I will start this post with an optimistic prediction made by Dr. John Ioaniddis. The doctor said that.
If I were to make an informed estimate based on the limited testing data we have, I would say that covid-19 will result in fewer than 40,000 deaths this season in the USA.
The death toll of Americans by April 9, 2020 was 21,993.
By April 17, 2020, America had 39,581 deaths and 2,197 deaths. On the day that his prediction was proven wrong, he gave an interview in which he continued to downplay the problem. He said that the study was flawed.
We realize that the number of infected people is somewhere between 50 and 85 times more compared to what we thought, compared to what had been documented. Immediately, that means that the infection fatality rate, the chance of dying, the probability of dying, if you are infected, diminishes by 50-85 fold, because the denominator in the calculation becomes 50-85 fold bigger. If you take these numbers into account, they suggest that the infection fatality rate for this new coronavirus is likely to be in the same ballpark as seasonal influenza…
Our data suggests that COVID-19 has an infection fatality rate that is in the same ballpark as seasonal influenza. It suggests that even though this is a very serious problem, we should not fear. It suggests that we have solid ground to have optimism about the possibility of eventually reopening our society and gaining back our lives…We have data now that the infection fatality rate is much, much lower, compared to our original expectations and fears. I think that there is no reason to fear.
Hospitals were being overrun with worry according to Dr. Ioannidis. He spoke.
I think that in many of these places, unfortunately, we saw many people going to the hospital probably under a sense of fear and threat and panic, and we had the environment heavily contaminated, generating hospital chains of infection and therefore infecting lots of people who were very susceptible, and who would do very poorly if, on top of whatever they had, they also got COVID-19 infection.
No one who worked in a COVID hotspot at that time ever made a statement like that. What was happening was described by healthcare workers. A nurse who served in Iraq and Afghanistan said that he would rather die of a disease than be a casualty of war. There is a doctor at the hospital.
If you watch a war movie to see people shooting from all over, that’s what this almost felt like. One thing after the next after next, you can’t even catch up with what has to happen.
On April 20th, 2020, Dr. Ioannidis was a guest on a Fox News program. For elderly people, especially those in nursing homes, the risk of dying from COVID was high. Most of the population has minimal risk in the range of dying while you drive from home to work and back. The death rate from infections is in the range of 1 in a thousand. He said, "You say one in a thousand" One-tenth of 1% of the population that actually has the virus will pass away as a result of the virus, or in connection to the virus, is that?
The week before this interview, New York City had recorded over 10,000 carbon dioxide deaths. If 10,000 people had already died and only one in 1,000 died overall, this would require 10 million New Yorkers to have been exposed to the disease. It would take 1 billion infections to kill a million Americans, triple the population.
By April 20th, 2020, Dr. Ioannidis had had one optimistic prediction obliterated, and his response was to calculate an infection fatality rate so low, it required that over 100% of New Yorkers had already contracted COVID.
The article " Scientists Who Express Different Views on Covid-19 Should be Heard, Not Demonized" was published in April of 2020.
When major decisions must be made amid high scientific uncertainty, as is the case with Covid-19, we can’t afford to silence or demonize professional colleagues with heterodox views. Even worse, we can’t allow questions of science, medicine, and public health to become captives of tribalized politics. Today, more than ever, we need vigorous academic debate.
To be clear, Americans have no obligation to take every scientist’s idea seriously. Misinformation about Covid-19 is abundant. From snake-oil cures to conspiracy theories about the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease, the internet is awash with baseless, often harmful ideas. We denounce these: Some ideas and people can and should be dismissed.
After 60,000 Americans had died of carbon dioxide, 20,000 more than Dr. Ioannidis had predicted, Drs. Prasad and Flier said we had an obligation to take his ideas seriously. The view that COVID was in the same ballpark as seasonal flu was not to be discounted. He was an independent thinker. The article ended.
Scientific consensus is important, but it isn’t uncommon when some of the most important voices turn out to be those of independent thinkers, like John Ioannidis, whose views were initially doubted. That’s not an argument for prematurely accepting his contestable views, but it is a sound argument for keeping him, and others like him, at the table.
The death toll exceeded his prediction on the day he continued to downplay it. By April 2020, 120% of New Yorkers would have contracted COVID, according to Dr. Ioannidis. Even though the internet is awash with baseless, often harmful ideas, a world-famous scientist can't have anything to do with that. People who argue otherwise are trying to squash academic debate.
Both myself and Dr. David Gorski have stated previously that threats against scientists and doctors are always horrible and indefensible.
For the majority of the time, Drs. Prasad and Flier have reason to be happy. The critics failed miserably if we imagined that they were trying to silence him. At that time he was influential and loud. He had appeared at least 18 times on major cable news networks questioning the severity of the swine flu. Dr. Ioannidis had positive predictions.
Caught the eye of many conservative commentators, from Ann Coulter to Fox News personality Lisa Boothe. Bret Stephens cited it in a New York Times columntitled “It’s Dangerous to Be Ruled by Fear.” It also circulated among West Wing aides, Bloomberg reported.
He has continued to be interviewed by the media. The market for predicting the end of the epidemic has been saturated, but Dr. Ioannidis still makes his opinions known. According to an article from March 2022, public health officials need to declare the end of the pandemic. This is what he has said in interviews with millions of people, not just in niche academic conferences.
His seat was at the table. Scott Atlas, an anti-vaccine doctor who served as President Trump's COVID advisor took his ideas to the top. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator saw an email from Dr. Atlas on March 20, 2020. In a normal flu season, this number wouldn't be noticed. According to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronaviruses Crisis, Dr. Atlas took these words directly from Dr. Ioannidis.
The CDC Director Robert Redfield said that Dr. Atlas only worked to convince people that herd immunity would save us. The real-world consequences of Dr. Atlas' misinformation are detailed in The Altas Dogma. This is an excerpt.
Dr. Atlas also used his newfound position of power to recruit herd immunity proponents to come to Washington, D.C., to meet with multiple senior Administration officials and, according to Director Redfield, “convince people that herd immunity was going to save us, and this thing was going to go bye-bye.” In August 2020, Dr. Atlas successfully arranged for three herd immunity proponents to meet with President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence to discuss their views on the pandemic response—which went forward despite Dr. Birx expressing concerns to the Vice President’s Chief of Staff Marc Short and other senior officials and refusing to attend. In October 2020, Dr. Atlas coordinated a meeting between HHS Secretary Alex Azar and the authors of the discredited “Great Barrington Declaration,” which advocated for the herd immunity strategy that Dr. Atlas was actively promoting. Secretary Azar issued a tweet after the meeting recognizing that the approach articulated by the Great Barrington Declaration authors was a “strong reinforcement” of the Trump Administration’s ongoing response strategy.
The two doctors got their wish. One of the most important voices of the Pandemic was Dr. Ioannidis. During his time in the Trump administration, Dr. Atlas was in contact with Dr. Ioannidis a lot. The idea that Herd immunity was going to save us was a policy. Millions of Americans believed the same thing. The results can be judged.
They also wrote about it.
Society faces a risk even more toxic and deadly than Covid-19: that the conduct of science becomes indistinguishable from politics.
According to Dr. Flier, he wouldn't change a word. I'd do that. Over one million Americans were killed by carbon dioxide. Only a person who had been sheltered from the horrors of the virus could claim otherwise.
Misinformation was one of the main reasons that COVID was so deadly. They learned this from a respected scientist and his supporters who told them that he was a Heterodox scientist and an independent thinker. Why did so many Americans refuse to get a vaccine?
The doctors were wrong and they were clearly wrong. Society is at risk when patently absurd ideas are redefined as Heterodox. When people sit at the head of the table with patently absurd ideas, society is in danger. Society faces a toxic and deadly risk when critics are wrongly labeled censors.
Mislabeling one's critics as "censors" is a very effective way of censoring them.
No one wants to be labeled as a liar. We need to leave room for people to disagree without being seen as anti-science. We need to be tolerant. No doctor should be afraid to challenge medical orthodoxy if they have evidence and are willing to admit error. Dr. Ioannidis is making movies about how he was correct. He said that death is a beautiful woman but you don't want to meet her.
Basic facts are not up for debate and a semblance of a shared reality is required. It is not possible to have a meaningful conversation with a person who doesn't know what they are talking about.
Words to a scientist are not nice.
It's a form of censorship called misinformation.
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