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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“Police forces paint cars with rainbow colours”.
Isn’t that a political symbol? Surely our police should be politically neutral?
” ‘Transphobic’ ” – does that mean the police are going anti-women as well now?
Incidentally, I saw a rainbow colour police car years ago, so this is not exactly new.
Clown cars will make it all better.
Surely it is well past time for Bozo’s car to get this treatment!
Hey, there are much more important things for our ruling elite than some racist nonsense about foreign terrorists. Let’s not have them take their eyes off the real ball for too long, eh?
“…today Joe Biden said “terrorism has metastasized around the world”, but … not even a month ago what was the number one threat was “domestic white supremacy terror groups” … you had General Millie “wanting to get at the root of white rage” … so what we were told by our military head and the President of the United States is that Americans were a bigger threat than Islamic terror – they used those words. They said it was bigger than Al Qaeda, bigger than ISIS”
New report sheds more light on US equipment now in hands of Taliban
ITEM: “Lockdowns can’t go on, admits Australian PM” – As lockdown protests escalate in New South Wales, Australia’s PM says they cannot continue, reports the Times.
But don’t expect him to do anything about it. Two-bob-each-way Scomo has been saying this for months, as indeed has Gladys (NSW state Premier), Lockdown-Crazy Dan (Victoria’s Premier) and every other state Premier, yet lockdowns keep happening regardless (in South Australia, we even have them as a prophylactic against ‘potential’ ‘outbreaks’ even when the official ‘case’ count is zero).
I knew we were in for trouble when Australia’s sheer seasonal dumb luck in getting the original virus during the southern hemipshere’s virus-unfriendly spring/summer of 2019-2020 saw the entire scientifically-illiterate Australian political class (always a few watts short of full brightness) take the big stage to claim credit for their wise choice to crush the economy through lockdowns as the reason for our relatively low Covid stats, and then go on to say that ‘why don’t we lick this thing altogether through more of the same’. Hence the Zero Covid addiction which they haven’t been able to shake off.
The surprisingly large and hearteningly angry nationwide protest rallies last Saturday were a real shot in the arm (in a good way!) and may be a wake-up call to our politcians (they can sense some lost votes because of their increasingly unpopular lockdowns, particularly because of their ham-fisted police action against them).
In the end, the virus will – in New South Wales (in nine-week lockdown and counting), after manic testing, daily ‘case’ numbers are hitting 900 (unheard of heights for the Zero Covidians). The thoroughly benign Delta variant (benign because we never hear how many of these ‘cases’ are actually ill, or in hospital, or dead because these stats would be zero, or as good as, and thus the pandemic scam would be over) is outrunning the heroic contact-tracers. Go Delta!!
The ‘vaccination’ gambit looks like being Scomo’s and the state Premiers’ Hail Mary pass that will help them to detox without losing face by having to admit that they made a disastrous error with lockdown in the beginning. The costs of the ‘vaccine’ will of course, be paid by those dumb enough or pressured enough, to roll up their sleeves. But if it saves just one politician’s skin, then it is worth it, I suppose.
Phil
South Australia
“Australia’s sheer seasonal dumb luck in getting the original virus during the southern hemipshere’s virus-unfriendly spring/summer of 2019-2020″
What do you make of the suggestion (made here I think by somebody but I can’t recall who) that Australia had a particularly bad preceding flu season, and that covid probably went through then, without anybody noticing because it was just written off as flu?
We have seen a number of reports that SARS-CoV-2 virus was present around the world during 2019, based on checking old samples.
“The ‘vaccination’ gambit looks like being Scomo’s and the state Premiers’ Hail Mary pass that will help them to detox without losing face by having to admit that they made a disastrous error with lockdown in the beginning. The costs of the ‘vaccine’ will of course, be paid by those dumb enough or pressured enough, to roll up their sleeves. But if it saves just one politician’s skin, then it is worth it, I suppose.”
This was always my problem with vaccination, even back when many still hoped that they would reduce infections enough to count as “sterilising”. They are absolutely toxic in political terms, allowing lockdowners to claim that it “saved us until the vaccines came along”.
We have seen a number of reports that SARS-CoV-2 virus was present around the world during 2019, based on checking old samples.
Mark, we had suspected this from pretty much the start and were intrigued when the story came out a while back about samples of the virus being found in water samples in Barcelona around Sring 2019, (please correct me if I have that wrong).
We were in Salou, an hours train journey from Barcelona, for 2 weeks middle of May 2019…….ourselves and numerous people we knew were unwell with flu like sypmptoms, the most consistent being a persistent, continuous cough. It was resort wide, my sister and her family joined us for the 2nd week in a hotel a good 15 minute walk away, and they had the symptoms within days of arriving.
Lasted 5-7 days for the people we knew; everyone recovered as you would expect as the age range was say 40 ish-70ish, so no extremes of age and no one so frail they would choose to fly to a busy resort.
As soon as the reports came in from China and the symptoms were explained, we all immediately thought, “that sounds exactly like what we had”.
Have avoided all corona based nonsense; masks, SD, vaccines, panic, testing ect, ect….but must admit it is tempting to find out if I am right about this or not.
TLDR…Anecdotal story. Agree Covid19 been around for ages and gone unnoticed until manufactured panic put into play.
“in water samples in Barcelona around Sring 2019, (please correct me if I have that wrong).”
Sounds about right from my own recollection. I think similar old 2019 samples of blood or of water/sewage had SARS-CoV-2 in them from Italy, South America, and possibly Finland, iirc.
Wow that is early.
In Suffolk we had an outbreak of a weird virus with a bad cough between October 2019 and February 2020. One incident was a family whose son returned from a skiing trip in France with a hacking cough which everyone else in the family caught but with widely varying levels of distress.
I’ve heard of similar outbreaks elsewhere in the UK Europe and the US but none so early, but it backs up the tales of the virus being found in sewage and blood samples in spring 2019, I think in Italy and Spain.
Just to add, here and in parts of the West Country the high levels of “early covid” were followed by low levels of “official covid”.
I know parts of Spain were badly hit but how did Barcelona do?
Hi Chris; sorry no idea really as we opted out of the MSM “reporting” of all of this very early.
I know May 2019 sound unfeasably early; but the virus samples in water were found just up the coast a month or 2 prior to this so who knows?
Despite Mrs FB and myself being healthy, we have had colds and the flu previously…..but this was different, in respect of the severe constant coughing.
In fact, so many people in the resort had these symptoms all at the same time I’m surprised I haven’t come across anyone else venturing the opinion that they had a Covid 19 style illness in Salou May 2019.
Bit like a lot of some suspiscious looking possible vaccine injuries in people I know…..the “victims” simply don’t seem to be able to join the dots.
Sweden wasn’t an experiment. It was the control. Virtually everyone else (barring South Dakota, Belarus and Tanzania, from memory) was the experiment. Never let the covidians forget that what they did was unorthodox and went directly against all the planning from the WHO and every rich country in the world.
Correct, Sweden said they weren’t experimenting, everyone else was. They were right.
Can anyone provide a transcript of the pay-walled Rod Liddle article in the ST please?
The Sweden experiment was nothing of the sort – in the event of a major pandemic the UK had more or less the same plans as Sweden except the only difference was that our government panicked and decided to jettison those plans in favour of the tyrannical lockdown methods as seen in communist China.
Sweden chose to stick with hundreds of years western enlightenment – Britain dumped enlightenment in favour of eastern tyranny instead..
The comments on the MoS article on UKGovCamp are a joy to behold. The supporters have been mobilised to flood them with squealing responses designed to insult everyone who disagrees with them. And these people represent those that are “serving” the public and who are happy to accept the wages the rest of us contribute to them.
The Masked Mob must be removed from positions of power in our institutions. They are fit only to sweep the streets, and probably not that.
Interesting piece, clearly written by a pro-vaxer who nevertheless is forced to concede that the opposite of the Official Truth line is what is supported by the evidence.
But he concludes that: “The simple thing to say is that in order of ascendance the least protection is from a vaccine, then comes natural protection, and the best is to combine both. The other simple thing to say is that vaccine protection costs a hell of a lot less than the risks involved in getting natural protection. ”
This seems to be based upon some pure speculation by the “experts” that he has already convicted of misrepresentation of reality by pretending vaccine immunity is better that natural immunity, and by others, about possible extra protection from vaccination against variants – extreme scepticism about that kind of stuff seems the only possible response.
And further, he establishes pretty well that natural protection is fine, and really very good. So why would anyone even consider adding the risks of the vaccines (which he implicitly seems to dismiss without recognition that most of them are by definition unknown and unknowable) just to try to top up an already very good protection?
The simple thing to say is that in order of ascendance the least protection is from a vaccine, then comes natural protection, and the best is to combine both……
This seems to be based upon some pure speculation by the “experts”
I think it is a bit more than pure speculation:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2782139
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03696-9
Nature…….bwaaahahhahahaaaaa
Muppet tr0ll
And is more than pure speculation by ‘experts’ that injections that are not sterilising and are designed to combat symptoms of the wuhan virus are the very last thing someone with natural immunity should have.
No vaccines are intended to sterilise. They prime your immune system which is completely different.
So all the collocation of R numbers and talk of the jab was pure spin from the government?
If so then recording it on internal passports is purely a social credit scheme and nothing to do with health.
Jabs reduce R numbers by reducing the probability of infection. This has nothing to do with sterilisation which is the removal of microorganisms from something (surgical instrument, wound etc) that are already there.
The COVID-jabs reduce the probability of symptoms while infected, not infection, in fact the viral load was often higher in the jabbed according to that leaked CDC doc.
Spread oddly seems to be a thing that does not correlate with viral load
But basically without symptoms but able to spread is the highest risk. The greatest chance of this will be in the jabbed and lowest in the recovered.
The viral load was very similar if you are infected. However, all of the vaccines have some efficacy against getting infected in the first place, although it appears this is lower against the Delta variant also declines with time since vaccination. Even Will Jones analysis of the PHE figures agrees with this.
You are spouting absolute bloody nonsense.
When does he not?
The “pure speculation” was in reference to the stuff in the original article about variants and “polymutants”. As I said, pure speculation (and from clearly biased sources).
The links you provided add nothing to the existing conclusion, that protection from natural immunity is extremely good and you’d have to be pretty daft to try to increase it still further by taking the vaccines – an experimental new treatment with known risks and basically unknown long term effects.
If the vaccine program is driving dangerous mutation (it is), wouldn’t getting vaxxed after recovery be ‘selfish’ and ‘deplorable’?
The “pure speculation” was in reference to the stuff in the original article about variants and “polymutants”. As I said, pure speculation (and from clearly biased sources).
I am sorry I misunderstood you. Your comment seemed to be about the order of ascendance of protection, not variants or polymutants.
The links provide evidence that vaccination on top of infection gives you even better protection than infection alone. Whether it is daft to take advantage of that additional protection will surely depend on your personal situation?
But of course the single worst option risk wise would be mass jabbing without testing for prior SARS/covid infection
MTF agrees with the authorities that they are entitled to run the risks of enhancing the threat from the virus on behalf of the rest of us, because they are so scared, or so greedy for power or profit.
Yes, you did misunderstand, and that bit of my comment was about the bit I quoted just previously, concerning hypothetical additional protection from getting the experimental treatment on top of having had the disease.
“The links provide evidence that vaccination on top of infection gives you even better protection than infection alone. Whether it is daft to take advantage of that additional protection will surely depend on your personal situation?“
For the vast, vast majority, no, it’s just daft
“The zero Covid campaign’s bid to make masks political”
Actually it is really useful. If you continue to wear a mask, then that marks you out as a Cultural Communist, a member of the Masked Mob, and you should be removed from any position of power or influence in society.
It’s time to stop messing about, pretending that this is anything to do with logic and rationality and realise that this is a political movement along the same lines as the Moonies.
Then deal with it in the same way.
Gullible people shouldn’t be in charge of anything. We need rational people in charge who are able to ask the tough questions and call out the charlatans.
I agree it’s political, but I don’t think the gullible are in charge. I’m pretty convinced SAGE and most of the Cabinet know exactly what they are doing, and I think the same probably goes for people in senior positions in public health, Big Pharma, the media and other institutions. Simply a political power grab. Backbench MPs are along for the ride, and many may well be covidian true believers.
DOMINIC LAWSON: It’s a sad irony that every anti-vaxxer who dies of Covid might just save lives
Never forget, and never forgive, those in positions of media influence, who push this authoritarian coronapanic propaganda.
It’s not even that Lawson is necessarily technically incorrect in any of the factual things he writes (though any authoritarian writing anything that pushes the Official Truth line should always be presumed to be lying, or unknowingly pushing lies, until they are proven correct, and all his assertions should be diligently “fact checked” by anybody thinking of taking them seriously).
The problem is that he is pushing the line that there is some kind of emergency, that this disease is something to fear, that justifies taking risks and incurring costs to defend against it. By and large, it isn’t, on a societal level, and we would have been far, far better off if we had just treated it as an ordinary “flu pandemic” from the beginning
Recognising that people die, that we all die, and getting on with life is far more important than desperately paying any price to try to reduce the effects of this disease.
Never forget that Lawson was one of those pushing this panic in the media, and demonising those who rightly try to resist it for whatever reason.
Fortunately, judging by the best rated comments, DM readers are giving this short shrift!
Dominic Lawson is why I stopped reading the Sunday Times, he compared lockdown opponents to Harold Shipman.
How ironic looking at the vaccine deaths and injuries and the lockdown harms
Civil service is an awful place to work if you don’t subscribe to hard-left politics and happen to be a white heterosexual male with no visible disabilities.
They run so-called apprenticeships that are nothing more than socialist brainwashing, warning of the threat of the nasty white guy in the office, how he is most guilty of ‘micro-aggressions’, ‘racism,’ ‘transphobia’ etc, ad infinitum.
The civil service show no signs of what the Mail on Sunday describe as ‘fascism’ – fascists oppose gay rights and race-mixing. They promoted eugenics of the national race – in our case that would be a strong white race. The civil service discriminate against old whitey. Truth is, they’re the other brand of socialists, they’re of the communist strain.
Fascism according to it’s architect Mussolini was
“Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”
The people complaining about Fascism are much more fascist than the people they are complaining about.
Yes, there is a poor understanding of ‘fascism’ these days. It does not necessarily include what people associate with ‘national socialism’ which definitely majored on race purity. Its more to do with the fusion of corporatism and the state to the exclusion of individual and independant existence. I think it perfectly describes the current moves in many western nations.
Especially now that ‘the state’ does not mean ‘the nation state’.
and that’s possibly the most worrying thing.
I truly hope that 5eyes has not metastasized in the way I think it has.
Eugenics (i.e. the state picking winning Genes/punishing losing genes) has a long history of support from the (especially Fabian) Left it’s a analogous to the thinking the state can “pick” economic winners better than customers.
I don’t know where you work in the Civil Service but where I am it’s nothing like that at all. IME it’s largely representative of the local population. The higher up the hierarchy you get the more likely you are to be pale, male and stale so I don’t think it’s working out too badly for them.
‘Pale, male and stale’ – yep, you definitely sound like a civil servant with a preference to anyone who isn’t white and male.
Could not make this up.
Issues with the supply of Flu vaccinations.Thus it could be less effective than normal. Reasons. Covid.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9918327/Flu-jabs-weak-protect-people-winter-labs-focused-Covid-pandemic.html
At first, I thought the Australians were killing puppies because of some inkling that they were spreading the virus. The real reason is way worse.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/greed-and-good-the-rise-of-wokenomics-2tdgq5zlt
For the Times, to publish this is shocking.
It looks like this site has now lost a lot of its focus, with Round Up now proportionately citing fewer ‘meaty’ articles (see the Swiss Doctor article for an example of what that means), and more MSM regurgitation – particularly from the Mail and Telegraph.
There is also a conflation of Covid issues with ‘wokeness’ and climate – both of which are debates in their own right. Even if there are connections, this just distracts towards ‘grand conspiracy’ theories and simplistic hobby-horse riding, making it easier to dismiss the site.
It’s very obvious from your comments in general that your concern is not “hobby horse riding” per se, but riding the wrong hobby horse. If the site focussed on blaming everything on “Tories” and “rich right-wingers” you’d be perfectly happy to see those hobby horses ridden into the ground.
But this is the Daily Sceptic, not Lockdown Sceptics (which you were perfectly happy to see extended to “Vaccine Sceptics” wherever possible).
The parallels between the covid panic and other elite obsessions are very obvious. Climate alarmism is most similar, because of its similar grounding in modelling pseudo-science and fear-mongering, but wokeness generally shares a lot of the political issues, and enriches and empowers elites over society in similar ways.
These are the correct targets for scepticism in our modern societies imo, because these are the areas where elites are trying to foist bullshit upon us with massive propaganda, and with demonisation, censorship and exclusion of dissent and of dissenters.
Though in the end, it’s neither your opinion nor mine on this that matters, but that of the site owners.
As usual, you have this amazing ability to mind-read and impute imaginary intentions. I’m sorry to disillusion you, but I don’t have parallel obsessions about ‘the right’ as you have about an imaginary consolidated ‘left’ that is a mental box where you put all your antagonisms.
I know you love having a vehicle for general and simplistic pontificating, but my point is exactly as I said : the noticeable loss of focus, which remark was occasioned by the first item being on hydrogen as a fuel.
Climate/anthropogenic environmental change, for instance, is a whole other issue, with a different history, that may be used by those promoting Covid – but it isn’t the same, and it simply distracts.
Of course, those who own this site can do what they like with it. That fact has nothing to do with the price of fish.
“As usual, you have this amazing ability to mind-read and impute imaginary intentions. I’m sorry to disillusion you, but I don’t have parallel obsessions about ‘the right’ as you have about an imaginary consolidated ‘left’ that is a mental box where you put all your antagonisms.”
Nope, you have made numerous comments here about this coronapanic being “driven by the hard right”, despite that stance being so absurdly unsupported by any real world evidence.
As for “mind reading” and “imputing”, I have said little that isn’t directly supported by your own comments here, but where I have speculated (not unduly extensively) it has been necessary because you contribute so little of substance on these topics, but instead a lot of playground abuse. That’s your prerogative, but you can’t then complain if people make reasonable presumptions about what you conceal.
“Climate/anthropogenic environmental change, for instance, is a whole other issue, with a different history, that may be used by those promoting Covid – but it isn’t the same, and it simply distracts.”
Of course it isn’t “the same”, but as I pointed out it shares striking and fundamental similarities which make it a wholly legitimate target of scepticism.
“Of course, those who own this site can do what they like with it. That fact has nothing to do with the price of fish.“
Well for a start you insist, repetitively, that the issues they choose to report “distract”, but ignore the fact that it “distracts” only from what you personally believe ought to be the focus of this site. Clearly it doesn’t distract from what they believe is the purpose if the site – it is [part of] the purpose of the site.
George Christensen.
We do have a few politicians with guts down here.
https://rumble.com/vlk4li-george-christensen-stands-up-for-innocent-protesters-who-were-assaulted….html
“Australia will have to live with Covid-19 rather than in constant fear of it. We the people want our freedom back.
We demand that there be no more lockdowns.
We demand that there be no more curfews.
We demand that there be no more mask mandates.
We demand that there be no more state border closures.
We demand that there be no more privacy invasion with mandatory QR code check-ins.
We demand that there be no more discrimination between vaccinated and unvaccinated Australians.
We demand that our freedoms be restored, and I demand that peaceful protesters, patriotic, freedom-loving men and women never, ever be fired upon in this country, ever again.”
Good stuff!
I see the good man has already made the right enemies after a previous speech:
Facebook removes George Christensen’s anti-lockdown speech for breaching Covid misinformation policy
The Eureka flag seems to be something of an Australian equivalent of the Gadsden flag in the US.
The Eureka flag is our one-flag-fits-all symbol of rebellion. It belongs to every Australian now; created by gold miners ie small business operators, co-opted by the unions during the 70s.
George Christensen has been courageous voice in Canberra against covid, and before that against climate change. As you saw in the Guardian article, his own side are quite happy to join with the Labor opposition in quashing him.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/07/the-crackdown-on-the-eureka-flag-is-another-bid-to-destroy-our-unions
They’ll be memory holing this from the Grauniad soon. Perhaps archive it.
Another well organised protest today at ITN:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCRuW2dw7Ew
DM giving it the full Jan 6th Capitol protests exaggeration. Not “mostly peaceful”, apparently:
ANTI-VAXXERS STORM ITN
Chaos as up to 200 anti-vaxxers storm London HQ of ITV News and Channel 4 News: Angry mob chases Jon Snow and hurls abuse at him – then orders terrified staff to ‘get me Peston’
“Shocking footage shows dozens of police officers forming a barrier against the activists – who are protesting against vaccine passports, amid widespread shouting and desperate cries for the group to ‘calm down’ (left). Officers, many wearing face coverings, are seen pushing back members of the crowd as tensions clearly begin to boil over. Multiple police vehicles are on standby at the scene on Grays Inn Road in Camden, and helping to stop the protesters disrupting the traffic. Abuse was also shouted at veteran broadcaster Jon Snow (right), with the activists accusing him of not ‘speaking up for the children’ over the vaccine rollout. The shocking scenes comes just two weeks after anti-vax protesters attempted to storm a studio at the BBC Television Centre in west London.”