As far as I can tell, this is just virtue signalling. They didn't need to announce anything, they could have just stopped using Twitter. I guess just stopping wasn't good enough.
Thank you Dr. Prasad. BUSPH is saying that they don't want one person dictating what is and is not publicly stated on Twitter because of bias, a possible leaning too far to the right or left; but they will continue on FaceBook? Isn't that like the pot calling the kettle black? FB will yank, without any hesitation, any posts that "they" (whoever 'they' is) deem inappropriate.
I'm a member of a different public health school, and this seems dramatic. Twitter seems chaotic and I personally avoid it, but I am not going to create a post to grandstand about it.
Also there are those of us in public health that do look beyond the Red or Blue and look at the issues, that is just not what you see on contrarian platforms like Twitter. I proudly nominated a Florida Republican as our public health association legislator of the year, and he won. Many of the bills that passed in Florida this year were bi-partisan, but cooperative legislation does not get the click bait, but it definitely happens.
VP, I think you and I along with millions of others are learning the lesson my grandfather taught me a decade or so ago: I didn't leave the Democratic party; the Democratic party left me. Although I am a staunch conservative, I can say the EXACT same thing about the Republican party.
Vinay, I have really enjoyed watching you learn the truth about how the world, and particularly the democrat party has ruined much about what is good about America. I am pretty independent, but this seems pretty obvious and I respect you more than I can say that you are willing to acknowledge and learn from it all.
Public health as we have known it should just be ended. I agree that it is likely unsalvageable. Do you want to lead in creating a new public health organization with the goal to discredit (appropriately) the old one and to try to build a transparent infrastructure upon which people can depend? You do much of that now with your Substacks and such, but it could be a bigger thing. Just curious. (I know you do not read these comments...but just in case.)
Since Fauci signs off NIH grants, could it be that this plays a role in these kinds of decisions to support Fauci's record or actively condemn dissenting comments or opinions from other "academics" such as the letter from the Standford faculty regarding the "Barrington Project" or Scott Atlas MD??? Usually the number of NIH grants obtained is directly proportional to the likelihood of gaining tenure status.
Dean Galea needs either to apologize or resign. He has made a partisan decision. I agree with him that Musk's decision to endorse prosecution of Anthony Fauci was overwrought but within his bounds. It was certainly not a reason to dump the entire platform.
Good stuff as always Dr Prasad. A few observations:
‘Public Health has to be for everyone, not just far left democrats.’
It’s important to understand the nature of the US progressive movement. Progressives are not the same as liberals, indeed in most respects they are the opposite..
The progressives of the 1920s, like John Dewey, were huge fans of Stalin and Mussolini. After WW2, progressive wolves in liberal sheeps’ clothing slowly but systematically took over the Democrat Party, supplanting the liberals, indeed in many cases ‘converting’ them to progressivism without their even noticing it. That’s why the people driving around with ‘Question Authority’ bumper stickers in 2004 were yelling ‘just wear the mask’ in 2020 and ‘no jab, no job’ in 2021, but still call themselves liberals.
Dewey, ‘the father of US public education,’ influenced progressive educators who carried out the controlled demolition of our public education system during the latter half of the 20th century. The result is protesters chanting ‘no blood for oil’ and ‘regime change begins at home’ in 2004, but ‘Slava Ukraine’ and ‘down with Putin’ in 2022.
In many countries - Spain and Russia spring to mind - govt backed healthcare works just fine. That’s because the people who run those healthcare systems see their primary mission as providing healthcare to all who need it. So I understand why a frustrated heme-onc doc would support such a system here. The problem is the peculiar American political culture in which it would be implemented.
To American progressives, healthcare isn’t about healthcare (as we saw all too plainly with vaccine mandates). It’s about power and control. Education is about power and control. Science is about power and control. Even the weather is about power and control.
It follows that public health is also about power and control, and boy, in 2020 did they ever grab themselves some power! That’s why public health officials (like ‘climate scientists,’ whose findings are dictated in advance via govt grants) are almost all progressives. They captured that institution along with all the others. I’ve said elsewhere that emergency decrees and mandates are like Rings of Power to the public-health Nazgûl.
I strongly suspect it’s too late to fix this via ordinary political, judicial and bureaucratic processes.
Love your take, Vinay. There are a few things we have to remember about social media. Since it is “free,” we are the product. Social media is meant to garner views, in order to see ads and therefore buy. Social media does this by creating dissonance. Anger is the most basic emotion and social media uses it to manipulate longer time spent on whichever app one is victim to. Yes, I chose the word victim.
I realized how bad social media is during my tenure as a Director of chronic pain and addiction in a large healthcare facility. I spent a majority of my time with direct patient care, and one of the first things that was highly suggested to each group was to get off of social media. Since anger exacerbates chronic pain and addiction, those who got off social media were less angry and at least during the time they were with my program, relapsed less.
I came up in chronic pain with the commercialization and pushing of opioid painkillers and screamed at the top of my lungs that we were addicting people. I was ignored. After seeing pharmaceutical companies sponsoring prescribers, and at the time, in my opinion, manipulating people into thinking that addiction didn’t happen when treating chronic pain, I realized that the bottom line being more important than patient care. “Experts” enjoyed large paychecks for pushing the drugs.
I see it RIGHT now in addiction medicine as well. I decided to get out of the business entirely a few years ago and help people the way I learned how, which is what most people in harm reduction consider to be “old school, and not science.” What I see is that 12 step meetings and other group modalities cost patients very little and do not offer any type of profit to prescribers. No wonder!
Funny enough I never understood what was left right or democrat or republican until maybe 10 years ago. I didn’t realize how atypical I was as a mental health provider as for my “politics.” I was and remain a staunch supporter of sobering up in a way that demands accountability and responsibility to the recovering person, not an increase in opioid dose (bupe or methadone) for a relapse.
Remember, many of us are sadly in the BUSINESS of medicine. I didn’t see this type of mentality when physicians were CEOs. But now that bean counters are more important, patient care is not, science suffers, healthcare, suffers, and we suffer.
As a graduate of BU School of Public Health I would like to suggest that those in offices on the city campus come outside and get their hands dirty, smell the dirty laundry,feel the hunger on the streets and speak to real people out on Methadone Mile rather than study algorithms and read published papers of academics. As has already been mentioned today, are the folks @BU willing to give up their Teslas?
This performative theater and virtue signaling is all so tiring. It boggles the mind that so many are so blind. These people really don't have an issue with government oversight of speech? That's how far left the norm is now in academia an the Democratic (sic) party?
As far as I can tell, this is just virtue signalling. They didn't need to announce anything, they could have just stopped using Twitter. I guess just stopping wasn't good enough.
Thank you Dr. Prasad. BUSPH is saying that they don't want one person dictating what is and is not publicly stated on Twitter because of bias, a possible leaning too far to the right or left; but they will continue on FaceBook? Isn't that like the pot calling the kettle black? FB will yank, without any hesitation, any posts that "they" (whoever 'they' is) deem inappropriate.
I'm a member of a different public health school, and this seems dramatic. Twitter seems chaotic and I personally avoid it, but I am not going to create a post to grandstand about it.
Also there are those of us in public health that do look beyond the Red or Blue and look at the issues, that is just not what you see on contrarian platforms like Twitter. I proudly nominated a Florida Republican as our public health association legislator of the year, and he won. Many of the bills that passed in Florida this year were bi-partisan, but cooperative legislation does not get the click bait, but it definitely happens.
VP, I think you and I along with millions of others are learning the lesson my grandfather taught me a decade or so ago: I didn't leave the Democratic party; the Democratic party left me. Although I am a staunch conservative, I can say the EXACT same thing about the Republican party.
Yet they are apparently keeping their account on TikTok....
https://www.tiktok.com/@bostonusph
Vinay, I have really enjoyed watching you learn the truth about how the world, and particularly the democrat party has ruined much about what is good about America. I am pretty independent, but this seems pretty obvious and I respect you more than I can say that you are willing to acknowledge and learn from it all.
Public health as we have known it should just be ended. I agree that it is likely unsalvageable. Do you want to lead in creating a new public health organization with the goal to discredit (appropriately) the old one and to try to build a transparent infrastructure upon which people can depend? You do much of that now with your Substacks and such, but it could be a bigger thing. Just curious. (I know you do not read these comments...but just in case.)
Since Fauci signs off NIH grants, could it be that this plays a role in these kinds of decisions to support Fauci's record or actively condemn dissenting comments or opinions from other "academics" such as the letter from the Standford faculty regarding the "Barrington Project" or Scott Atlas MD??? Usually the number of NIH grants obtained is directly proportional to the likelihood of gaining tenure status.
Dean Galea needs either to apologize or resign. He has made a partisan decision. I agree with him that Musk's decision to endorse prosecution of Anthony Fauci was overwrought but within his bounds. It was certainly not a reason to dump the entire platform.
Exactly 💯
Good stuff as always Dr Prasad. A few observations:
‘Public Health has to be for everyone, not just far left democrats.’
It’s important to understand the nature of the US progressive movement. Progressives are not the same as liberals, indeed in most respects they are the opposite..
The progressives of the 1920s, like John Dewey, were huge fans of Stalin and Mussolini. After WW2, progressive wolves in liberal sheeps’ clothing slowly but systematically took over the Democrat Party, supplanting the liberals, indeed in many cases ‘converting’ them to progressivism without their even noticing it. That’s why the people driving around with ‘Question Authority’ bumper stickers in 2004 were yelling ‘just wear the mask’ in 2020 and ‘no jab, no job’ in 2021, but still call themselves liberals.
Dewey, ‘the father of US public education,’ influenced progressive educators who carried out the controlled demolition of our public education system during the latter half of the 20th century. The result is protesters chanting ‘no blood for oil’ and ‘regime change begins at home’ in 2004, but ‘Slava Ukraine’ and ‘down with Putin’ in 2022.
In many countries - Spain and Russia spring to mind - govt backed healthcare works just fine. That’s because the people who run those healthcare systems see their primary mission as providing healthcare to all who need it. So I understand why a frustrated heme-onc doc would support such a system here. The problem is the peculiar American political culture in which it would be implemented.
To American progressives, healthcare isn’t about healthcare (as we saw all too plainly with vaccine mandates). It’s about power and control. Education is about power and control. Science is about power and control. Even the weather is about power and control.
It follows that public health is also about power and control, and boy, in 2020 did they ever grab themselves some power! That’s why public health officials (like ‘climate scientists,’ whose findings are dictated in advance via govt grants) are almost all progressives. They captured that institution along with all the others. I’ve said elsewhere that emergency decrees and mandates are like Rings of Power to the public-health Nazgûl.
I strongly suspect it’s too late to fix this via ordinary political, judicial and bureaucratic processes.
Love your take, Vinay. There are a few things we have to remember about social media. Since it is “free,” we are the product. Social media is meant to garner views, in order to see ads and therefore buy. Social media does this by creating dissonance. Anger is the most basic emotion and social media uses it to manipulate longer time spent on whichever app one is victim to. Yes, I chose the word victim.
I realized how bad social media is during my tenure as a Director of chronic pain and addiction in a large healthcare facility. I spent a majority of my time with direct patient care, and one of the first things that was highly suggested to each group was to get off of social media. Since anger exacerbates chronic pain and addiction, those who got off social media were less angry and at least during the time they were with my program, relapsed less.
I came up in chronic pain with the commercialization and pushing of opioid painkillers and screamed at the top of my lungs that we were addicting people. I was ignored. After seeing pharmaceutical companies sponsoring prescribers, and at the time, in my opinion, manipulating people into thinking that addiction didn’t happen when treating chronic pain, I realized that the bottom line being more important than patient care. “Experts” enjoyed large paychecks for pushing the drugs.
I see it RIGHT now in addiction medicine as well. I decided to get out of the business entirely a few years ago and help people the way I learned how, which is what most people in harm reduction consider to be “old school, and not science.” What I see is that 12 step meetings and other group modalities cost patients very little and do not offer any type of profit to prescribers. No wonder!
Funny enough I never understood what was left right or democrat or republican until maybe 10 years ago. I didn’t realize how atypical I was as a mental health provider as for my “politics.” I was and remain a staunch supporter of sobering up in a way that demands accountability and responsibility to the recovering person, not an increase in opioid dose (bupe or methadone) for a relapse.
Remember, many of us are sadly in the BUSINESS of medicine. I didn’t see this type of mentality when physicians were CEOs. But now that bean counters are more important, patient care is not, science suffers, healthcare, suffers, and we suffer.
Is it possible Dr Jha, former head of BU PH might have had some influence here?
As a graduate of BU School of Public Health I would like to suggest that those in offices on the city campus come outside and get their hands dirty, smell the dirty laundry,feel the hunger on the streets and speak to real people out on Methadone Mile rather than study algorithms and read published papers of academics. As has already been mentioned today, are the folks @BU willing to give up their Teslas?
This performative theater and virtue signaling is all so tiring. It boggles the mind that so many are so blind. These people really don't have an issue with government oversight of speech? That's how far left the norm is now in academia an the Democratic (sic) party?