Throughout the COVID catastrophe, we have witnessed something quite appalling, the widespread dissemination of disinformation. What makes it so appalling is that physicians, some of whom are actually licensed to practice medicine, are the most prominent super spreaders of lies.
None of the physicians who have been spreading disinformation are actually fellowship trained and board certified infectious diseases doctors. They have a hodgepodge of educational credentials ranging from general practitioners to family medicine. A surgeon, a pulmonary doctor, a pathologist, and an Ob-Gyn are among them. One has a flagrantly embellished CV. Another never finished any postgraduate training. Yet another never even did an internship and isn’t licensed to practice medicine.
Yet, these physicians, lacking any of the requisite credentials to be credible academicaly recognized imfectious disease experts have been held out as such on social media and cable news. The general public has no idea these doctors are not actually infectious disease experts at all.
These doctors spread misinformation and disinformation the world over. Millions of people believe them and have declined vaccination. It has been reliably estimated that 300,000 to 400,000 Americans died unnecessarily as a result. Their COVID antivaxx messaging has worsened vaccine hesitancy not just for the COVID vaccine, but for vaccines in general. Compliance with recommended childhood immunization has plummeted and as a result diseases we haven't seen in 50 years have come roaring back. Measles and Polio are showing up for the first time in decades. These doctors have set back public health 100 years. It’s like we are back in the 1800s.
How could this be? Don’t state medical boards have the responsibility to discipline them? Well, they do, but they are reluctant because under the strictest interpretation of “unprofessional conduct” medical boards point to the the requirement that the objectionable conduct must be “within the practice of medicine”. Unless they are treating a specific patient, general public comments, even if blatantly false, are non jurisdictional.
So according to most state medical boards, a licensed doctor can go on TV, lie about their credentials and experience, claim falsely to be an expert and give dangerous wrong information without any consequences. Imagine a doctor on TV urging people not to treat bacterial meningitis or Tuberculosis or Syphilis. Apparently medical boards feel that such behavior, though obviously unprofessional isn’t within their jurisdiction.
That is palpable baldedash.
One organization tried to do something about it. Dr. Nick Sawyer, a board certified Emergency Medicine doctor at UC Davis Medical Center who witnessed first hand the catasrophe that was COVID. He volunteered early in the pandemic to work in the hardest hit hospital in New York. He saw people dropping like flies. Later, he cared for patients in the ER who were dying of COVID because they refused to be vaccinated believing what they heard from the fake experts, the doctors of disinformation.
Dr. Sawyer did something about it. He started an organization called “No License for Disinformation” (NLFD) to try and pressure state medical boards to do their duty and hold doctors accountable for spreading deadly disinformation. Dr. Sawyer is brilliant and articulate. His effort got noticed. He appeared on national TV and received coverage in several major publications. He even helped get a law passed in California to hold doctors accountable for spreading COVID misinformation in the care of their patients. He was the leading voice trying to protect the public. He was active on TWITTER with a large following.
Then, suddenly, NLFD disappeared. Dr. Sawyer has been silenced. What happened? Where did he go?
I can only speculate. I have had no contact with Dr. Sawyer since NLFD went dark. But my hunch is, he was threatened with litigation. The antivaxx doctors of disinformation use the courts to silence their critics. These lawsuits are called “SLAPP” suits. They are simply a tool to silence critics through threat of litigation.
The doctors of disinformation must obviously have substantial money behind them to be able to silence opposition. It is even likely, state medical boards have chosen to look the other way because they too can be sued.
So, with NLFD gone and no one else to carry on with the effort to hold doctors accountable for spreading deadly disinformation, they continue to do so. Every day I find patients who refuse to get vaccinated. I have been a doctor for over 41 years and have never seen such widespread vaccine hesitancy.
What will happen as a result? COVID has become endemic now that our species is the host reservoir within which the virus persists, replicates, mutates and disseminates. Unvaccinated people will continue to die of COVID. Children will die of Measles and Polio. Eventually people will ask, how this happened and they will look to the state boards of medicine who failed to protect the public from vaccine disinformation.
I hope NLFD and Dr. Sawyer aren't forgotten. He was brave to be so outspoken. History will remember his noble effort.
I believe in my opinion that you are a quack, Patmas. Give up.