Martin Kulldorff, head of the disgraced CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, recently claimed those unwilling to “debate” him and his anti-vaccine grifter panel members are “untrustworthy.” In reality, Martin has been the one engaging in untrustworthy behavior, and now his ACIP has zero credibility with over half of the country giving Kulldorff the middle finger.
Just a few years ago Martin previously said, correctly, that the MMR vaccine doesn’t cause autism:
Now in 2025, Martin has silenced himself & refused to rebuke the HHS Secretary or his colleagues in the federal government, who have now foolishly and unscientifically, claimed that the MMR vaccine and Tylenol are the causes of autism. Why is Martin wasting time demanding debates against former CDC heads instead of challenging his colleagues making boneheaded decisions today? Cowardice is the trait of an untrustworthy person. Today, we unpack what these endless demands for “debate” around COVID-19 and vaccines are really about.
Since 2020, the public has been barraged with the message that the real problem with COVID-19 wasn’t all the death and disability caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but instead, that comfortable academics were personally inconvenienced and “debate” was stifled and censored. This wasn’t a genuine call for policy debates regarding the pandemic response, but instead, an advertising technique meant to enhance the value of the speaker’s arguments by putting down others. Unsupported by the facts, one has to create value for their opinions in other ways.
Debates are competitive in nature and typically conclude with a winner and a loser. If your local little league baseball team was flown out to New York City to play against the Yankees, few would buy tickets, as the outcome would be obvious. If I dispatched an 8-year-old to debate on behalf of vaccine mandates against an Ivy League professor, the inevitable outcome wouldn’t change the fact that vaccines have saved millions of lives. If the wrong “side” wins a debate over vaccines or pandemic policy, leading to bad decisions that ends up with a bunch of people dying, then that “debate” didn’t do much good now, did it?
In truth, demands for policy debates around COVID-19 were about floating the idea that there was a vast conspiracy between scientists and the government to “suppress” alternative views on how to manage the pandemic:
March 8th, 2023: Jay Bhattacharya via Twitter: “The Biden US Department of Homeland Security used is immense power to censor scientific debate online about covid in the US. I would love to debate the omniscient scientists who collaborated on this unconstitutional and anti-scientific activity.”
Anyways, here’s Smilin’ Jay being “censored” on FOX News:
After falsely claiming to be a censored voice, Bhattacharya went on to gleefully join a pro-censorship Administration that has declared open siege against civil liberties. He cowardly chooses to silence himself, showing that he never cared about censorship or defending scientific debate, but instead to make personal attacks on social media. Bhattacharya’s claim was laughed out of a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court for lack of evidence. Jay to this day still claims he was “censored” regardless. You can’t have a good-faith debate with someone that refuses to acknowledge when basic facts contradict their unfounded opinions.
Why won’t Martin condemn his online petition co-author for such dishonest, untrustworthy behavior? Or do they these moral standards only apply to those who they seek to attack on social media? One has to ask…
The Pandemic As Media Spectacle
April 14th, 2023 - Anti-vax Twitter troll Kevin Bass, who was expelled from med school for sexual misconduct: “I have not yet been challenged to a debate by someone who is respectful, ethical, and mentally sound. When I am, I will be happy to have such a debate.”
It’s essentially impossible to engage in a good-faith debate with someone who immediately launches into ad hominem personal attacks before the show even starts. Before being expelled, numerous doctors patiently tried to correct the student on his many errors. He refused their guidance to instead pursue becoming an anti-vaccine celebrity and has failed in realizing this goal.
June 11th, 2023: Anti-vaccine grifter Steve Kirsch via Twitter: “I believe the US would be better off if everyone refused every vaccine and the K shot. If you disagree and are willing to go 1:1 with me in a live video debate hosted by a well known doctor (he has Millions of followers), indicate your interest below. Otherwise I will declare victory by default.”
Comically enough, here is Kirsch being completely humiliated in a debate by someone who actually knows what they’re talking about:
Kirsch has not acknowledged this devastating loss, and has not changed his views, which would lead to feeling great shame for having wasted years of his life spewing garbage for attention, followed by a public apology. This speaks to the futility of “debating” such charlatans, and their true purpose: to turn discussions about serious matters into an entertainment spectacle, nothing but an opportunity to promote oneself. The other issue is that legitimizing such dangerous quackery as holding equal standing against scientific rigor only allows it to flourish.
June 18th, 2023: Alex “iFightForKids” Rosen confronts vaccine scientist Peter Hotez in front of his home and harasses him for refusing to legitimize RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine grift on an anti-vaccine podcast.
Certain quack-provocateurs felt entitled that their demands for debates between obscene cranks and respected doctors be met, to the point of showing up at the homes of private citizens and harassing them. Experts like Dr. Hotez have been faced with an unyielding torrent of abuse, that no amount of capitulation would stop.
There’s simply no “debate” to be had with those who engage in such disgraceful, undisciplined, and undignified hootin’ and hollerin’.
Debate Demands as a Character Smear
The truth is that the constant demands for “debate” over the COVID-19 response was not a genuine desire for a public debate, but instead, an underhanded attack on the character of doctors and scientists with real-world responsibility. This served as a total distraction from the real challenges posed by the virus. You were expected to believe that frontline physicians who treated COVID-19 patients was untrustworthy, while an academic who spent the pandemic slinging personal insults behind the safety of a laptop was the true arbiter of science:
March 11th, 2024 - Martin Kulldorff in City Journal: “The public should not trust scientists, even Harvard scientists, unwilling to debate their positions with fellow scientists.”
Anyways, Martin’s sole act as a “scientist” regarding COVID-19 was to demand the mass infection of the unvaccinated public:
Of course, as we demonstrated at the beginning of this article, Martin Kulldorff has proven himself untrustworthy. Over half the nation considers Kulldorff’s ACIP to be untrustworthy. Supplement salesman and MAHA spokesperson Calley Means is now calling for blind trust in Trump & RFK Jr. while telling their followers to harass doctors. There is no “debating” such irrational zealotry.
November 16th, 2024 - Vinay Prasad via Twitter: “In 2020, Francis Collins dishonorably called Jay [Bhattacharya] a fringe epidemiologist because Jay did not support school closure & lockdown. Francis should have had a series of public debates on these policies, but he demonized. So it’s fitting Jay gets his job.”
To pro-infection cranks like Vinay Prasad, David Zweig, etc. the worst part of the pandemic for them was that their feelings were hurt when their obvious falsehoods were rebuked. Think back to the chaos of 2020, as the virus killed massive numbers of Americans in rapid fashion, and it was unclear if and when a vaccine would be available. Prasad argues that hardworking doctors and scientists should have abandoned their posts to “debate” every unqualified Tom, Dick, and Robert on social media who clearly had no idea what they were talking about. Nearly a year later, it’s clear that the Stanford economist had no business running the National Institutes of Health and has completely failed in his task as a civil servant.
There is no debating that fact.
March 1st, 2025 - Vinay Prasad via Twitter: “NEJM should debate when pediatricians should apologize for masking kids and giving them covid shots, at the start or end of visit”
The overwhelming majority of pediatric COVID-19 deaths were unvaccinated. This is the sort of childish immaturity that now infests the leadership of the Food & Drug Administration. Nobody should dignify such immature antics with a public debate over serious matters of life and death. It should be clear now that empty demands for “debate” were merely a ploy to discredit those who struggled to prevent needless death and suffering, on top of other vulgar insults:
Is Rewriting History Trustworthy Behavior?
March 5th, 2025 - Vinay Prasad via Substack: “The National Institutes of Health, under [Francis Collins’] leadership, funded the Wuhan lab. After the virus exploded globally, Collins orchestrated a media campaign to discredit future NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya and he suppressed debate on whether lockdown or school closure should continue.”
This absurd conspiracy theory that Francis Collins somehow played some role in engineering the SARS-CoV-2 virus and then covered up his involvement is not supported by a shred of hard evidence. A lab leak causing a global pandemic would be the first of its kind and would require strong evidence to verify such a claim. How is one expected to “debate” somebody that is so dead set on peddling these ridiculous fantasies in bad faith? Prasad alone has years and years of spewing these pitiful insults on social media, disqualifying himself from any debate, much less being a reliable judge of character.
May 2nd, 2025 - UFO Conspiracy Theorist Nick Pope: “It’s unknowable, of course, but we should at least have discussed and debated the Great Barrington Declaration in an honest and even-handed fashion. Unfortunately, it was dishonestly smeared as a reckless ‘let it rip’ policy, when it was specifically designed as a middle ground between heavy-handed mandates and a laissez-faire ‘let it rip’ approach.”
Anyways, here is the AI-slop “poster” for Nick’s “documentary” about COVID-19:
There has been a desperate attempt to re-write the history around this particular online petition, which was hardly “designed,” but instead a demand for others to “protect the vulnerable” so the authors could go to Vegas and gamble with other Americans’ lives against a new SARS virus. Don’t be confused - there was a public debate when it was published: The overwhelming medical and scientific consensus found the GBD to be reckless, unscientific, and unethical. Refusing to acknowledge that they lost the debate, the authors & supporters of this particular online petition sought revenge for their humiliation.
September 4th, 2025 - Jay Bhattacharya at the white nationalist rally “NatCon5”: “Why was there not so much dissent during the 2020 Covid pandemic? Fact is: there was much dissent, including among my colleagues. Problem was: you were denied the scientific debate you deserved because the free speech this country normally has was taken away.”
This is pathetic, coming from a member of an Administration that is dedicated towards suppressing and silencing speech which isn’t sufficiently fawning over Trump, whose grip on reality has only grown looser in recent weeks. Truth be told, Jay and his ilk don’t believe in free speech or civil debate, but instead that everyone else should be forced to subscribe to the nonsense that they freely spew without an ounce of self-discipline. In their minds, they do not have “free speech” unless their voices are the only ones heard.
Closing Remarks
Hopefully, today’s article serves as a pretty overwhelming dismantling of the ridiculous notion that demands for “debate” over COVID-19 policy were not made in good faith, nor worth taking seriously. They served to legitimize unscientific quackery as something Americans needed to entertain, whilst sabotaging serious efforts to prevent needless death and suffering caused by COVID-19. The chance for good-faith debate over the pandemic response quickly became a poisoned well.
You were meant to doubt the moral character of frontline doctors, vaccine scientists, and public health experts while placing blind faith in charlatans who spent the five years doing little more than talk. You were meant to believe that an online petition contained all the secrets to managing the complexities of a still-ongoing public health crisis. Your first priority, in fact, was to help elevate these unscientific cranks by making endless demands for flashy debates that they could never lose, seamlessly moving from one absurd, evidence-free claim to another in rapid succession.
This was always a game rigged against the public’s interest. Unfortunately, with the ongoing crisis that is the demolition of our federal public health agencies, we are all learning the hard way why you never play such foolish games. You simply cannot debate in good faith with someone who refuses to admit when they’ve lost.
