Governments concerned about Covid misinformation should start with their own lies and distortions, Indiana’s Attorney General has told the U.S. Government. In a submission to the U.S. Surgeon General, who had requested information on the impact of online health misinformation during the pandemic in the United States, Todd Rokita joined with leading scientists Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Martin Kulldorff to set out nine examples of disinformation propagated by the CDC and other health organisations that have “shattered the public’s trust in science and public health and will take decades to repair”. Read their full submission below.
May 2nd 2022
Agency: Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Surgeon General
Action: Request for Information (RFI)
Subject: Impact of Health Misinformation in the Digital Information Environment in the United States Throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic
Response: COVID-19 Misinformation from Official Sources During the Pandemic
Submitting parties: Todd Rokita, Indiana Attorney General; Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine; and Dr. Kulldorff, Senior Research Fellow at the Brownstone Institute and former Professor at Harvard University School of Medicine.
The Office of the Surgeon General requested information on the prevalence of health misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of such misinformation on the U.S. public health system in order to be better prepared to respond to a future public health crisis.
We agree that misinformation has been a major problem during the pandemic. The spread of inaccurate scientific information has made it difficult for the public to make the right decisions to protect themselves, their families, and their communities from COVID-19 and the collateral public health damage arising from the pandemic countermeasures. As such, the disinformation has led to great harm in the lives and livelihoods of Americans. We submit the following examples of disinformation from the CDC and other health organisations that have shattered the public’s trust in science and public health and will take decades to repair.
#1 Overcounting COVID-19: The official CDC numbers for COVID-19 deaths and hospitalisations are inaccurate. The official tallies include many people who have died with rather than from COVID-19. CDC has not distinguished deaths where COVID-19 was the primary cause of death, where COVID-19 was a contributing cause of death, or where the death was entirely unrelated to COVID-19, but they incidentally tested positive.
There are three reasons for this problem. (i) The counting of COVID-19 cases and deaths is unlike the way that public health counts the incidence and mortality caused by other diseases; physicians have been advised to fill out death certificates to privilege COVID-19 as a proximal cause, even when the medical facts suggest otherwise. (ii) The population-wide testing to identify asymptomatic individuals infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus is unprecedented in human history. (iii) Although it would have been easy, CDC has not conducted random national surveys of medical charts to determine what proportion of reported COVID-19 deaths were truly due to COVID-19. Ex-post audits of death certificates and medical records in Santa Clara County and Alameda County, California, for instance, found that in around 25% of death certificates in which COVID-19 was labelled as the primary cause of death, other causes of death were more likely. The peer-reviewed literature confirms that COVID-19 is overcounted in other developed countries. Ex post audits of death certificates should be conducted to establish an accurate death count from COVID-19.
#2 Questioning Natural Immunity: There has been consistent questioning and denying of natural immunity after COVID-19 recovery. Using seriously flawed studies, CDC falsely claimed that natural immunity is worse than vaccine acquired immunity. In October 2020, the CDC director published a “memorandum” in the Lancet, questioning natural immunity. Most critically, by mandating vaccination for people who have recovered from COVID-19, the Government, corporations, and universities de facto deny natural immunity.
For scientists, this has been the most surprising disinformation. We have known about natural immunity since the Athenian Plague in 430 BC; other coronaviruses generate natural immunity; and throughout the pandemic, we knew that the COVID-19 recovered have good natural immunity if and when they get exposed the next time. That is, six months after the start of the pandemic, we had epidemiological evidence that natural immunity lasts at least six months; a year into the pandemic, we knew that natural immunity lasted at least one year, and so on.
#3 COVID-19 Vaccines Prevent Transmission: The CDC director and other health officials falsely claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine prevents the transmission of COVID-19 to others. This was also the rationale for vaccine mandates and passports – to prevent the spread of the virus to others. At the time, we did not know, and it turned out to be wrong. When the COVID-19 vaccines were approved for emergency use, the manufacturers presented randomised controlled trials (RCTs) that showed that the vaccines reduced symptomatic disease. The trials were not designed to determine whether they could also limit transmission or prevent death, even though they could have been designed to do so. As it turned out, vaccinated individuals spread the disease to others. While it was unfortunate that the RCTs were not designed to answer the disease transmission question, it is irresponsible for public health officials to claim that they did when the RCTs did not even attempt to answer that question.
#4 School Closures Were Effective and Costless: In the United States, most schools were closed for in-person teaching for some time, and many schools were closed for over a year. This decision was based on false claims that it would protect children, teachers and the community at large. Already in the early summer of 2020, we knew this was false. Sweden was the only major Western country to keep schools open throughout spring 2020 without masks, social distancing, or testing. Among these 1.8 million children ages one to 15, there were zero COVID-19 deaths, only a few hospitalisations, and teachers did not have a higher COVID-19 risk than the average of other professions.
Moreover, while older people living with a working-age adult had a higher COVID-19 risk, there was no evidence that also living with a child increased that risk further. In a July 2020 New England Journal of Medicine article evaluating school closures, they did not mention the Swedish data and evidence, which is like evaluating a new drug without including data from the placebo comparison group. Despite clear evidence on the safety of keeping schools open, misinformation led to many schools being closed for over one year.
#5 Everyone is equally at risk of hospitalisation and death from COVID-19 infection: Though public health messaging has blunted this fact, there is more than a thousand-fold difference in the risk of hospitalisation and death for the old relative to the young. Though the risk of death is high for the old and some other vulnerable populations with severe chronic illness, the risk posed to children from COVID-19 infection is on par with the risk posed by a bad influenza season. Surveys indicate, however, that both old and young overestimate the risk of death from COVID-19 infection. This misperception about risk is harmful because it leads to demand for policies – such as school closures and lockdowns – that were themselves harmful.
#6 There was no reasonable policy alternative to lockdowns: Even from the beginning of the pandemic, the sharp age-gradient in the risk of severe disease on COVID-19 infection has provided an alternative to the lockdown-focused policies that many U.S. states adopted – focused protection of the aged and otherwise vulnerable. In October 2020, along with Prof. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University, we wrote the Great Barrington Declaration – a public petition that proposed heightened measures to protect the vulnerable and a return to near-normal life for the less vulnerable (including the opening of schools). Tens of thousands of doctors and scientists signed the Declaration in opposition to lockdowns. In the Declaration itself and in supporting documents, we offered many concrete policy suggestions for better protecting the vulnerable, including reduced staff rotations in nursing homes, free home delivery of groceries and other essentials offered to older people living in the community, paid sabbatical leave or alternative work arrangements for older workers, and many other policy options. We also invited the public health community to join in thinking creatively about other ideas to protect the vulnerable. As subsequent research has confirmed, it was clear even at the time that lockdowns could not protect the vulnerable (nearly 80% of COVID-19 deaths have occurred among the elderly in the U.S.). Meanwhile, countries like Sweden, which did not implement lockdowns, have had near-zero overall excess death over the last two years of the pandemic. Lockdowns are an aberration– a sharp deviation from traditional public health management of respiratory epidemics – and a catastrophic failure of public health policy.
#7 Mask mandates are effective in reducing the spread of viral infectious diseases: Contrary to assertions by some public health officials, mask mandates have not been effective in protecting most populations against COVID-19 risk. The SARS-CoV-2 virus spreads by aerosolisation. Unlike larger viral droplets, which are pulled by gravity to the ground shortly after emission, aerosols are tiny particles that can persist in the air for extended periods. Aerosols escape through gaps of poorly fitted masks, greatly reducing their ability to stop disease spread. Cloth masks, in particular, cannot stop aerosols, and even well-fitted N95 masks have diminished capacity to stop viral transmission when they become moist from breathing. It is thus unsurprising that the highest quality evidence available – randomised trials – conducted both before and during the pandemic find that masks are ineffective at stopping the spread of respiratory viruses in most settings when worn by untrained people.
#8 Mass testing of asymptomatic individuals and contact tracing of positive cases is effective in reducing disease spread: Mass testing of asymptomatic individuals with contact tracing and quarantining of people who test positive has failed to substantively slow the progress of the epidemic and has imposed great costs on people who were quarantined even though they posed no risk of infecting others. Three facts are crucial to understanding why this policy has failed. First, even close contacts of someone who tests positive for the SARS-Cov-2 virus are unlikely to pass the disease on. In a large meta-analysis of household contacts of asymptomatic positive cases, only 3% of people living in the same home got sick. Second, the PCR test that has been used to identify asymptomatic infections often returns a positive result for people who have dead viral fragments, are not infectious, and pose no risk of infecting others. And third, the contact tracing system becomes overwhelmed whenever cases start to rise, leading to long delays in contacting new cases. At precisely the moment when contact tracing might be needed, it cannot do its job. At the same time, quarantining people is costly – for workers without adequate sick leave, absenteeism due to contact tracing means pay cuts, lost opportunities and perhaps even an inability to feed families. For children, it means more skipped lessons and missed opportunities for academic and social growth at school, with long-run negative consequences for their future prospects. In the U.K., an official government review determined that its 37 billion pound investment in contact tracing was a waste of resources. The same is undoubtedly true in the United States.
#9 The eradication of COVID-19 is a feasible goal: Throughout the pandemic, from “two weeks to flatten the curve” and onwards, the suppression of the spread of COVID-19 has been an explicit policy goal. Implicitly, public health leaders have made the suppression of COVID-19 spread to near-zero levels the endpoint of the pandemic. However, SARS-CoV-2 has none of the characteristics of a disease that can be eradicated. First, we have no technology to reduce the spread of the disease or meaningfully alter disease dynamics. Lockdowns and social restrictions fail because only people who can afford to work from home without losing their job can comply over long periods. While we have vaccines that can help prevent hospitalisation or death resulting from COVID-19 infection, the vaccines wane in efficacy against COVID-19 infection and cannot stop transmission. Second, there are many animal hosts for SARS-CoV-2 and evidence of transmission between mammals and humans. One USDA study in late 2021 found that nearly 80% of white-tailed deer in the U.S. had evidence of COVID-19 antibodies. Dogs, cats, bats, mink and many other mammals can get COVID-19. So even if the disease were eradicated among humans, zoonotic transmission would guarantee that it would come back. Finally, eradication takes a global commitment from every country – an impossible goal since COVID-19 eradication is far from the most pressing public health problem for many developing countries.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Big respect to the author for speaking up. I’ll bet money that the perv had done it before, probably to his own son, and has most likely done it after the incident described above. He was a paedophile and don’t they say paedos cannot be rehabilitated? It’s not just a passing fancy, get it out of your system and then all deviant impulses disappear. You’re either programmed that way or you aren’t. But back in those days many things went on behind closed doors that were not talked about out in the open, this type of incident being just one example.
Toby, Cooper’s criticism of Raymond Baxter tells us less about Baxter than it does about your would-be molester. I recall Baxter’s authoritative voice introducing ‘Tomorrow’s World’ in the 60s. Added to which he (Baxter) was a decorated Spitfire pilot during the WW2. To be thought a “complete c***” by Cooper was something of a badge of honour.
The BPC.
I’ve asked this question since 2012 and never received an adequate reply.
What is the evidence (excluding allegations) that Jimmy savile committed the crimes he’s accused of?
Yes I’ll get lots of down ticks but, almost certainly, no reply to the actual question.
Maybe they buried all their ( whoever they were/are) dirty washing with Savile
No evidence then?
Savile suffered from mass hysteria as you know.
I see what you did there.
Thanks for the msg BTW..
No evidence then?
Lots of witness statements, plus he was well known by people who knew him and knew of him to be a pervert. It is hard to bring a dead person to trial (I shouldn’t need to say that).
Lots of witness statements that turned out to be false, and “I always knew he was a wrong un (but did nothing)” hearsay allegations by the sort of celebs who on another occasion promoted COVID jabs; perhaps we should believe them about that too. There was a very lengthy and public trawling operation for evidence, with financial incentives from his estate and, for those who went public, from newspaper stories, with no downside for false testimony. The late lawyer Susanne Nundy (the “Anna Raccoon” blogger), who had been a resident at the Duncroft school for girls where the allegations started, took a strong interest in the case and her conclusion was that there was no evidence that was made public that he’d done what he was accused of.
Well I’m confident that either way, had he been alive today, he’d be allowed to keep his bank account.
And remarkably, although the allegations ran into the hundreds, not a single documented police complaint made at the time,
I was sexually abused, by a teacher at a Catholic school, I never complained to the police. So I understand why there was “not a single documented police complaint made at the time”, and you don’t. It was a very different time.
No evidence then?
The evidence is documented in “‘Giving Victims a Voice’ A joint MPS and NSPCC report into allegations of sexual abuse made against Jimmy Savile under Operation Yewtree”
https://library.nspcc.org.uk/HeritageScripts/Hapi.dll/filetransfer/2013GivingVictimsAVoiceSexualAllegationsMadeAgainstJimmySavile.pdf?filename=CC18C70DB7C8C3D49403BB94EB176F95207E5F66235DCA89651F5ED2BA5DA9311A3547010EB1745F9098C8189E66B54F16BBCA4419250DDAE584462476E362622BD259A20D1597309210AC995C99F449C7702D4CF7627CBCEC72291068BFEAFDDC8C9625B71658F22EAD1E815FED12FF6D0DEB5CDBB40AEA4EF5D058E57168353BEB2DA3730B57DF729865CC3271FEE73BB1D434AB645BB5&DataSetName=LIVEDATA
If you think more than 400 people, who don’t know each, making the same type of detailed serious allegations isn’t “evidence” because they could all be lying, then you need to explain why you don’t believe any of them and explain what you would regard as “evidence” for any sexual crimes.
“…more than 400 people, who don’t know each other,”!
I would regard correspondence, video, audio, photographic, forensic evidence, confession, police complaints at the time as evidence.
There is nothing for Jimmy saville.
Toby, well done for putting this on the recors.
What I have found amazing is how meny in the MSM and politics behave like that but are never reported. Why do they congregate there.
In all my year sin business at senior managerial level I only once ever had a similar situation. It eas a 3 something woman trying it on with a 20 year old woman whose mother called in to complain.
Wow, the BBC sure seems to be a really big magnet for creeps and nonces! You may recall one Jimmy Saville, for example.
I wonder if the reason his own son didn’t want to go on holiday to Skye was about a great deal more than boredom?
A very evocative account of the attitudes of the time. I was 14 in 1966, so a bit older, and fortunately do not recall a similar incident but I do remember the lack of questioning of motive, as well as the automatic deference to authority. A lot of people had the capacity to keep secrets, good and bad.
Fascinating story and glad you managed to avoid full-on sexual abuse by the sounds of it. I imagine many people can recount experiences of inappropriate behaviour if not full-on sexual abuse during that era. It does seem prominent people who one might describe as “larger than life” are prone to getting carried away (to use a polite term for such perverts) and taking advantage of vulnerable or impressionable youngsters. I’m not making excuses, just observations and I take the point make by a fellow commentator that evidence of Jimmy Saville’s abuses is thin on the ground. I wonder if anything has changed nowadays. It maybe that would-be abusers are more aware that they may get exposed if not brought to justice.
I also had this instinct to stay silent when similar things happened to me as a 16-17 year old – being driven back from a babysitting assignment or given a lift back to a campsite. I struggled and ran too, suffering little more than ruffled feathers – though it does, as you note, stick in the memory.
It is worth pondering this instinct to stay shtum. I suspect it is an evolutionary adaptation – better survival rates for those who did not tell tales on powerful people. When Trump famously observed that ‘it was amazing what you got away with once you were perceived as rich and powerful,’ I felt he was expressing honest surprise at his happy discovery as much as simply boasting. Better appreciation of this mechanism should help us stamp out the unacceptable exploitation of the young and powerless.
How many avuncular figures turned out to have WHT (wandering Hand Trouble) after drinking? Many women remember being groped by such men when they were young. It was such a surprise/shock (the switch from avuncular to groper) that you didn’t know what to do apart from try to distance yourself from them and keep your distance thereafter.
Groping is a strange thing – being groped so unpleasant, what do the gropers think they are doing apart from hurting their victim? It surely is a power thing.