Category: Public Health

Update on Long COVID

Recent evidence suggests the burden of long COVID is significant.

/ March 30, 2022
Florida "COVID theater"

Old antivax tropes never die: “COVID theater,” “Urgency of Normal,” and the Great Barrington Declaration

Last week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis held a roundtable calling to "end COVID-19 theater" that brought together the Great Barrington Declaration and "Urgency of Normal," a movement to end mask mandates and other COVID-19 mitigations in schools. The arguments used long predate the pandemic and echo a dark side of the history of American medicine.

/ March 14, 2022
The Cow-Pock

The return of the revenge of “COVID-19 mRNA vaccines permanently alter your DNA” and “lab leak”

Claims that COVID-19 vaccines "permanently alter your DNA" or that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered in a lab were resurrected last week based on two dubious studies. No matter how many times you think these myths have been debunked, they always come back for another installment of the same misinformation franchise.

/ February 28, 2022

Dr. Vinay Prasad: “Public Health’s (Mis)Truth Problem”

Dr. Vinay Prasad continues to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the government response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

/ February 27, 2022
COVID-19 "natural immunity"

Which is best, vaccine-induced immunity, “natural immunity,” or “super immunity” to COVID-19?

Those opposed to public health interventions to slow the spread of COVID-19, including masks, "lockdowns," and vaccine mandates, are hyping "natural" immunity again as somehow "superior" to vaccine-acquired immunity. It's a deceptive simplification of a complex issue.

/ February 21, 2022
Kim Kardashian

John Ioannidis uses the Kardashian Index to attack critics of the Great Barrington Declaration

This isn't a title that I ever thought I'd use or a post that I ever thought I'd write, but John Ioannidis has really done it. He's incompetently used the Kardashian index to attack John Snow Memorandum signatories and argue that the Great Barrington Declaration signatories, who argue for a "natural herd immunity" approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, are the underdogs who...

/ February 14, 2022

State legislators dispense with standard of care for COVID treatment and encourage medical misinformation

State legislatures are considering bills that protect doctors and other health care providers from being held accountable for using unproven COVID-19 treatments and spreading medical misinformation.

/ February 10, 2022
Brownstone Institute

The “spiritual child of the Great Barrington Declaration” promotes antivaccine misinformation

The signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration and its "spiritual child" the Brownstone Institute, swear up and down that they are not anttivaccine. If that's so, why are Brownstone-affiliated academics spreading antivaccine misinformation in Uganda?

/ January 24, 2022
Rubber Duck quack

Why are physicians threatened by efforts to report doctors to their state medical board for COVID-19 misinformation?

It's not "cancel culture" to delicense physicians promoting dangerous misinformation about COVID-19. It's quality control. Why do so many physicians think it is?

/ January 17, 2022

Florida Surgeon General declares single positive COVID test proves immunity forever

Florida's Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, continues to defy scientific consensus with new rules declaring a single positive COVID test proves one has "natural immunity" forever. This is but one example of recently enacted laws and similar efforts gutting public health protections in Florida, thanks to Ladapo and his boss, Gov. Ron DeSantis.

/ December 30, 2021