I'm so glad you spoke out Steve--it was well into 2022 by the time I started writing about this. Before that, I would argue on private Facebook groups (as you know) and with friends, but the negative reception I got was so frightening to me that I avoided any kind of public discourse. If everyone like me had behaved courageously like you, I wonder if we could have countered this COVID insanity that did so much damage.
Thanks, Katie. I'm pretty sure that after surviving the experience, many more people would stop the insanity if it truly threatened to return, regardless of how they handled it the first time.
Congrats on the new book, Steve. I'm assuming your local independent book store won't stock it, so I hope everyone finds it elsewhere. I'm still amazed that "The Real Anthony Fauci" became a run-away international best-seller for many months with no reviews in any mainstream publication and very few brick and mortar book stores stocking the book.
Emerging diseases = emerging fortunes. An amazing amount of new paint on a rotting structure is just that….a rotten structure. Follow the money….find the science. Sad indeed.
Late to respond here, but just wanted to say that I loved the book. A lot. I learned a lot from it too. Please keep it up!
Maybe you could do a book, or a series of pieces here on substack, on child-rearing for immune development? Taking down many of these weird obsessions (esp. in America) about avoiding infections, keeping things clean, etc. etc.
It's interesting to me that Brosseau (who you interviewed for Flashpoint piece) has been so intent on attacking any study questioning mask efficacy ever since she was burned at the stake after her CIDRAP piece back in 2020 [1] questioning community masking. For example, in the Loeb et al RCT of Surgical vs Respirator study late 2022 [2], all of the pro-mask hysterics (Greenhalgh, MacIntyre, etc) came out swinging in the comment section incensed that this study dared question the mask, suddenly concerned with ethics, sample sizes, replication, confounders, and equipoise.
And interestingly enough, they all say that anything short of wearing a fit tested n95 100% of the time is ineffective when critiquing Loeb et al, indicating that is almost "common sense":
Greenhalg:
"The airborne nature of SARS-CoV-2 means that health care workers may be exposed to the virus even when not directly caring for infected patients simply by breathing contaminated air. A valid comparison of respirators and medical masks in a hospital environment would therefore require respiratory protection to be worn continuously from entering to leaving the building."
McIntyre:
"only continuous use of N95 respirators protects health care workers against respiratory infection; intermittent use of medical masks and respirators is equally ineffective"
Brosseau:
"Surgical masks are not designed to protect the wearer from inhalation of small infectious particles and will not prevent person-to-person transmission from patients or coworkers."
So where were Greenhalgh, Brosseau, Macintyre when the CDC published Kansas Mask, 2 Hairdressers in Missouri, and all of the garbage "studies" that claimed Cloth masks are 100% effective stopping viruses? Where was their critique of Bangladesh RCT which found Surgical masks worn intermittently had a 10% (1% absolute) reduction in Covid cases?
I'm so glad you spoke out Steve--it was well into 2022 by the time I started writing about this. Before that, I would argue on private Facebook groups (as you know) and with friends, but the negative reception I got was so frightening to me that I avoided any kind of public discourse. If everyone like me had behaved courageously like you, I wonder if we could have countered this COVID insanity that did so much damage.
Thanks, Katie. I'm pretty sure that after surviving the experience, many more people would stop the insanity if it truly threatened to return, regardless of how they handled it the first time.
Congrats on the new book, Steve. I'm assuming your local independent book store won't stock it, so I hope everyone finds it elsewhere. I'm still amazed that "The Real Anthony Fauci" became a run-away international best-seller for many months with no reviews in any mainstream publication and very few brick and mortar book stores stocking the book.
Emerging diseases = emerging fortunes. An amazing amount of new paint on a rotting structure is just that….a rotten structure. Follow the money….find the science. Sad indeed.
Late to respond here, but just wanted to say that I loved the book. A lot. I learned a lot from it too. Please keep it up!
Maybe you could do a book, or a series of pieces here on substack, on child-rearing for immune development? Taking down many of these weird obsessions (esp. in America) about avoiding infections, keeping things clean, etc. etc.
Coming back to this article a month late, just adding a paywall bypass to your piece in Flashpoint:
https://www.tribstar.com/opinion/flashpoint/flashpoint-the-price-of-being-human/article_37ec9760-1564-11eb-8ab7-b7b4b0dd55cb.html
Hope you don't mind.
It's interesting to me that Brosseau (who you interviewed for Flashpoint piece) has been so intent on attacking any study questioning mask efficacy ever since she was burned at the stake after her CIDRAP piece back in 2020 [1] questioning community masking. For example, in the Loeb et al RCT of Surgical vs Respirator study late 2022 [2], all of the pro-mask hysterics (Greenhalgh, MacIntyre, etc) came out swinging in the comment section incensed that this study dared question the mask, suddenly concerned with ethics, sample sizes, replication, confounders, and equipoise.
And interestingly enough, they all say that anything short of wearing a fit tested n95 100% of the time is ineffective when critiquing Loeb et al, indicating that is almost "common sense":
Greenhalg:
"The airborne nature of SARS-CoV-2 means that health care workers may be exposed to the virus even when not directly caring for infected patients simply by breathing contaminated air. A valid comparison of respirators and medical masks in a hospital environment would therefore require respiratory protection to be worn continuously from entering to leaving the building."
McIntyre:
"only continuous use of N95 respirators protects health care workers against respiratory infection; intermittent use of medical masks and respirators is equally ineffective"
Brosseau:
"Surgical masks are not designed to protect the wearer from inhalation of small infectious particles and will not prevent person-to-person transmission from patients or coworkers."
So where were Greenhalgh, Brosseau, Macintyre when the CDC published Kansas Mask, 2 Hairdressers in Missouri, and all of the garbage "studies" that claimed Cloth masks are 100% effective stopping viruses? Where was their critique of Bangladesh RCT which found Surgical masks worn intermittently had a 10% (1% absolute) reduction in Covid cases?
Why is their skepticism always one directional?
___________
[1] https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/04/commentary-masks-all-covid-19-not-based-sound-data
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36442064/