Today, Ashish Jha demonstrated once again the lack of integrity. This is the elite academic mentality - willingness to be promoted with any administration even at the expense of ethics & integrity. He likely would work under RFK if offered.
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Jha brought us on at Brown to create the Information Futures Lab at the School of Public Health just before he got tapped for the White House. I would
be interested to hear about your work and/or interactions with him.
Willingness to be able to get a position with any admin is exactly why no reputable institutions spoke against health disinfo conference held by Stanford & welcomed by their President. Because everybody is calculating what they can get with one admin or the other.
Organizations, academia, top doctors should be advocating for patients & for practice of medicine. Yet, personal careers, memberships, funds, dues, or organizational survival matter more.
I also blame media & journalists. Several of us tried to reach out to journalists & media anchors hoping to get health disinfo covered widely exposing the entire network. But they just wouldn't cover it because it wasn't a hot enough topic. Well, now it is hot! I see you posting about it. Too late!
Now all of you who didn't want to hear about disinfo network will say - Oh we didn't know. But all of you didn't want to know & didn't care. Now people will die, people will get sick. And I blame you!
I have been fighting disinformation for 9 years. I have an especially low tolerance for vaccine conspiracy theories because I am a polio survivor. I don't wish that experience on anyone, and I was one of the lucky ones.
I accept the blame. I was too timid to confront the "free speech" bigots that saw only one side of the two sides of freedom that Isaiah Berlin wrote about.
Actually, that's not entirely true, I did try, but obviously not hard enough.
Most people don't know what they are voting for. Twenty years ago there was a good book called "What's the matter with Kansas'. People continuing to vote against their own self interest over and over again.
What makes me angry is that now you, prominent public health figures, media doctors, media anchors & journalists, write about dangers of RFK. But I know when you were asked to cover this you refused, or never responded, or didn't find it important. Few of us have memories & email receipts.
You are so right. Look. I’m old. I had every childhood disease there was except polio. I missed so much school in early years bc I was sick all the damn time. People are just so stupid. I will forever blame them with their noses stuck up Fox News’ ass. They didn’t want to know!!
This reminds me so much of what happened in Nazi Germany. Everyone expected their well established institutions to be guardrails against the Crazy. But all the institutions simply threw integrity to the wind and joined in.
@nicksawyermd.com read a lot and wrote summaries about similarities of where we are and Nazi Germany. When he tried to warn people in all kinds of medical & other leaderships, people looked at him like was crazy & didnt want to take it seriously.
The people at the top have all fallen in line, at some level, or they wouldn't be at the top; so they will now fall in line for the next leader. It's their nature.
And if few won't, or don't? Well, someone else will be happy to step in.
Where was Ashish Jha when he was the White House covid response coordinator? Ah, yes, he blamed physicians for not doing enough, completely ignoring the fact that those who stood up for science were retaliated one way or the other
He and people like him had a lot of opportunities to speak up, they had power, visibility, and they could have done so much. But they chose not to. Now his tweet means nothing. Its just a tweet.
Oh yes, I understood. I am just so angry at him particularly. He spoke about disinfo before became the covid coordinator, and then he stopped mentioning it or blamed somebody else.
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be interested to hear about your work and/or interactions with him.
Actually, that's not entirely true, I did try, but obviously not hard enough.
The people at the top have all fallen in line, at some level, or they wouldn't be at the top; so they will now fall in line for the next leader. It's their nature.
And if few won't, or don't? Well, someone else will be happy to step in.
https://bsky.app/profile/anonymouse728.bsky.social/post/3lax3tpx5uc2a
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/voices-in-the-vacuum/