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[Ayumi]

This seems to be interesting. So I set an anchor for it.


GO THERE AND READ THE ORIGINAL!

https://www.misinformationkills.org/misinfomap

[*quote*]
Mapping Covid Misinformation Fraud
Wisconsin's ties to California, Texas, DC, and Florida

As featured on: https://misinformationkills.substack.com/

CALIFORNIA

Steve Kirsch

The Los Altos, CA tech millionaire and founder of the failed Covid Early Treatment Fund to study existing pharmacopeia for Covid (investors: Elon Musk, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff)

-Exposed by his alma mater MIT’s Technology Review October 2021 - CETF board walked out on Kirsch citing mental health concerns and inability to admit his trials did not yield the magic pill for Covid-19 and his subsequent anti-vaccine crusade

-Has been active on Substack for months and lists colleagues:  Robert F Kennedy Jr., Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Robert Malone, and Dr. Pierre Kory

-Has offered $1-$2million to doctors who oppose his anti-vax views (McCullough discussed this ‘untaken’ offer on the Joe Rogan Experience) however when he did debate with Dr. Avi Bitterman he did not pay up and tried to get him fired

-Sponsored the Joe Rogan & Dr. Malone ‘An American Homecoming: Defeat the Mandates DC’ rally on Jan 23rd 2022

-Was invited by Sen Ron Johnson to a meeting on the pandemic response prior to his ‘2nd Opinion’ senate panel. States that re-electing Ron Johnson is the “#1 most important thing you can do to STOP the COVID insanity”.

-Founded the Vaccine Safety Research Fund (colleagues: Dr. Malone, Dr. McCullough, and MIT’s Dr. Stephanie Seneff) which was a sponsor of the April 10th ‘Defeat the Mandates’ Los Angeles rally

-Protested outside the CA State Capitol building with the ongoing ‘Truckers Convoy’ during the committee hearing for AB2098, which was argued for by Dr. Nick Sawyer of No License For Disinformation, Dr. Tanya Spirtos of the California Medical Association, and CA Assemblymember Evan Low (bill passed committee)

-Has appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast

-Received lifetime bans from Twitter, Linkedin, and Medium, though VSRF is active on Twitter (@vacsafety) as is their backup account @VaccineTruth2

-Affiliations: Vaccine Safety Research Fund (Defeat the Mandates sponsor)

-VACCINATED

Dr. Simone Gold MD, JD/America’s Frontline Doctors

The ER physician, lawyer, and founder of pro-hydroxychloroquine America’s Frontline Doctors, the first and loudest of the prominent anti-vaccine doctor groups during the Trump administration

-Based hydroxychloroquine recommendations on controversial physician Dr. Stella Immanuel’s unproven claims

-AFLD has pressured medical boards to ‘let it slide when doctors spread covid misinformation’ and ambushed Medical Board of CA president Kristina Lawson in the parking garage of her office in addition to flying a drone over her house in December 2021

-Gold pled guilty to her attendance at the 1/6 insurrection in March 2022 and faces up to six months in jail yet still has her medical license

-Currently on the ‘AWAKEN’ pro-Trump tour with Roger Stone and Mike Flynn (association: Q-anon)

-Florida-based AFLD physician Dr. Kathleen Ann Cullen has been stripped of her state licenses (FL, NC)

-Notable AFLD members:

    Stella Immanuel MD - doctor/pastor

    James Todaro MD - partner at Greymatter Capital

    Bob Hamilton MD

    Dan Erickson DO

    Richard Urso MD

    Joseph Ladapo MD, PhD - now FL Surgeon General

-Affiliations: America’s Frontline Doctors

Dr. Vinay Prassad MD, MPH

The UCSF hematologist/oncologist, health researcher, and associate professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and loudest anti-mask physician

-Active on Substack and his own speaking series

-Affiliated with The Urgency of Normal, the group who sent Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg to testify in opposition to AB2098 in April

-Affiliations: The Urgency of Normal

Dr. Aditi Bhargava PhD

The UCSF hormone researcher with stated goal to “understand the sex-specific molecular and cellular actions of the stress hormones and their receptors that operate in health and disease”

-Member of the Unity Project who hold the IRB for the Kirsch-endorsed ‘PROVES’ study to do survey research on vaccine safety (already proven) - the survey contains many questions on hormones and and gender and sneaks in questions on the vaccine, raising concerns for study ethics and informed consent of participanats

-Dr. Mary Bowden of the FLCCC has recruited for this study on Twitter threads of antivax politicians

-Affiliations: The Unity Project (Defeat the Mandates sponsor)

Robert F Kennedy Jr

The Republican environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist founder of 501c3 charity Children’s Health Defense

-Made an anti-vax film in 2021 specifically targeting black Americans though Covid had already disproportionately affected them per NEJM

-Caught making an illegal $50,000 donation to the Republican Attorneys General Association from his 501c3 Children’s Health Defense

-Listed by the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s Disinformation Dozen

    Joseph Mercola

    Robert F Kennedy Jr

    Ty & Charlene Bollinger

    Sherri Tenpenny

    Rizza Islam

    Rashid Buttar

    Erin Elizabeth

    Sayer Ji

    Kelly Brogan

    Christiane Northrup

    Ben Tapper

    Kevin Jenkins

-Affiliations: Children’s Health Defense (Defeat the Mandates sponsor)

WISCONSIN

Senator Ron Johnson

The Wisconsin Senator aligned with Trump, up for re-election in the 2022 midterm elections

-Visited Moscow over July 4th, 2018 and said that Russian interference in the 2016 election was overblown

-Blew off FBI warning in spring 2021 that Russia may be targeting him for a disinformation campaign.

-Supported Trump’s Big Lie and anti-public health messages

-Was kicked off of Youtube twice for Covid misinformation June & November 2021

-Invited Kirsch to a meeting about the pandemic response ahead of his ‘2nd Opinion’ panel attended by Drs. Kory, McCullough and Malone on January 24th, the day after the Defeat the Mandates DC march

MythinformedMKE

The antivax, anti-CRT 501c3 organization from Milwaukee active on Twitter and their Youtube podcast

-Their website only lists their member by first name (Sean, Kristyn, Dima, Brian, and Michael) but Brian Edward is particularly vocal on Twitter @BrianEdwardMKE

-Hosted ‘Better Discourse’ events in WI and TX in 2021, with extremist guests like Niko House of Russian-controlled RT and white supremacist Twitter “celebrities” James Lindsay and Jack Posobiec

-Retweeted vaccine misinformation frequently with Joe Rogan

-Aligned politically with similar messages from Rebecca Kleefisch’s failed Mequon-Theinsville School District Board recall election over teaching CRT and enforcing Covid mandates and who is still trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin while on her current Wisconsin gubernatorial campaign directed by Alex Walker to unseat Tony Evers

-To date, Milwaukee’s Medical College of Wisconsin’s dean (Dr. Joseph Kerschner - the former Chair of the Board of Directors of the American Association of Medical Colleges) and president/CEO (Dr. John Raymond Sr. - the Rotary Club of Milwaukee’s 2021 Person of the Year, the St. Francis Children’s Center’s 2021 Humanitarian of the Year, and the Milwaukee Business Journal’s 2021 Public Health Leader of the Year) have not issued a statement denouncing MythinformedMKE’s antivax rhetoric, despite numerous public pleas from 2021 MCW alum Dr. Allison Neitzel (further reading: “MCW leader vaulting to forefront of warning employers they need to act” Milwaukee Business Journal, March 2020)

Dr. Pierre Kory MD, MA/FLCCC

The Wisconsin critical care doctor, founder of the Frontline Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) and most vocal pro-ivermectin for Covid doctor

-Based his clinical recommendations for ivermectin off of debunked small-scale studies out of Egypt found to have plagiarism and data-forging issues

-Founded the FLCCC with:

    Paul E Marik MD

    Flavio Cadegiani MD, MSc, PhD

    Joseph Varon MD

    Jose Iglesias DO

    Keith Berkowitz MD, MBA

    Fred Wagshul MD

-Testified in December 2020 on behalf of the FLCCC calling ivermectin a “wonder drug” to protect against Covid infection, caught Covid in November 2021, and has since pivoted to long-Covid concierge medicine treatments with ivermectin

-Participated in Johnson’s ‘2nd Opinion’ panel Jan 2022

-Per NEJM, ABC, and others there is no use for ivermectin use in Covid prevention or treatment

-The FLCCC provider database lists 2,697 providers worldwide (46 in Wisconsin)

-Affiliations: Unity Project, FLCCC which both sponsor Defeat the Mandates

Aaron Rodgers

The Packers quarterback, 1x Super Bowl champion , 4x NFL MVP who lied about his vaccination status

-Has been involved with the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Children’s Hospital’s Midwest Athletes Against Childood Cancer Inc. which hosted an “Evening With Aaron Rodgers” in 2014

-Holds a 2018 honorary doctorate from the Medical College of Wisconsin for his “commitment to end childhood cancer and blood disorders”

    "MCW's conferral of an honorary degree on Aaron Rodgers not only honors this extraordinary individual, but also the MACC Fund's special relationship with the Medical College of Wisconsin," said Jon McGlocklin, co-founder and president of the MACC Fund in 2018

    “The Packers and MCW have a long and storied history. The Green Bay Packers Foundation has granted nearly $350,000 in support of impact grant for scholarship, curriculum development for MCW-GB, and other MCW initiatives.” - Packers.com press release, 2018

-Responded “yeah, I’ve been immunized” to a question about his vaccination status (Further reading: “The unfiltered year of Aaron Rodgers” by ESPN senior writer Kevin Van Valkenburg)

-1400 American children died of Covid-19 and estimates of 150,000 children have lost a primary caregiver to the virus, more severely in poorer minority groups as has been the case throughout the pandemic (see: American Academy of Pediatrics)

-No comment from MCW’s dean Dr. Joseph Kerschner and president/CEO Dr. John Raymond Sr.

TEXAS

Joe Rogan

The Austin-based podcaster with a record-breaking $100million Spotify contract who hosted Dr. McCullough and Dr. Malone

-Retweeted vaccine misinformation frequently with MythinformedMKE and LGBTQ+ misinformation with LibsofTikTok

-Was the face of Dr. Malone’s DC Defeat the Mandates march in January 2021

Dr. Peter McCullough MD, MPH

The former Baylor cardiologist who appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience

-Baylor has filed a restraining order against their controversial former employee

-Has taken $2.1million from pharmacology companies (non-research) since 2014 including from AstraZeneca per OpenPayments, despite calling pro-vaccine doctors grifters

-Has a long history of failing to disclose financial ties, dating back to 2012

-Participated in Johnson’s ‘2nd Opinion’ panel

-Has appeared on the Chinese Falun-Gong cult affiliated pro-Trump Epoch Times with Roman Balmakov

-Has appeared with Hillsdale College, the politically active Christian school

-Has appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast

-Affiliations: Unity Project, Hillsdale College

Dr. Mary Bowden MD

The Houston-based ENT physician, owner of BreatheMD, and clinical advisor to the anti-vaccine group Frontline Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, founded by Dr. Kory

-Houston Methodist has suspended her privileged and reported her to the Texas medical boards

-Has referred to the physician group No License for Disinformation as the ‘Gestapo’

-Has harassed pharmacists who won’t fill her ivermectin prescriptions, going as far as to post the home address of a pharmacist online

-Posted SurveyMonkey and Qualtrics survey links to the ‘PROVES’ study endorsed by Kirsch (IRB Aditi Bhargava) on anti-vaccine political Twitter threads (Marjoree Taylor Greene) to recruit anti-vax participants and a biased sample (compare recruiting ethical issues to Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s debunked/retracted vaccine/autism studies)

-Affiliations: Frontline Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance

Koch Industries

The Oil empire and sponsors of the ‘Great Barrington Declaration’, the pro-economy anti-public health policy adopted by Trump in 2020

-Exposed by CMD laid out the Koch ties to the GBD via their support of the libertarian think-tank the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER)

-AIER has a history of climate change denial (see piece out of the London School of Economics)

-Have been major GOP donors prior to Trump (see their page on OpenSecrets)

-Affiliations: Great Barrington Declaration via AIER

Elon Musk

The billionaire founder of Tesla and SpaceX who donated to Kirsch’s Covid Early Treatment Fund

-Vocally supported the Canadian Truckers protest on Twitter, comparing Justin Trudeau to Hitler

-Has claimed that SpaceX was working on ventilators to help the Covid-19 crisis, to date there has been no update on this

-Now owns Twitter

Del Bigtree/Informed Consent Action Network/The Highwire

The TV/film producer and CEO of the Austin, TX anti-vax group Informed Consent Action Network

-Based his opinions on vaccines off of Andrew Wakefield’s discredited, debunked vaccine autism link after working on The Doctors

-Used The Highwire webcast to sow covid skepticism prior to the vaccines being available

-Spoke at the pro-Trump Stop the Steal rally before the January 6th insurrection

-Was a main speaker at the Malone/Rogan January 2022 Defeat the Mandates DC rally where he called for Nuremberg-like trials for doctors and journalists

-Despite Youtube closing his account, his Highwire show is popular on Roku and Rumble and distributed on Twitter 

-Listed as the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s Top 12 Pandemic Profiteers

    Joseph Mercola

    Andrew Wakefield

    Robert Kennedy Jr.

    Del Bigtree

    Larry Cook

    Ty and Charlene Bollinger

    Sherri Tenpenny

    Mike Adams

    Rashid Buttar

    Barbara Loe Fischer

    Sayer Ji

    Kelly Brogan

-Affiliations: ICAN (Defeat the Mandates sponsor)

DC (METRO AREA)

The Great Barrington Declaration (AIER/Koch Industries, Brownstone Institute, Hillsdale College)

The pro-economy anti-public health policy adopted by Trump in 2020 with ties to AIER, Koch Industries, the Brownstone Institute, and the far-right and politically active DC chapter of Christian school Hillsdale College, authored by:

-Jay Bhattacharya, the professor of medicine at Stanford University, research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, director of Stanford's Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging - contributor to the GBD-tied Brownstone Institute

-Martin Kulldorff, the former professor of medicine at Harvard University - contributor to the GBD-tied Brownstone Institute

-Sunetra Gupta, the epidemiologist at the University of Oxford - contributor to the GBD-tied Brownstone Institute

    GBD was signed at a summit hosted by the American Institute of Economic Research (AIER) a libertarian think tank with a history of climate change denial

Scott Atlas, the Robert Wesson Senior Fellow in health care policy at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University and a fellow at Hillsdale College's Academy for Science and Freedom - contributor to the GBD-tied Brownstone Institute

Dr. Robert Malone MD

The Maryland-based physician, biochemist, and contributor to early stages of mRNA vaccine development who appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience

-Overstated his role in mRNA vaccine development, was involved in only early lipid uptake

-Active on Substack

-Participated in Johnson’s ‘2nd Opinion’ panel

-States that “Senator Ron Johnson is a Truth Warrior and COVID hero” and supports his reelection

-VACCINATED

Affiliations: Unity Project, Vaccine Safety Research Fund

FLORIDA

Dr. Jospeh Mercola DO

See New York Times documentary “Superspreader” on Hulu.

Dr.  Joseph Ladapo MD, PhD

The America’s Frontline Doctors founding member who became Ron DeSantis’s Florida Surgeon General in September 2021

-Appeared in the original AFLD video shared on Twitter by then-president Trump

-Former UCLA health policy physician researcher who called for hospitals to focus on capacity over case counts/deaths and supported keeping the economy open and lied about having treated Covid-19 patients at UCLA

-His UCLA supervisor Dr. Carol Mangione did not offer a recommendation for the FL surgeon general position, instead stating: “In my opinion the people of Florida would be better served by a surgeon general who grounds his policy decisions and recommendations in the best scientific evidence rather than opinions.”

-Has opposed mask and vaccine mandates, in line with DeSantis’s political platform on Covid and refused to wear a mask himself when meeting with Senator Tina Polsky (D-Boca Raton) despite her telling him she was suffering from breast cancer

Steve Bannon

The founder of Breitbart News, former Trump campaign chief executive officer then chief strategist, and self-described nationalist populist who runs the War Room Podcast

-Unclear where he resides, though he has registered to vote in Florida

-Called Breitbart the home of the “alt right” - a term also used by neo-nazi leader Richard Spencer for his movement - and failed to denounce extremists like Spencer and former KKK grand wizard David Duke

-Ousted from Trump administration in 2017 after the Charlottesville white nationalist rally left 19 injured and 1 dead over his ties to neo-nazis

-Previously sat on the board of Cambridge Analytica, the British consulting firm that collected data on Facebook users for political advertising  (see Netflix documentary “The Great Hack”)

-Has hosted antivax physicians  Malone, McCullough, and Kory on his War Room Pandemic podcast as well as Steve Kirsch

Donald Trump

The sitting president at the time of the 2020 Covid-19 outbreak who downplayed the public health threat of the virus

-Embraced the Koch Industries-linked Great Barrington Declaration denounced by his own public health organizations

-Per Vox :”Even while sick with Covid-19, Trump sees masks as a symbol of weakness President Donald Trump’s erratic behavior fits what behavioral scientists call ‘precarious masculinity’”

-Many physicians have commented on Trump’s clinical narcissism (see 2018 piece from The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law)

-Supported by Wisconsin Sen Ron Johnson in his 2020 Election Big Lie and anti-public health Covid response

-VACCINATED & BOOSTED

-Presumed 2024 GOP presidential nominee
MisinformationKills

[*/quote*]

[Rhokia]

Mit welcher Dreistigkeit die akademischen Morschhölzer ihre unwahren Tatsachenbehauptungen behaupten spottet jeder Beschreibung. Der in obigem Post genannte Martin Kulldorf hat gestern bei Twitter und woanders seinen Mist verbreitet:


https://twitter.com/MartinKulldorff/status/1767312395959980034

SCREENSHOT:



KLARTEXT:

[*quote*]
Martin Kulldorff @MartinKulldorff

I am no longer a professor of medicine at @Harvard. Here is the story of my Harvard experience until I was fired for clinging to the truth.

From
https://www.city-journal.org/article/harvard-tramples-the-truth

11:11 PM · Mar 11, 2024
4.7M Views
[*/quote*]


Tatsache ist, daß Kinder sehr schwer an Covid erkranken.

Tatsache ist, daß Kinder immer wieder an Covid erkranken.

Tatsache ist, daß Covid bei jeder Infektion Hirnschäden verursacht.

Tatsache ist, daß Kinder ohne weiteres 6 Mal pro Jahr an Covid erkranken.

Tatsache ist, daß es keine Immunität durch eine Covid-Erkrankung gibt.

Tatsache ist, daß die Lockdowns die Gefährdung durch Infektion verringert haben.

Tatsache ist, daß die Kinder in Schulen zu zwingen (und dort ohne Masken) die Kinder ERHEBLICH gefährdet.


Trotz dieser weltweit bekannten Tatsachen lügt Martin Kulldorff kackdreist:

"This was a risk worth taking for older people at high risk of Covid mortality—but not for children, who have a minuscule risk for Covid mortality, nor for those who already had infection-acquired immunity."

"COVID vaccines are important for older high-risk people and their care-takers. Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children."


Das Beweisstück für Kulldorffs Lügen:
The piece of proof for Kulldorff's lies:

https://www.city-journal.org/article/harvard-tramples-the-truth

[*quote*]
Martin Kulldorff
Harvard Tramples the Truth

When it came to debating Covid lockdowns, Veritas wasn’t the university’s guiding principle.
/ Eye on the News / Education, Politics and law
Mar 11 2024

I am no longer a professor of medicine at Harvard. The Harvard motto is Veritas, Latin for truth. But, as I discovered, truth can get you fired. This is my story—a story of a Harvard biostatistician and infectious-disease epidemiologist, clinging to the truth as the world lost its way during the Covid pandemic.

On March 10, 2020, before any government prompting, Harvard declared that it would “suspend in-person classes and shift to online learning.” Across the country, universities, schools, and state governments followed Harvard’s lead.

Yet it was clear, from early 2020, that the virus would eventually spread across the globe, and that it would be futile to try to suppress it with lockdowns. It was also clear that lockdowns would inflict enormous collateral damage, not only on education but also on public health, including treatment for cancer, cardiovascular disease, and mental health. We will be dealing with the harm done for decades. Our children, the elderly, the middle class, the working class, and the poor around the world—all will suffer.

Schools closed in many other countries, too, but under heavy international criticism, Sweden kept its schools and daycares open for its 1.8 million children, ages one to 15. Why? While anyone can get infected, we have known since early 2020 that more than a thousandfold difference in Covid mortality risk holds between the young and the old. Children faced minuscule risk from Covid, and interrupting their education would disadvantage them for life, especially those whose families could not afford private schools, pod schools, or tutors, or to homeschool.

What were the results during the spring of 2020? With schools open, Sweden had zero Covid deaths in the one-to-15 age group, while teachers had the same mortality as the average of other professions. Based on those facts, summarized in a July 7, 2020, report by the Swedish Public Health Agency, all U.S. schools should have quickly reopened. Not doing so led to “startling evidence on learning loss” in the United States, especially among lower- and middle-class children, an effect not seen in Sweden.

Sweden was the only major Western country that rejected school closures and other lockdowns in favor of concentrating on the elderly, and the final verdict is now in. Led by an intelligent social democrat prime minister (a welder), Sweden had the lowest excess mortality among major European countries during the pandemic, and less than half that of the United States. Sweden’s Covid deaths were below average, and it avoided collateral mortality caused by lockdowns.

Yet on July 29, 2020, the Harvard-edited New England Journal of Medicine published an article by two Harvard professors on whether primary schools should reopen, without even mentioning Sweden. It was like ignoring the placebo control group when evaluating a new pharmaceutical drug. That’s not the path to truth.

That spring, I supported the Swedish approach in op-eds published in my native Sweden, but despite being a Harvard professor, I was unable to publish my thoughts in American media. My attempts to disseminate the Swedish school report on Twitter (now X) put me on the platform’s Trends Blacklist. In August 2020, my op-ed on school closures and Sweden was finally published by CNN—but not the one you’re thinking of. I wrote it in Spanish, and CNN–Español ran it. CNN–English was not interested.

I was not the only public health scientist speaking out against school closures and other unscientific countermeasures. Scott Atlas, an especially brave voice, used scientific articles and facts to challenge the public health advisors in the Trump White House, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci, National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins, and Covid coordinator Deborah Birx, but to little avail. When 98 of his Stanford faculty colleagues unjustly attacked Atlas in an open letter that did not provide a single example of where he was wrong, I wrote a response in the student-run Stanford Daily to defend him. I ended the letter by pointing out that:

    Among experts on infectious disease outbreaks, many of us have long advocated for an age-targeted strategy, and I would be delighted to debate this with any of the 98 signatories. Supporters include Professor Sunetra Gupta at Oxford University, the world’s preeminent infectious disease epidemiologist. Assuming no bias against women scientists of color, I urge Stanford faculty and students to read her thoughts.

None of the 98 signatories accepted my offer to debate. Instead, someone at Stanford sent complaints to my superiors at Harvard, who were not thrilled with me.

I had no inclination to back down. Together with Gupta and Jay Bhattacharya at Stanford, I wrote the Great Barrington Declaration, arguing for age-based focused protection instead of universal lockdowns, with specific suggestions for how better to protect the elderly, while letting children and young adults live close to normal lives.

With the Great Barrington Declaration, the silencing was broken. While it is easy to dismiss individual scientists, it was impossible to ignore three senior infectious-disease epidemiologists from three leading universities. The declaration made clear that no scientific consensus existed for school closures and many other lockdown measures. In response, though, the attacks intensified—and even grew slanderous. Collins, a lab scientist with limited public-health experience who controls most of the nation’s medical research budget, called us “fringe epidemiologists” and asked his colleagues to orchestrate a “devastating published takedown.” Some at Harvard obliged.

A prominent Harvard epidemiologist publicly called the declaration “an extreme fringe view,” equating it with exorcism to expel demons. A member of Harvard’s Center for Health and Human Rights, who had argued for school closures, accused me of “trolling” and having “idiosyncratic politics,” falsely alleging that I was “enticed . . . with Koch money,” “cultivated by right-wing think tanks,” and “won’t debate anyone.” (A concern for those less privileged does not automatically make you right-wing!) Others at Harvard worried about my “scientifically inaccurate” and “potentially dangerous position,” while “grappling with the protections offered by academic freedom.” 

Though powerful scientists, politicians, and the media vigorously denounced it, the Great Barrington Declaration gathered almost a million signatures, including tens of thousands from scientists and health-care professionals. We were less alone than we had thought.

Even from Harvard, I received more positive than negative feedback. Among many others, support came from a former chair of the Department of Epidemiology—a former dean, a top surgeon, and an autism expert, who saw firsthand the devastating collateral damage that lockdowns inflicted on her patients. While some of the support I received was public, most was behind the scenes from faculty unwilling to speak publicly.

Two Harvard colleagues tried to arrange a debate between me and opposing Harvard faculty, but just as with Stanford, there were no takers. The invitation to debate remains open. The public should not trust scientists, even Harvard scientists, unwilling to debate their positions with fellow scientists.

My former employer, the Mass General Brigham hospital system, employs the majority of Harvard Medical School faculty. It is the single largest recipient of NIH funding—over $1 billion per year from U.S. taxpayers. As part of the offensive against the Great Barrington Declaration, one of Mass General’s board members, Rochelle Walensky, a fellow Harvard professor who had served on the advisory council to NIH director Collins, engaged me in a one-directional “debate.” After a Boston radio station interviewed me, Walensky came on as the official representative of Mass General Brigham to counter me, without giving me an opportunity to respond. A few months later, she became the new CDC director.

At this point, it was clear that I faced a choice between science or my academic career. I chose the former. What is science if we do not humbly pursue the truth?

In the 1980s, I worked for a human rights organization in Guatemala. We provided round-the-clock international physical accompaniment to poor campesinos, unionists, women’s groups, students, and religious organizations. Our mission was to protect those who spoke up against the killings and disappearances perpetrated by the right-wing military dictatorship, which shunned international scrutiny of its dirty work. Though the military threatened us, stabbed two of my colleagues, and threw a hand grenade into the house where we all lived and worked, we stayed to protect the brave Guatemalans.

I chose then to risk my life to help protect vulnerable people. It was a comparatively easy choice to risk my academic career to do the same during the pandemic. While the situation was less dramatic and terrifying than the one that I faced in Guatemala, many more lives were ultimately at stake.

While school closures and lockdowns were the big controversy of 2020, a new dispute emerged in 2021: the Covid vaccines. For more than two decades, I have helped the CDC and FDA develop their post-market vaccine safety systems. Vaccines are a vital medical invention, allowing people to obtain immunity without the risk that comes from getting sick. The smallpox vaccine alone has saved millions of lives. In 2020, the CDC asked me to serve on its Covid-19 Vaccine Safety Technical Work Group. My tenure didn’t last long—though not for the reason you may think.

The randomized controlled trials (RCTs) for the Covid vaccines were not properly designed. While they demonstrated the vaccines’ short-term efficacy against symptomatic infection, they were not designed to evaluate hospitalization and death, which is what matters. In subsequent pooled RCT analyses by vaccine type, independent Danish scientists showed that the mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) did not reduce short-term, all-cause mortality, while the adenovirus-vector vaccines (Johnson & Johnson, Astra-Zeneca, Sputnik) did reduce mortality, by at least 30 percent.

I have spent decades studying drug and vaccine adverse reactions without taking any money from pharmaceutical companies. Every honest person knows that new drugs and vaccines come with potential risks that are unknown when approved. This was a risk worth taking for older people at high risk of Covid mortality—but not for children, who have a minuscule risk for Covid mortality, nor for those who already had infection-acquired immunity. To a question about this on Twitter in 2021, I responded:

    Thinking that everyone must be vaccinated is as scientifically flawed as thinking that nobody should. COVID vaccines are important for older high-risk people and their care-takers. Those with prior natural infection do not need it. Nor children.

At the behest of the U.S. government, Twitter censored my tweet for contravening CDC policy. Having also been censored by LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube, I could not freely communicate as a scientist. Who decided that American free-speech rights did not apply to honest scientific comments at odds with those of the CDC director?

I was tempted just to shut up, but a Harvard colleague convinced me otherwise. Her family had been active against Communism in Eastern Europe, and she reminded me that we needed to use whatever openings we could find—while self-censoring, when necessary, to avoid getting suspended or fired.

On that score, however, I failed. A month after my tweet, I was fired from the CDC Covid Vaccine Safety Working Group—not because I was critical of vaccines but because I contradicted CDC policy. In April 2021, the CDC paused the J&J vaccine after reports of blood clots in a few women under 50. No cases were reported among older people, who benefit the most from the vaccine. Since there was a general vaccine shortage at that time, I argued in an op-ed that the J&J vaccine should not be paused for older Americans. This is what got me in trouble. I am probably the only person ever fired by the CDC for being too pro-vaccine. While the CDC lifted the pause four days later, the damage was done. Some older Americans undoubtedly died because of this vaccine “pause.”

Bodily autonomy is not the only argument against Covid vaccine mandates. They are also unscientific and unethical.

With a genetic condition called alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, which leaves me with a weakened immune system, I had more reason to be personally concerned about Covid than most Harvard professors. I expected that Covid would hit me hard, and that’s precisely what happened in early 2021, when the devoted staff at Manchester Hospital in Connecticut saved my life. But it would have been wrong for me to let my personal vulnerability to infections influence my opinions and recommendations as a public-health scientist, which must focus on everyone’s health.

The beauty of our immune system is that those who recover from an infection are protected if and when they are re-exposed. This has been known since the Athenian Plague of 430 BC—but it is no longer known at Harvard. Three prominent Harvard faculty coauthored the now infamous “consensus” memorandum in The Lancet, questioning the existence of Covid-acquired immunity. By continuing to mandate the vaccine for students with a prior Covid infection, Harvard is de facto denying 2,500 years of science.

Since mid-2021, we have known, as one would expect, that Covid-acquired immunity is superior to vaccine-acquired immunity. Based on that, I argued that hospitals should hire, not fire, nurses and other hospital staff with Covid-acquired immunity, since they have stronger immunity than the vaccinated.

Vaccine mandates are unethical. The RCTs mainly enrolled young and middle-aged adults, but observational studies showed that Covid vaccines prevented Covid hospitalizations and deaths for older people. Amid a worldwide vaccine shortage, it was unethical to force the vaccine on low-risk students or those like me who were already immune from having had Covid, while my 87-year-old neighbor and other high-risk older people around the world could not get the shot. Any pro-vaccine person should, for this reason alone, have opposed the Covid vaccine mandates.

For scientific, ethical, public health, and medical reasons, I objected both publicly and privately to the Covid vaccine mandates. I already had superior infection-acquired immunity; and it was risky to vaccinate me without proper efficacy and safety studies on patients with my type of immune deficiency. This stance got me fired by Mass General Brigham—and consequently fired from my Harvard faculty position.

While several vaccine exemptions were given by the hospital, my medical exemption request was denied. I was less surprised that my religious exemption request was denied: “Having had COVID disease, I have stronger longer lasting immunity than those vaccinated (Gazit et al). Lacking scientific rationale, vaccine mandates are religious dogma, and I request a religious exemption from COVID vaccination.”

If Harvard and its hospitals want to be credible scientific institutions, they should rehire those of us they fired. And Harvard would be wise to eliminate its Covid vaccine mandates for students, as most other universities have already done.

Most Harvard faculty diligently pursue truth in a wide variety of fields, but Veritas has not been the guiding principle of Harvard leaders. Nor have academic freedom, intellectual curiosity, independence from external forces, or concern for ordinary people guided their decisions.

Harvard and the wider scientific community have much work to do to deserve and regain public trust. The first steps are the restoration of academic freedom and the cancelling of cancel culture. When scientists have different takes on topics of public importance, universities should organize open and civilized debates to pursue the truth. Harvard could have done that—and it still can, if it chooses.

Almost everyone now realizes that school closures and other lockdowns, were a colossal mistake. Francis Collins has acknowledged his error of singularly focusing on Covid without considering collateral damage to education and non-Covid health outcomes. That’s the honest thing to do, and I hope this honesty will reach Harvard. The public deserves it, and academia needs it to restore its credibility.

Science cannot survive in a society that does not value truth and strive to discover it. The scientific community will gradually lose public support and slowly disintegrate in such a culture. The pursuit of truth requires academic freedom with open, passionate, and civilized scientific discourse, with zero tolerance for slander, bullying, or cancellation. My hope is that someday, Harvard will find its way back to academic freedom and independence.

Martin Kulldorff is a former professor of medicine at Harvard University and Mass General Brigham. He is a founding fellow of the Academy for Science and Freedom.
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