Jay Bhattacharya is a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University, and one of the three co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which outlines a focused protection strategy for dealing with COVID-19.
Although many academics disagree with Bhattacharya about the merits of focused protection, you’d hope they would treat him with respect when expressing their disagreement. Unfortunately, in the era of wokeness and safetyism on campus, this is too much to ask for.
Professor Bhattacharya recently became the subject of a censorious petition circulated by his own colleagues at Stanford.
Although the petition does not name him explicitly, it refers to a “Stanford faculty member” who – gasp – “defends the Governor of Florida’s rejection of mask mandates”. It then directly quotes Bhattacharya as saying “there is no high-quality evidence to support the assertion that masks stop the disease from spreading”.
Note how reasonable this supposedly controversial statement is. Bhattacharya didn’t say there is “no evidence”. He said there is “no high-quality evidence”, which strikes me as entirely defensible. Although there has been one RCT of community masking – the Bangladesh mask study – its results were inconclusive at best.
What’s more, Bhattacharya’s statement concerned the effect of children wearing masks, and there haven’t been any RCTs on that. (The Bangladesh mask study – which had not been published at the time his comments were made – only monitored adults.)
According to the petitioners, Bhattacharya “sows mistrust of policies designed to protect the public health and puts young children, their families and their teachers at risk”. Quite a charge to level at one of your own colleagues. And this wasn’t an off-hand remark in a heated conversation; it was written in a letter to the University President.
The petitioners “recognise the right of every member of the scientific community to express their views and opinions”. But “a time comes,” they write, “when skepticism can no longer be seen as anything other than willful disregard of countervailing facts”.
Perhaps the petitioners are aware of another large-scale RCT of community masking, which does show an unambiguous benefit? If so, it was not mentioned in their missive.
They go on to say: “Encouraging others to deviate from nationally-advocated policy during a pandemic jeopardises us all.” Given that the authorities initially advised against mask-wearing, this must mean the first scientists who questioned that advice were also “jeopardising us all”.
Maybe Bhattacharya’s critics can pen a belated letter denouncing those scientists who “encouraged others to deviate from” the U.S. Surgeon General’s advice in February of 2020. He urged people to “STOP BUYING MASKS” because they are “NOT effective” at preventing the general public from catching coronavirus.
The petitioners conclude their missive by asking the University President to “forcefully declare your faith in the measures you are relying upon to bring us back to campus”. And if that doesn’t sound like a religious exhortation, I don’t know what does.
Incidentally, the petition against Bhattacharya isn’t the first example of Stanford academics mobbing one of their own colleagues for questioning the received wisdom on Covid policy.
Last October, 98 faculty members signed a petition criticising Dr Scott Atlas, whom they accused of spreading “falsehoods and misrepresentations of science”. As a matter of fact, a recent study of academic cancel culture found that Stanford had experienced more incidents than any other U.S. university.
Based on this evidence, it looks like Stanford scholars need to spend more time doing teaching and research, and less time denouncing their colleagues.
This post has been updated.
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We moved to ireland to avoid the NHS!!
Doesn’t it cost you a minimal fee for the consultation?
My son had an Irish girlfriend some years ago and had a contact lens disappear round the back of her eyeball.
She told us she didn’t want to go to A+E because she couldn’t afford the 30 Euros (at the time) for treatment. She was greatly relieved to find that it wouldn’t cost her here.
Yes, it’s ‘free’ for around a third of the population, the rest have to pay. Specialist healthcare provision outside of Dublin is also pretty poor. And that A&E trip now costs €100!
The NHS needs to be put to sleep, but once you’ve sold something as being ‘free’ how do you convince people to pay? I’ve turned into a proper grumpy old man and anytime someone refers to a service as ‘free’ I tell them it’s not free and someone’s taxes are paying for it.
Yes that is true but I have a medical card and haven’t had to pay anything yet.
The service down here in the southwest is second to none and we can get an appointment to see the doctor the next day usually, so, it’s not perfect but it’s certainly better than when we where in the uk.
It varies tremendously in the UK.
When I lived in Leicester I ended up in hospital for a few days getting IV antibiotics because it took so long to see my GP.
Although I now live in Northamptonshire my GP is in Rutland and I could always get same-day appointments.
I haven’t needed to see him since the scamdemic started but I did once need a prescription for pills to treat gout and the delay between my email and the pharmacist calling me was only 3 hours and I was able to drive there after the conversation and collect the prescription.
From getting through on the ‘phone to possibly being given an appointment to see one of the gods – four weeks at our surgery.
Ever human being has to eat and crap every day! Thats how you know what the real population is!
Its no good doing a head count if many people keep their heads down.
As with the NHS and all infrastructure, if you lie to yourself about how many people are using the facilities you’ll never have enough to go round!
Is it just me or is Jeremy Hunt talking out of his arse here?
“Looking back, with the benefit of hindsight, and it is with the benefit of hindsight, I can see that we over focused on preparing for pandemic flu and not for the type of virus that we actually ended up with, which was a coronavirus flu virus.
“I think Sweden and the UK, we used the law, Sweden used a voluntary approach, but we had broadly fairly similar levels of compliance with the lockdowns.
“In retrospect, I think there’s a lot to learn from what Sweden did, but I don’t think there was such a huge difference.” And; ”Hunt admitted that the Government had prepared for a flu and not a virus, explaining that the way the two spread is different.” Huh?? Bizarre..
So the original pandemic preparedness plan for flu was to be chucked out because a different type of ”flu” is what the world ended up with and the UK police went round arresting people for having picnics/walking in the middle of nowhere or sitting on a bench therefore ”we had broadly fairly similar levels of compliance with the lockdowns” when compared with Sweden…Is this shyster trying to re-write the facts of what happened whilst simultaneously treating everyone like they have sh*t for brains?
https://www.gbnews.com/news/jeremy-hunt-says-uk-has-lots-to-learn-from-sweden-covid-response-pandemic
We’d have been perfectly fine if they’d used the existing plan for pandemic flu.
We’d also have been fine if we’d simply ‘locked down’ all the vulnerable for the few months of that first covid wave, and then let everyone get on with life.
“and then let everyone get on with life.”
Of course we could and should have done nothing as would be normal for a touch of ‘flu.
There was no “pandemic.”
“We’d also have been fine if we’d simply ‘locked down’ all the vulnerable for the few months of that first covid wave, and then let everyone get on with life.”
Hopefully you don’t mean this in the way I’ve read it. “Locking down” anyone for a mild-for-most respiratory virus of the type we’ve lived with since the dawn of time is immoral, unethical and futile. EVERYONE should have been able to “get on with life” from Day 1. Anyone who was likely to be more susceptible based on the available data (and their loved ones) should have been given the relevant, accurate information, calmly, and left to make their own choices. You could possibly make some arguments around infection control in care homes and hospitals, and for me this is where it gets a bit tricky because you have to balance conflicting interests – some may have been happy to take their chances with visitors so as not to spend the last months/years of their life lonely and miserable, others may have made a different choice. With limited resources it may be difficult to cater for everyone, but forcing people into putting their lives on hold indefinitely is wrong.
Yep, agreed. Even the Swedes admit they could have done better at protecting their elderly, frail population but then that brings me to my Captain Obvious question; what would Sweden, or any other country come to that, have done in terms of care for the elderly during any previous particularly bad flu season? Because wouldn’t you just do the same? I never worked exclusively with elderly or in the community so perhaps others can shed some light here but I’ve never ever known masks to be worn outside of an operating theatre ( obv nothing to do with viruses there ) and I’ve never heard of old folk being deprived of visits or treat like prisoners in residential care/nursing homes. My point is that nothing should have been done differently to previous years but I genuinely don’t know what goes on in these institutions that care for the vulnerable during a typical flu season. Honestly, prior to 2020 I’d only ever heard the term ”lock down” in the context of prisons or sci-fi movies.
Both my parents were in care homes and frail before they died, and both died of something respiratory – or they died of old age, depending on your point of view. I suppose I may have avoided seeing them if I was down with a bad cold or flu, but at that stage time is limited so I would not have wanted to avoid them for months on end. Life involves risk, everything is a tradeoff. No-one in the care homes wore masks. Possibly if the staff were very ill they would have stayed away but it’s not something I ever thought about.
“Is it just me or is Jeremy Hunt speaking out of his arse here?”
It’s his default mode of function
‘A quick search through Facebook groups shows that
Ukrainiansjust about everyone who can’t afford private health care can be frightened about getting sick in the U.K. for fear of not being able to receive treatment.’There, fixed it for you.
You might be irritated to know that private health care in Russia is tax-deductible.
I have to question the status of “refugee” since the author was able to fly back and see, presumably, her family doctor.
Her home is clearly many miles from any action.
“Her home is clearly many miles from any action.”
Would that be her Ukrainian home or her English home?
Isn’t it nice to have options?
Both are many miles from the action.
She’s not a war refugee. She’s been here since at least a year before the current war began in earnest.
Sounds like an option for reducing waiting lists.
Maybe the NHS can fund flights to the Ukraine full of British patients. What’s the bet it’s cheaper than treating them through the NHS?
Hmmm…maybe I’ve been on this site for so long I now see conspiracy everywhere?! LOL!
But I imagine this article will have made a lot of people very angry….either because it sounds dreadfully ‘ungrateful’, or because many will be annoyed that they have no facility to do the same thing as a ‘refugee’…
…….along with what could be seen as the US attempt to throw Ukraine under the bus with the fake Nordstream story…I can’t help thinking this has been published as another little nudge to change people’s minds…..?
She says she’s been here for at least two years. She’s not here as a refugee.
The same in Russia, of course, with nearly everything being affordable and immediate. They get on with full diagnosis and then treatment very promptly. It is advisable to give extra personal care to your relatives if they are in hospital, however – just as in the UK in fact!
I have never been a fan of the NHS ‘Gatekeeper GP’ system – I think it stinks.