"Science:" Francis Collins, Anthony Fauci Organized a Political Smear Campaign Against Scientists Opposed to General Lockdowns

Is this "The Science"? Because this looks a lot like The Politics.

And it's being done by people who have been government bureaucrats and not scientists for a very, very long time. One wonders if they even remember what science actually is.

The Great Barington Declaration was a statement written by three scientists and signed by nearly 60,000 scientists and medical professional. It urged
a policy of "focused protection" for those at risk from covid -- the elderly, the immunocompromised, the obese -- and lesser mitigation efforts for everyone else.

The three guys who wrote the statement were fully credentialed by the credentialling authorities of The Ruling Class:

Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations.

Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.

Because they could not be attacked on credentials, or on science, they had to be smeared politically.

Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci organized that political smear campaign, FOIA'd emails now reveal.

Behold The Science in action.

Jay Bhattacharya

@DrJBhattacharya

So now I know what it feels like to be the subject of a propaganda attack by my own government. Discussion and engagement would have been a better path.

A key political claim -- not a scientific one, of course -- was the claim that they Barington scientists' plan for covid was to "let it rip," ignoring the facts that they called for focused protection (that is, lockdowns, quarantines) of the most vulnerable and mitigation efforts for everyone else. They just opposed the Fauci/Collins plan of lockdowns for everyone, including children and young people for whom covid posed next to no threat at all.

By the way, when this political smear campaign was executed, it was well known that covid posed next-to-no-threat to the young -- that was well-established by May 2020. This campaign unfolded in October 2020.

But "The Science" trumps actual small-s science.

And "The Science" is always settled -- by the Science Priests.

And no dissent is allowed, whether about Global Warming, the efficacy of lockdowns, the justification for vaccine mandates, the danger of dietary fat, or anything else the Science Priests decree.

'There needs to be a quick and devastating take down': Emails show how Fauci and head of NIH worked to discredit three experts who penned the Great Barrington Declaration which called for an end to lockdowns

The emails show Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins attempting to coordinate a 'devastating takedown' of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD)

AIER, a libertarian think tank, sponsored the GBD, which largely abandons lockdowns in favor of herd immunity strategy that allows life to return to normal

In an October 8 email from Collins to Fauci, the head of the NIH calls the GBD the work of 'three fringe epidemiologists' that 'seems to be getting a lot of attention'

Collins adds that 'there needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises. I don't see anything like that online yet - is it underway?'

Fauci later sends Collins multiple op-eds trashing the GBD in Wired and The Nation Magazine

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya - one of the authors and a DailyMail.com contributor - tweeted that he was the subject of a propaganda attack by his own government

This thread by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya documents the lies coordinated by Fauci and Collins, and Collins' fresh lies on the Sunday shows this week, justifying his anti-science political smear operations.

See also this thread of more emails.

One of the claim made were that these three eminent scientists were "fringe epidemiologists."

By the way, Collins is not an epidemiologist of any kind -- he's a geneticist. By the credential games these assholes play when it suits him, he should recuse himself from the debate entirely.

But, as with all journalists and leftists: every journalist and every leftist with an opinion, which is all of them, are self-credentialing.

I was also puzzled by the mischaracterization of the GBD as a "herd immunity strategy". Biologically the epidemic ends when a sufficient number of people have immunity, either through COVID recovery or vax. Lockdown, let-it-rip, & the GBD all lead to that. (3/n)

As @MartinKulldorff has said, it makes as much sense to say "herd immunity strategy" as it does to say "gravity strategy" for landing an airplane. The only question is how to land safely, not whether gravity applies. (4/n)

So the question is how to get through this terrible pandemic with the least harm, where the harms considered include all of public health, not just COVID. The GBD & focused protection of the vulnerable is a middle ground between lockdown & let-it-rip.(5/n)

Lockdowners like Collins & Fauci presumably think that focused protection of vulnerable is impossible. They could have engaged honestly in a discussion about it, but would have found that public health is fundamentally about focused protection.

We can never debate these issues like global warming -- they're always "too important" for debate and dissent, so we proceed directly to suppression, censorship, propaganda and punishment of dissenters.

And the left's list of issues that are "too important" to allow discussion about is very long, and growing at an expodential (as Brandon would say) rate.

On Jimmy Dore's show, Max Blumenthal -- yes, they are both on the far leftwing, but they hate the "shitlibs" of the neoliberal/neocon uniparty as much as we do -- says that part of this effort, which I don't know if Collins and Fauci were directly responsible for, consisted of telling the left that the Great Barrington Declaration was a Koch operation, just because one speech was given by these guys at AEIR, which does get some money from Koch.

Koch is a boogeyman on the left, so this was a very effective propaganda tactic for poisoning the left against considering the arguments made in the Great Barrington Declaration.

I linked this piece from Kulldorff and Battacharya before, How Fauci Fooled America, from November 1. Worth reading if you missed it.

Don't forget: Francis Collins is a very, very serious person. A very respected epidemiologist scientist bureaucrat.

posted by Ace at 01:31 PM

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