” Ioannidis.

https://twitter.com/hypoautonomic/status/1583228703965782022?s=20&t=he_uZAi7xo15XstmHZBsFg

In May 2020, Ioannidis said, "covid is more or less as deadly as the flu,” a month many remember for The New York Times publishing on its front page 100,000 names and brief details of people who had died at that point from Covid-19.

Stanford's Jay Bhattacharya, Feldman writes, “left the doldrums of medical research to become a full-time political opponent of public health measures (including vaccination) as an author of the Great Barrington Declaration and Senior Fellow at Hoover.”

Jay Bhattacharya called Omicron "a normal respiratory virus, not an unusual, extraordinary, or grave danger," in early January 2022 shortly before Omicron was killing more than 2,200 Americans per day (higher than Delta).

The @PesteMagazine #Snowzzies Award for PUBLIC HEALTH DISSERVICE BY AN INDIVIDUAL who has gone above & beyond to provide a disservice to public health. And the Snowzzie goes to … Ron Klain @WHCOS . Honoring the recipient is Jason Silverstein @jason_reads pestemag.com/the-snowzzies/…

Too few dedicate their lives to the world’s poorest people, and Ron Klain (@WHCOS) is not one of them. As with the AIDS pandemic, now with Covid: the rich get drugs and the poor are left to die: pestemag.com/the-snowzzies/…

Meet the fatal irony of Ron Klain (@WHCOS). From the early days of his tenure, Klain has helped pursue a vaccine-only strategy. But what good is a vaccine-only approach to ending the pandemic, if only affluent countries get the vaccine?
pestemag.com/the-snowzzies/…

Klain’s (@WHCOS) twitter account is a moral document, revealing what he values and what he doesn’t. He recaps the week’s jobs metrics, while pediatric hospitals are overwhelmed by a tripledemic and more than 680,000 Americans have died during Biden's term.

To those who were nominated for Snowzzie Awards this year but did not win — such as the CDC, Moderna, the US Supreme Court, the APHA, the IDSA, Bonnie Henry, Ken Paxton, Jesse Singal, LibsofTikTok, Nate Silver, and Aseem Malhotra — please do not try again next year.

https://twitter.com/PesteMagazine/status/1603573728151048196?s=20&t=gxJM8B2_mXvbBUct2zXRIw

https://twitter.com/NeoliberalSnow/status/1602127190249947139?s=20&t=QglXg1gBTRb4CpT5Vmv8FA

The only thing more American than tolerating the mass death and disability of vulnerable and marginalized people is expecting them to be quiet about it. We will not be. Why we created the Snowzzie awards. An intro letter by @Jason_Reads and @heavyredaction pestemag.com/the-snowzzies/…

"The powerful are comfortable because it is often too risky, professionally and personally, for the rest of us to speak against them. We are here to disturb their comfort." — @Jason_reads and @heavyredaction pestemag.com/the-snowzzies/…

"Calls for civility have been used as a shield for policies that perpetuate and deepen this pandemic. Criticisms of anger have been used to silence those who will suffer from the outcomes that our award winners are egging on." @Jason_reads @heavyredaction pestemag.com/the-snowzzies/…

Our awardees have deliberately divided us. They do so to maintain power and privilege. We reject them. Solidarity is the only way we are going to, in Russo’s words, “kick the shit out of this system, so that this never happens again.” pestemag.com/the-snowzzies/…

Thirty-four years ago, in the face of government inaction and apathy over AIDS, Vito Russo said, everyday life was “like living in the twilight zone. Living with AIDS is like living through a war which is happening only for those people who happen to be in the trenches.”

We dedicate the introductory essay of the Public Health Disservice Awards to Vito Russo.