The irony. Designed and proven using entirely mechanistic method and observational data, with a healthy side order of biochemistry. And fielded for decades with huge successes, without a single randomized trial as proof. & today, groups of MDs work tirelessly to prove N95 don’t work vs viruses.

During the height of the pandemic, Tyson used Palantir to predict Covid-19 infections among meatpacking workers down to a nearly exactly figure. But rather than using this data to increase worker protections, Tyson used it plan for labor shortages + plant closures My latest for @sentientmedia.org

Amputating a limb provides strong long term protection against losing same limb from frostbite.

Good morning! AI is being force-fed to you by a handful of billionaires who will lose a bunch of money if they fail to convince you that you need it. You do not need it 🫶

This is a critical thread for every Canadian to read. I began the pandemic as an avid CBC listener. I can't listen anymore. The lack of journalistic integrity, the dangerous anti-science rhetoric, the simping & attacks from @ianhanomansing.bsky.social destroyed my faith in it. #cdnsky #canpoli

We need to start calling misrepresentation of COVID-related harms as due to "lockdowns" what it is: fraud, and a breach of academic integrity. There's room for good research, but studies that ignore direct effects and mindlessly attribute e.g. changes in mental health to mitigations are dishonest.

🧵This "public" Nov 5 forum highlights the hypocrisy of public health institutions. Topics include misinformation and public trust, and an attendee sent me this: questions for the panellists must be submitted in advance (so hard ones on e.g. PPE, aerosols etc can be censored). ubccdc.med.ubc.ca

🆄🅽🆂🅰🅵🅴 🅸🅽 🆃🅷🅴 🆆🅾🆁🅺🅿🅻🅰🅲🅴 how the CBC forced me to resign over COVID and why we’re all worse off for it—especially our kids a 🧵 (on the occasion of my son’s [5th] and the CBC’s [89th] shared birthday, nov. 2) 👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼 [links to referenced articles in ALT text]

Minimizing COVID-19 is maximizing social harm One of the best articles I've read all year because it centers social justice and equity. Published today Gift link 🎁 www.thespec.com/opinion/cont...

It's instructive how rapidly infection control and public health influencers are rushing to bend the knee now the anti-vaxxers and overdiagnosis types have power. Almost makes you think we should be listening to scientists about science, instead of relying on shortcuts and opinion-laundering. 🤔

Isaac, honestly. Didn’t think you could promo Covld sickness more than you already have. Your constant minimizing of this virus and its impacts has likely already put many people at risk of poor outcomes. Most of them won’t even know it. Let’s not also use your platform to put them further at risk.

Links to sources aren't working for me, but with public health and IPC AWOL on ventilation and PPE it'd be pretty irresponsible to start back-pedaling on vaccines now too without considering #longCOVID. Is there even a plan to deal with the impacts in this thread? Thoughts and prayers? Ignore them?

Dropping at noon EST, my conversation with Dr. Jonathan Howard about his book We Want Them Infected: How the Failed Quest for Herd Immunity Led Doctors to Embrace the Anti-Vaccine Movement and Blinded Americans to the Threat of COVID. Listen at patreon.com/strugglesession and everywhere else!

I am giving a webinar next week, mostly aimed at rehabilitation clinicians/researchers, on EDI considerations for long COVID. This is through the READII committee at U of T’s Rehabilitation Sciences Institute. I’m looking forward to it :)

The 3rd annual Canadian Long COVID symposium wrapped up yesterday. It was a great meeting, and I got some nice news at the end! PDF of the poster is here: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/e8wh6... MP3 of a 5-minute verbal overview is here: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ej0lw...

Covid has created an increase in work absences year round comparable to a year round flu season. This is due to both Trump & Biden mishandling Covid with a vaccine-only approach, opposing other needed action. #Medsky jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Excellent work from @michellegamage.bsky.social - a breath of fresh air! Put the word out if BC's legion of airborne-transmission-denier quacks come after you for this. We've got your back. #Standupforscience

I wrote this back in 2021 (found on my squarespace on profile) and all the evidence of waning still holds true. The once a year option is absurd and doesn’t fit with existing data. It seems like a money saving venture.

OK took a look at another one of the NACI references, #22: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... I just have a minute but this looks seriously sketchy. #1: 👉why can't I find an overall COVID incidence rate?👈 Did they really only count "medically attended" cases (p17) - so e.g. 7.5% annual incidence?

Read this and weep. F**k all of @ipaccanada.bsky.social. We cannot adopt new CSA respiratory protection standards fast enough. "There is limited evidence with which to draw conclusions on the comparative effectiveness of PPE to prevent exposure to and transmission of VHFs to HCWs."

Moral injury due to the absolute betrayal of trust by huge chunks of our medical establishment, especially in public health, infection control and pediatric medicine. Real banality-of-evil stuff. Put the word out that you want to listen, and you will hear *so many stories that need to be told*.

The next Covid Awareness billboard will be something to the effect of… “Mask Up, Clean The Air, Protect the Kids, and Show We Care.” #SafeSchoolsNow If you like to help me continue my work and place some more billboards please share/donate. Every bit helps. YerAweSum! gofund.me/b398a403

"Unlike comments made by non-scientists such as Premier Danielle Smith that the vaccine “doesn’t work very well,” an intervention that reduces deaths, ICU visits and development of long COVID is real and impactful." Excellent Editorial please read👇

The Canadian Standards Association (CSA) has released a draft standard requiring masks (like N95s) in health care settings to stop airborne infections. There is a strong attempt to push back against this, so need your public comments to get this through: publicreview.csa.ca/Home/View/22...

More details here donoharmbc.ca/national-sta...

We could have done this. But Bonnie Henry put BC babies in the control group.

He doesn’t want to “reduce chronic illnesses,” he wants to reduce people with chronic illnesses

In examining this list of people fighting *against* protections for infectious diseases, it is worth thinking about the liability (and resulting COIs) that each might be expected hold once it becomes widely recognized that respirators are a reasonable step to protect against aerosol-borne diseases.

As an OG AI researcher working in biomedicine to relieve suffering, it pains me to have to acknowledge the truth of how things are turning out.

Please note the core issue under discussion is EBM interpretation of evidence (science etc). The claim that physicians have special insight there is a common error (among physicians). (also FYI @sameo416.bsky.social co-authored the first "EBM leaders speaking out" citation you provided)

Medical schools need to teach an ethics class called “don’t end up like these guys.”

‘This policy is wrong for health care workers and wrong for all Albertans’ – UNA President Heather Smith The Alberta government must immediately change its planned vaccination policy and provide COVID-19 vaccinations on demand and without charge to all health care workers.

The owner of Twitter sends out 100 right wing propaganda tweets every single day and the algorithm is set up so that every single person on Twitter has to see every single one of these tweets. Now here’s another piece about Blue Sky’s ideological diversity problem.

The pandemic exposed far too many medical leaders as empty suits who seem to have got the job through self promotion and politics rather than ability. If something they didn't memorize comes up, they're out of their depth but can't publicly admit there's something they don't know, and they panic.

“The findings may challenge the assumptions of clinicians that very young children are less affected by long COVID, held in part because this population often cannot describe what they are experiencing.“ Millions of sick babies too young to ask for help is genuinely a nightmare.

Healthcare without masks is healthcare without safety. We don't stop washing our hands because "we're over it." We don't stop sterilizing surgical tools because "it's political." Why would we stop protecting the air -our most basic need?

Great interview, @sessford.bsky.social! Appreciated hearing a bit about your scoping review looking at mental health in caregivers of those with Covid (acute or long). Love the respirator masks. The yellow is very ‘spring’ 🌼

Correct sciencebasedmedicine.org/performancer...

At this point, it’s absolutely clear: N95 masks make a very meaningful difference in health care settings, especially when worn by health care workers. #HealthCareNotHealthCareless

🧵 extension updating the ongoing comic tragedy of this attempt to impose some degree of scientific rigour on the medical literature. Not only has our request for retraction of this fatally flawed study been rejected, no correction will be printed and they refuse to even print a critique (see link).

This is from last fall and it’s still up. This is what our NIH director feels and communicates regarding doctors here, who unlike him, treated Covid patients. He is telling the public not to trust us. That we are to blame for everything they didn’t like about the pandemic. It’s our fault.

🧵Transparency at Cochrane is critical due to a central falling of EBM/GRADE - it is far too easily manipulated. Expert opinion (unreliable) is replaced by averaging small numbers of non-expert opinions self-selected on the basis of shared biases (unscientific). bestpractice.bmj.com/info/toolkit...

If Hamas had killed 7 Israelis inside of Israel this week, it would be one of the biggest stories in the world, & all over the US media. But Israel killed 7 HUNDRED Palestinians this week, including almost 200 children, & yet there's little outrage from our politicians or media.

It's very important to note that this piece was written by someone with a background in crisis comms & PR and not epidemiology, public health or medicine www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

“Pandemic money was meant to clear the air in Ontario schools. Did it work?” By: @flannerydean.bsky.social @thenarwhal.ca With comments from our wonderful OSS team: @drhanwell.bsky.social @mjnabuurs.bsky.social (And many other wonderful people) Please read, repost, and share!

This may be the funniest and yet simultaneously the saddest attempt at historical revisionism I have ever seen. And the way the section snippets fall out is just...👨‍🍳😙 "None declared..." 🤣 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🧵An example of the shenanigans and junk science accepted in medical journals. In September 2023, JAMA Pediatrics published a ludicrously bad paper (quasi-retracted after much effort) claiming long COVID is "strikingly rare" in kids, supposedly vs the WHO definition. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

This paper is interesting for a few reasons. It shows that mask mandates in healthcare protect patients from infections, and removing mask mandates in healthcare harms patients. A facility without a mask mandate is making a *deliberate choice* known to harm patients. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...