Unpredictable evolutions may ensue, including financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric
In March 2020, Dr. John Ioannidis published a paper titled Coronavirus Disease 2019: The Harms of Exaggerated Information and Non-Evidence-Based Measures. In it, he spoke with great confidence about a new virus that had already wreaked havoc overseas. Despite this, Dr. Ioannidis wrote about about exaggerated pandemic estimates, exaggerated case fatality rate, and exaggerated exponential community spread. He said a claim that 20%-60% of adults would be infected, was “substantially exaggerated.” He said, “China data are more compatible with close contact rather than wide community spread being the main mode of transmission.” He said that, “Even if COVID-19 is not a 1918-recap in infection-related deaths, some coronavirus may match the 1918 pandemic in future seasons. Thus, we should learn and be better prepared.”
He felt this coronavirus was a false alarm. He wrote that:
If only part of resources mobilized to implement extreme measures for COVID-19 had been invested towards enhancing influenza vaccination uptake, tens of thousands of influenza deaths might have been averted.
While Dr. Ioannidis called for tranquility and calmness with regards to COVID, he warned of dire consequences if we tried to contain it. In another essay from March 2020, titled A Fiasco in the Making? as the Coronavirus Pandemic Takes Hold, We are Making Decisions Without Reliable Data. He speculated that COVID could be less deadly than the flu and said:
If that is the true rate, locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies.
One of the bottom lines is that we don’t know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health. Unpredictable evolutions may ensue, including financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric.
By the end of March, the headlines would read Surge in Deaths Overwhelms New York’s Morgues, Hospitals and Shocking Video Shows the Bodies of NYC Coronavirus Victims Being Forklifted into a Refrigerated Rruck Used as a Temporary Morgue.
Dr. Ioannidis was totally unmoved by what was happening in my hospital, however, claiming in April that the “devastation” of COVID mitigation measures “can be extreme and it can be far worse than anything that coronavirus can do.”
Dr. Ioannidis’s approach to risk was clear in spring 2020, and he never deviated from it. While basically everything about COVID’s danger was exaggerated, the real threat was an imaginary dystopia- financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric– one that would be manifest into existence by trying to limit COVID. Moreover, in order to contain the flu or some future coronavirus, we needed to let this one rip.
Dr. Ioannidis made these claims in the name of data, evidence, and rigor, though always without reference to what was happening in the real world at the time. Headlines of overflowing hospitals and morgues didn’t count for him. In his view, these obvious, present dangers, also known as reality, could be casually brushed away in service of preventing hypothetical, future catastrophes.
We need some shaking up and we need that to happen rigorously. If we don’t, it will be done with political means.
Though the threats are different today, Dr. Ioannidis’s approach to them hasn’t changed a bit. A recent article titled Will NIH’s New Director Reform His Agency—or Destroy It? noted that there are “13 open directorships at NIH’s 27 institutes and centers” and said the following:
One longtime colleague and friend, who has kept in touch with the director since he took the job, pleads for scientists—and reporters—to give him a chance. “I do worry that taking the stance that ‘Everything was perfect, and now comes Jay Bhattacharya and destroys everything’ is very problematic,” says Stanford physician-scientist John Ioannidis. “We need some shaking up and we need that to happen rigorously. If we don’t, it will be done with political means.”
And there it is. In addition to a dishonest straw man- no one said everything was perfect– Dr. Ioannidis is again claiming that our attempts to mitigate a current danger, MAHA in this case, will end up leading to a worse catastrophe in the future.
Again, Dr. Ioannidis conveniently disregards what is happening in the real world. In reality, Dr. Bhattacharya openly campaigned for Ron DeSantis and Kennedy last year and he continues to fluff Trump and give overtly political, religious speeches at Turning Point USA to this day. Science doesn’t have to be dominated by the “political left” according to Dr. Bhattacharya.
Incredibly, Dr. Ioannidis claims that those who object to this rhetoric will be responsible for the future politicization of science. In his telling, Dr. Bhattacharya is just here to shake things up, and he is doing so with rigor. Everything is perfect, apparently, and Dr. Bhattacharya’s critics need to lay off. They are “very problematic”.
Trump cuts disrupted 383 clinical trials, affecting 74,000 trial participants
In reality, no one needs Dr. Ioannidis’s permission to criticize Dr. Bhattacharya or anyone else in our government and medical establishment. However, perhaps the real lesson here is for journalists. What is the point in interviewing Dr. Ioannidis when everyone already knows he is going to use bland bromides about data and rigor to shelter and defend the MAHA doctors he’s promoted for years. Was there any chance he going to say, “Yeah, it turns out my buddies Jay, Vinay, and Marty are screwing things up pretty badly.” Of course not. As such, there is no need for journalists to seek his opinions further. He has nothing to contribute to our understanding of this sad moment, except as a chief enabler of it.
Posing as an wise, elder statesman and a neutral guardian of science, Dr. Ioannidis managed to pontificate mightily on COVID from a safe distance without ever being forced to acknowledge the tragic realities on the ground. There is no need for journalists to enable his charade today. Moving forward anyone who feels compelled to interview Dr. Ioannidis should do nothing but get his reaction to the headlines about the current state of science and medicine. Given that he feels we must embrace purges, censorship, canceled clinical trials, and shuttered labs to protect science and keep it apolitical, he should be forced to explain exactly why.