Kevin Bass, an MD/PhD student at a medical school in Texas, has written a surprisingly candid op-ed about the scientific community’s missteps in the medical community’s response to COVID, and admits that posturing costs lives. More shockingly, Newsweek published it.
Bass says, “As a medical student and researcher, I strongly supported the efforts of public health authorities when it came to COVID-19. I believe that the authorities have responded to the greatest public health crisis of our lifetime with compassion, diligence and scientific expertise. I was with them when they called for lockdowns, vaccines and boosters.
“I made a mistake. we are Wrong in the scientific community. And it cost lives. “
A Newsweek Op-Ed shares:
We have not properly appreciated that preferences determine how scientific expertise is used, and that our preferences—may indeed be our preferences. were– Very different from many of the people we serve. Based on that we have created a policy ourPreferences, then justified using data. And then we portray those who oppose our efforts as misguided, ignorant, selfish and evil.
Trending: Montana governor and emergency services confirm: No explosions in or around Billings, Montana Friday night
We have made science a team sport, and in doing so, we have made it no longer a science. It became us against them, and “they” responded in the only way anyone could have expected: by resisting.
We have excluded key segments of the population from policy development and criticized critics, which means we have deployed a monolithic response across an extraordinarily diverse nation, created a more fractured society than ever, and exacerbated chronic heath and economic inequalities.
Our emotional response and ingrained bias prevent us from seeing the full impact of our actions on the people we are supposed to serve. We have systematically minimized the negative effects of imposed interventions—those imposed without the input, consent, and recognition of those forced to live with them. In doing so, we have violated the autonomy of those most negatively affected by our policies: the poor, the working class, small business owners, blacks and Latinos, and children. These populations are ignored because they have been made invisible to us by systematic exclusion from the powerful, corporate media machine that purports to be omniscient.
Most of us did not speak up to support alternative views and many of us tried to suppress them. When strong scientific voices such as world-renowned Stanford professors John Ioannidis, Jay Bhattacharya and Scott Atlas or University of California San Francisco professors Vinay Prasad and Monica Gandhi have warned on behalf of vulnerable communities, they have faced constant condemnation. Critics and opponents in the scientific community—often not based on fact but simply on differences in scientific opinion.
I was wrong about the lockdowns and orders. I was wrong and the reason I was wrong was my tribe, my emotions and my distorted understanding of human nature and the virus. This is off topic, but I wanted to apologize for being wrong.
— Kevin Bass (@kevinnbass) December 13, 2022
Boss says his motivation is to restore public faith in science.
You can read the entire op-ed here.
