Thread by @han_francis

Here's how @MartyMakary , @MartinKulldorff , and @DrJBhattacharya misled @congressdotgov and @GOPoversight on their COVID testimony. You know, the old saying lies in front of Congress is bad type thing. #COVID19 #hearing #lockdownfiles 🧵

1. Natural immunity works for those who get it. Those who are deceased, aren't here to defend themselves anymore. Those who are still struggling with #LongCovid #LongCovidKids , are still struggling. Many of those who recovered from COVID, are still dealing with...

significant cardiovascular risks replicated across several studies and study methodologies erictopol.substack.com/p/heart-attack… . A GOP and @gbdeclaration bent on minimizing COVID isn't doing enough to help with this side of things.

2. Yes the risk of COVID varies by age but dying of COVID isn't the only bad thing COVID can do. It can cause blood clots, land a patient in the hospital, put a patient on a ventilator, make a kid into an orphan... I could go on and on. Yes population seroprevalence is...

much better than in Jan 2020 but ignoring all those things is doing the families that experienced them, a giant disservice. medicine.wustl.edu/news/repeat-co…
sciencebasedmedicine.org/they-have-name…

3. Speaking the words "Protecting the elderly" is much easier than actually carrying it out, which is why most countries on the world fumbled this one cepal.org/en/publication… . No, there weren't willy nilly intubations sciencebasedmedicine.org/intubations/ .

4. Speaking the words "We should have kept all the schools open for the whole pandemic with no exception" necessarily requires that policymakers honestly engage with the specific, line item consequences of doing that. sciencebasedmedicine.org/was-closing-sc… (h/t @19joho ).

5. The "8 mice" thing is a convenient trope used by antivaxxers to say that the slide presenting the data on the BA4/BA5 booster showed data from 8 mice. While that is technically true, it is dishonest to omit that that the booster right before (BA1) was tested on humans.

Vaccinations have been tested on mice for a really long time because their immune systems model ours in multiple really helpful ways ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P… (cbs17.com/community/heal…) .

6. Stating that 0 kids in Germany ages 5-11 died of COVID is wilfully omitting the entire American COVID experience. Kids thankfully die of diseases far less than their adult equivalents and this has ALWAYS been this way.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jaman… Kids definitely died OF COVID in the US. Marty couldn't have anything tarnish his narrative now ;)

7. Greatest perpetrator of misinformation- these three have the least self awareness that I have ever seen, into their role perpetrating misinformation. Just because the US pandemic response made clear mistakes doesn't mean think tank funded contrarians are then walking on water.

Just a little snippet of @Drjbhattacharya not taking his own words seriously - an age old antivaxxer technique - sciencebasedmedicine.org/jlockdowns/

8. I wouldn't expect non-cardiologists to be able to speak about myocarditis accurately but they fearmongered about it again... lets hear from actual cardiologists on that one theconversation.com/myocarditis-co… .

I don't mind giving our teen boys lots of time to think about it and turn it down, but starting on a baseline of ignoring all infection associated risks is hardly informed consent.

9. The ability of COVID vaccinations to prevent transmission is weaker than it once was npr.org/sections/healt… , but it is not zero.

To claim that it is **actually** zero is an intellectual game of time distortion and revisionist history (a classic antivaxxer tactic). ucsf.edu/news/2022/12/4….

10. The people who got plague in ancient Athens had a horrendous mortality rate. Not a role model for modern epidemiologists with a guesstimate of a 25% CFR 😱pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19787658/#:~:t….

People who tout natural immunity too frequently ignore the price paid to get there.

11. COVID vaccine safety and importance in pregnancy has a lot of data backing it up now - the speakers just chose to ignore literally all of it. You address it with the professionalism and rigor it deserves, by reacing for @VikiLovesFACS and @dr_kkjetelina .

Not three guys who are trying to preserve their narrative who last entered an obstetrics ward in medical school.

https://twitter.com/VikiLovesFACS/status/1367099701238116353?s=20

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No prior pandemic response has been improved by doubling down on distortions, think tank talking points, and willful misrepresentations of research. No reason to play that game this time around either.