My Invitation to Speak Got Rescinded, But I Went Anyway (PART THREE)

12:30-1:30 Lunch Break

1:30-2:45 Panel 4: “Science Communication, Evidence, and Accountability”

• Speaker 1: Eric Winsberg, PhD, Professor, Department of Philosophy, USF; British Academy Global Professor, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge

• Speaker 2: Joshua Scacco, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Communication; Director, Center for Sustainable Democracy, USF

• Panelist: Jason Salemi, PhD, MPH, FACE, Professor, College of Public Health, USF Health

• Panelist: Martin Kulldorff, PhD, Drhc, Epidemiologist, Biostatistician, Founding Fellow, Academy for Science and Freedom, Hillsdale College

• Moderator: Stephen Turner, PhD, Distinguished University Professor, Department of Philosophy, USF

A fundamental conflict has emerged since, and because of, COVID over science communication: how should the uncertainty that always exists in science be communicated to the public and used to justify policy? Just be honest and willing to debate the issues. The (official, manufactured, government) Narrative side was unwilling to discuss/debate anything connected to COVID-19. I challenged 16 pediatricians in the Jacksonville area who had publicly admonished parents for choosing not to vaccinate their children. The debate was over childhood vaccine mandates which I was against. All 16 refused. One non-doctor who heard about the challenges asked to change the debate to adult vaccine mandates which I was also against. We were ready to go until he backed out. He was nice enough to attend a presentation I gave instead and told me at the conclusion that he was glad he backed out .

Why did the 16 pediatricians refuse to debate an issue of utmost importance they had publicly taken a stand on? I don’t know. Could it be because they knew they were wrong.

People who weren’t doctors or other healthcare providers were keeping blogs that explained on a daily basis how the medical authorities , medical University faculties and how our leading science-based institutions were wrong. The chief of internal medicine at UC San Francisco Medical School said he was going to wear a mask for the rest of his life. The view of some science communicators is that uncertainty should never be addressed. To do so invite such things as vaccine hesitancy in a public health emergency, conspiracy theories, and proliferation of misinformation. This is idiotic. If you never address uncertainty, you make no progress. On top of this, we now know the misinformation was coming from the side that refused to debate, i.e. those who endorsed the official narrative.

Peter Hotez and the MDTV Mafia (Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, Dr. Leanna Wen, Dr. William Haseltine (not a medical doctor even though he wrote books entitled, “A Family Guide to Covid: Questions & Answers for Parents, Grandparents and Children” and “A Covid Back To School Guide: Questions and Answers For Parents and Students”), Dr. Anthony Fauci, and dozens of others who appeared on CNN, MSNBC, and network television were wrong about virtually everything. The public would have fared much better if these people had agreed to debate those who disagreed with them. They might have escaped without looking like complete idiots too. Dr. Reiner was still asking for more contact tracing in October of 2020, Dr. Wen supported “carrot and sticking” people to take the vaccines, Sanjay Gupta was giving out cloth masks his daughter had made to colleagues on CNN and Dr. Haseltine said, “If the virus is allowed to spread, we are looking at two to six million Americans dead, not just this year, but every year.” The stupidity was beyond belief. Addressing uncertainty (i.e. disagreement ) with open discussions/debates would not have “invited the proliferation of misinformation”, it would have REDUCED it.

Others argue that this approach endangers, politicizes, and undermines the legitimacy of science. The problem of evidence poses related questions about authority: who is justified in making decisions in the face of radical uncertainty? The response to COVID provides a master class in these conflicts. First of all, there wasn’t “radical uncertainty” with COVID-19. From the very beginning, myself, Dr. Mike Yeadon, Dr. John Lee, Ivor Cummins, Spartacus, Dr. Sunetra Gupta, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Dr. John Ioannidis and others were right on over 90% of the important issues.

Second, the “problem of evidence”?. The more properly-gathered evidence you have, the more likely you are to understand something and act on it intelligently.

Finally, something Dr. Scacco said struck me as completely irrelevant to the science we were supposed to be considering. You will see it for yourself in PART FOUR when I post the video of the entire conference. He said something like, “and isn’t it great that all the people on stage look completely different!” and there was quite a bit of applause. Call me crazy but who gets selected to speak and populate panels should depend on merit, not what the selectees look like. Dr. Scacco is showing us that he endorses DEI instead of a merit-based system as did Harvard Admissions when they discriminated against Asians. I guess Dr. Scacco would have been on Harvard’s side in the lawsuit the Asian families brought against Harvard College. Not me. I was pleased when the Asian families won. Thankfully, MIT does not engage in such practices. A few years ago, MIT’s entering freshman class was 53% Asian (including mixed) while Harvard’s was 18%.

I will note the time in the video segment when Dr. Scacco made that comment in PART FOUR. It was a very “woke” thing to say and explains a lot of the other actions that were taken at the conference.

2:45-3:00 Afternoon Break

3:00-4:30 Panel 5: “Where Do We Go from Here?”

• Panelists: Alina Chan, PhD, Tracy Beth Høeg, MD, PhD, Martin Kulldorff, PhD, Charles Lockwood, MD, Sten Vermund, MD, PhD, Jay Wolfson, DrPH, JD

• Moderators: Amber Gum, PhD, Kristopher Kaliebe, MD, Lynn Martin, PhD, Stephen Turner, PhD

The day will conclude with an open discussion among panelists and the audience. The goal is to synthesize lessons learned across all dimensions of the pandemic and identify important unresolved issues for future inquiry. What should we do the same, and what should we do differently to prevent and manage future public health events? What can we extrapolate from COVID experiences to improve communication, science, and public policy related to other contentious issues our society – and world – are facing? Just stop denying people’s first amendment rights.

4:30-4:45 Concluding Remarks

Charles (Charly) Lockwood, MD, Executive Vice President of USF Health, Dean of USF Health Morsani College of Medicine.

Several people came up to me at the close and apologized for the way I was treated. And that was just for the censorship I received at the conference. None of them knew I was canceled as a speaker and not being notified until I received the Conference Announcement. I said what am I going to do now? I’ve had my identity stolen. I’ve written a 2,000 page book- the ultimate history of COVID-19- as best I can but I can’t announce its release. I’ve lost my Facebook pages, Twitter, all my emails, etc. All I have left is this Substack to get the word out. I will need help getting the word out from all of you. I will publish it when I’m sure the identity thief can’t steal all the royalties.

END OF PART THREE

(PART FOUR will be video from the Conference. Be sure to tune in. Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel…)