That would be Marty Makary, not McGarry. He and his fellow contrarians like Bhattacharya have been so “shut up” that they have huge followings on Twitter and popular Substacks with tens of thousands of subscribers (paid subscriptions on Substack go for $5-$50 a month, even more if you want to “show support” by being a Founding Member), while holding down posts at major medical institutions. Makary hires out as a speaker for $20,000-$30,000 a gig. It must be hard for these people to survive while being so oppressed.
He and like-winded Warriors Against Groupthink have also been wrong about the pandemic again and again, not that they recognize and admit their errors.
The truth is, I’m not a big fan of the medical establishment in the US. The privatized and capitalistic nature of the system has led us to a place where profits are routinely put ahead of the best interest of the patient.
I believe that most drugs aren’t as safe or as effective as advertised and this is largely due to a lack of regulation that lets the pharmaceutical industry game the system. I believe that many, if not most, Americans are systematically overtreated and overmedicated.
This is in large part due to decades of deregulation and weakening of standards by mostly Republican lawmakers, who feel that profits and the economy should take precedence over people and their health.
This is why we don’t have socialized medicine. This is why we have an opiate crisis.
But when the very people that have been enabling this paradigm suddenly decide to get all concerned that one class of medication, a medication used exclusively by an out group that has been targeted for disenfranchisement, may not be as safe and effective as the medical establishment claims, I call bullshit.
If conservatives decide they want to try to reform the entire pharmaceutical industry by imposing stricter controls on clinical trials and the reporting of the results, I’d be all for it. If they want to impose laws limiting off-label or irresponsible prescribing, I’d be all for it. If they want to legislate for stricter laws regarding the reporting requirements of the medical supply chain, laws that would go a long way towards stopping the damage caused by counterfeit medications, I’d be right behind them.
But until that day, these anti-puberty blocker push is the height of political hypocrisy and nothing more.
Seeing as this is the pit and all, I’ll just come out and say it: magellan01 is a troll and you all should put them on ignore. They are not posting in good faith, and to continue engaging with them only harms the discourse. I like to think that is the best contribution I can make to this thread.
I have a few minutes and thought I’d see what’s transpired…
Huh? I’m 100% behind psychiatric care. I’ve said that numerous times in this thread. In fact, I’ve said I want more of it. As I’ve also said, I care not what Republicans want.
My point was that they were kept off the main stream media. They were raising questions and making observations that should have been welcome in what should have been a robust debate. Instead, the MSM narrative became: "good people talk about the blessing of the vaccine and nothing else. If you try to talk about anything else you are a bad person, part of the problem, because it’s “a pandemic of the unvaccinated”. We were told to get the vax, because if you get it, you can’t get reinfected or infect anyone else. Both of which turned out to be incorrect. And heaven forbid there was any mention of treatments that might help fight Covid. You don’t want to be a bad citizen, now, do you, comrade? (FYI: No, I’m not anti-vax. Given my circumstances I was happy to get it.)
Dr. Fauci: " Fauci added that vaccinated people essentially become “dead ends” for the virus to spread within their communities.
“When you get vaccinated, you not only protect your own health and that of the family but also you contribute to the community health by preventing the spread of the virus throughout the community,”
The vaccine does greatly reduce your chance of getting, and transmitting, COVID, and if you do get it the chances of a serious case are greatly reduced, but those chances don’t go down to zero. And in all the millions and millions of words the experts said about the vaccines, a few times they used hyperbole to try and encourage people to get vaccinated.
Still a million times better, and less factually incorrect, than Dr Bhattacharya, who would have gotten millions more Americans killed if we’d followed his recommendations.
Some had, or could have. Others not so much. The point is that we should have been having as robust debate as possible with the input of experts, not a mindset of Vaccine: wonderful / Everything else: the enemy of society.
No, we don’t have robust debates with the input of experts on questions of which treatments are and are not appropriate to treat diseases.
Experts tell us which treatment are and are not appropriate to treat diseases.
Sigh. I meant “we” as a society. The experts should be having a robust debate. And they should be having it publicly, as a way to engender trust. The worst thing about how things were handled is that the CDC lost trust that will take them a looong time to get back. This is frightening, because if there is another emergency, worse than Covid, the compliance will be much, much less than we had with the vaccine. That makes my blood boil. For one, it’s really dangerous. And it was an unforced error on behalf of the government medical experts, and the administration.
…or you can fight disinformation the way you want to fight it, and I’ll do it mine. If this line of discussion is going to be allowed on these forums, then the very least we can do is debunk it.