Doctors Respond to Being Quoted: “I Don’t Think You Realize How Silly You Look Right Now” – GWC Mag

Dr. Vinay Prasad:

Joseph you can’t indulge someone just trying to make money from selling a book🤣.

Professor Francois Balloux:

In fairness Dr Howard is just hawking his book so can’t blame the man for trying to line his pockets during a pandemic when he saw so many of his friends doing the same… But what he does have is nine truly terrible books on Amazon. The man clearly doesn’t earn enough wherever he works and I sincerely hope it’s all been worth it…It won’t since no one cares enough to actually worry about a person like him. But I do feel pity for how sad his life must be and do wish him better days ahead.

Twitters biggest book-selling schmuck…

Just asked you to leave me alone…still praying that happen one day.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya:

I wasn’t going to comment on the inane Jonathan Howard (@19joho) book on the pandemic, but I ran across an unhinged claim by him that illustrates perfectly a certain covidian mindset that is too perfect to pass up….

The only way out of this bind, I guess, is to extol the virtue of lockdown. Let’s also leave aside his deep lack of understanding of the idea of herd immunity, which is a biological fact and the endpoint of any strategy we follow, whether lockdowns, focused protection, or let-it-rip. California and NY followed lockdowns, and everyone got infected anyway!

(Free advice for you, Jonathan: maybe take an epidemiology class if you don’t want to keep embarrassing yourself in public further?) The bigger problem is that lockdowners like Howard (an NYU doctor, I think), think that living your life is an irresponsible act. Sending your kids to school is an irresponsible act. The implication is that unless you comply with his prescription — lockdown with no logical endpoint — you are irresponsible.

But he’s wrong. Living your life is not irresponsible. Absent tremendous laptop class privilege, there is and was no way to hide away from the virus forever without harm to your physical, psychological, and economic health. The unspoken root idea of his is that the general public owed it to doctors to not get covid because it would place doctors at risk of getting covid. Of course this is an inversion. Medical professionals serve the public, not the other way around.

After sharing his extensive commentary (previously discussed here and here), Dr. Bhattacharya revealed something entirely unsurprising about my book- he had not read it. This may explain why his and other doctors’ reaction was very different from those who had. Indeed, one person who actually read it said:

So far, on social media, these contrarians can only respond to this book with ad hominem attacks and not much else. After all, Dr. Howard quoted their own words and their words are the only evidence needed to condemn their work.

Another person who actually read it had this to say:

Anyone not convinced by his book hasn’t read it. I read the book and examined the recent Twitter responses from the main people JH alludes to. I can honestly say they have failed to refute him on a single point.  They resorted to ad hominem attacks and dug a deeper hole for themselves.