PROFILE - Ashish Jha, Biden's Final COVID-19 Response Coordinator
The Scourge of Vibes-Based Epidemiology
The trilogy of COVID-19 Czars under the Biden Administration can be quickly summarized as a tragic comedy of unforced errors by woefully unserious people who treated the collective health of the American people as little more than a decorative executive toy. Andy Slavitt would come in under Biden's inauguration in January 2021 as the initial public face of Biden’s COVID-19 response, go "oh god," and quickly flake off in June 2021 to start a podcast where he pushes ads for unregulated supplements, with pitifully softball interviews involving other political figures, titled "In the Bubble". Jeffrey Zients, with zero medical or scientific background, but was a former deli owner - was rewarded for his work bundling corporate donations for the Biden 2020 campaign with arguably, the most important job in the country at the time - and one he completely failed at, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dead Americans.
It wasn't until March 2022 that Ashish Jha would be brought in to take over as the "Final" COVID Czar, so Zients could be promoted to Chief of Staff for his catastrophic failure of leadership leading to mass death and disability throughout the initial Omicron wave.
The hardest part of Ashish Jha's record is that he would often provide reliable information to the public - in Fall 2020, he correctly decried the Great Barrington Declaration's promise of herd immunity via mass infection to be junk science. On Maddow, he would point out that the GBD's promise of "focused protection" was simply delusional, stating "can't shield [the vulnerable] while letting virus run." Since then, Ashish Jha has since embraced the worst of the GBD's attitudes out of loyalty to Biden and Zients, and after leaving his post as the final COVID-19 Czar, his tone has turned much worse - much more aligned with Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff's irresponsible recklessness rooted in ignorance, than protecting the public health of American families from a deadly & disabling pathogen.
Let's go back to the harsh winter of late 2021, where Jha's story truly begins.
2021: It Pays To Be A Social Media Sycophant
December 15th, 2021: To set the stage, we need to go back to a December 2021 Politico article, titled "Biden's Twitter doc army turns on him," in which it's revealed that the White House is directly coordinating messaging "off-the-record" with popular social media physicians including previous PAI subject Leana Wen. The White House was not happy about receiving criticism from many of these public figures, claiming "Some of them get paid to have takes. We get paid to end this pandemic," declaring, "we have actually gotten more right...than the Twitterati will admit."
Which leads us to this Politico quote:
"Despite these frictions, the White House still has close ties to some Twitter docs, as well as some favorites. Ashish Jha, the president of Brown University's School of Public Health, is widely respected for his clarity and consistency of his messaging on the pandemic."
Ashish Jha's professional career as a laptop class academic was rewarded with a posting to the White House - not for any actual scientific or medical accomplishments that would have provided insights in how to prevent further needless death and disability, but because he was a loyal foot-soldier to the Biden Administration on social media. If this was under Trump, people would be (correctly) outraged, but instead, Ashish Jha's deference to the Biden Admin's whims was largely ignored.
December 14th, 2021: NPR reports “800,000 Americans have died of COVID. Now the U.S. braces for an omicron-fueled spike.”
December 17th, 2021: On an episode of NPR’s All Things Considered, Ashish Jha boldly declares: “We do not need to be doing mass quarantining right now. We have kids across America at home waiting out a 14-day quarantine. Totally unnecessary.” Days later, the Biden Administration’s CDC would change isolation guidelines based on the demands of the Delta Airlines CEO to a mere 5-days, when it was understood that people could remain infectious well after 5 days.
December 26th, 2021: Ashish Jha appears on ABC’s This Week to boldly declare, without evidence, that “For two years, infections always proceeded hospitalizations which proceeded deaths…Omicron changes that. This is the shift we’ve been waiting for in many ways." The pseudoscientific fantasy that Omicron was a variant that is now harmless, aka “Nature’s Vaccine” according to many anti-vaxxers, was repeated to millions of Americans. Many Americans would find them disabled by their “mild” Omicron infection.
December 27th, 2021: Ashish Jha declares the CDC’s reduction in isolation guidelines to 5 days be “terrific…exactly what our country needs right now.” Countless Americans are dying and being disabled in the winter wave of 2021-22. There is no scientific evidence to actually support this, but Jha’s deference to the Biden administration’s whims would be rewarded.
2022: Bold Talk, No Action, Much Illness
It's a new year, and after the Biden Administration's crusade towards normalcy by infecting unvaccinated children with COVID-19 under Second COVID-19 Czar Jeffrey Zients, the pediatric death count doubles from 500+ in August 2021 to 1000+ before Christmas 2021. In the depths of the Omicron wave, January 2022 would go on record as the deadliest month for children - the total of recorded pediatric COVID-19 deaths now in 2024 sits at around 2,500 - with many more disabled or losing a primary caregiver after bringing home the virus from school. As it turns out, Jha was one of many public figures who wildly underestimated Omicron and gave the public false assurances that this new variant of SARS-CoV-2 was “mild".”
Jan. 03, 2022: Ashish Jha tweets out, "We know how to keep people safe in schools during COVID for an airborne virus. Masking and ventilation/filtration substantially slow spread, as does regular testing, and vaccines protect from bad outcomes. So I've been puzzling over why this isn't happening everywhere." Rest assured, Jha did not use his time as COVID Czar to ensure this was happening.
Jan. 04, 2022: Ashish Jha posts to Twitter, "What would ideal COVID Isolation guidance be? Once rapid antigen tests are cheap and ubiquitous, 1. Isolate for first 5 days 2. Then test daily 3. Negative X 2 days? End isolation. Good to go. 4. Positive? Remain in isolation until 2 negs or 10 days. I think it's that simple." Just two years later, with no meaningful changes in the pandemic environment, Jha would declare that zero isolation was in fact the "ideal guidance."
Jan. 22nd, 2022: Salon reports: "Data suggests 10% of children with COVID-19 become 'long haulers.'"
Jan. 24th, 2022: For the New York Times, Jha appears alongside unscientific Brown University economist Emily Oster in a podcast hosted by tech billionaire sycophant Kara Swisher, titled "How Did We Fail So Badly? Emily Oster and Ashish Jha on America's Covid Response."
Ashisha Jha endorses Oster's views on how we should have been infecting unvaccinated children in early 2020, as "mostly right," and that she "brings the data." This data was fraudulent, and ignores the growing mountain of data on how COVID-19 can seriously harm and even kill children. Neither of these laptop class academics were treating COVID-19 patients in a pediatric ward, and instead were making a basic error: willfully misinterpreting the data that public health measures to protect kids from COVID-19 were keeping them alive, to advertise this new virus and disease as harmless in children.
It's worth noting that Ashish Jha endorsed Emily Oster, who made millions encouraging drowning unvaccinated children facefirst in a brand new virus, as "brilliant" and "actually tracking data" as early as October 12th, 2020. On December 27th, 2020, another Twitter account that was "actually tracking data," called "School Personnel Lost To Covid" (LostToCovid) discovers they are blocked by both Oster and Jha - seemingly for the crime of putting faces to the numbers that Oster and Jha's pro-viral advocacy were creating - in the thousands.
Thousands of dead children and countless many more disabled kids later, Jha has never admitted that Oster was disastrously incorrect. Instead, he would claim "the pandemic has given way to too many who fool the public because they have fancy job titles," whilst sitting across from an unqualified economist who made millions by fooling the public with fraudulent data.
Ashish Jha would also claim that students infectious with COVID-19 should not isolate, but instead return to class to get their teachers, fellow students infected, bringing the virus home to their families - leading to further needless death and disability in the American population.
February 16th, 2022: Molly Murphy and Bryan Stryker of Biden’s polling firm, Impact Research, instructs the administration to stop talking about “the threat of COVID,” to avoid “shutdowns, masks, and lockdowns,” and “stop talking about restrictions and the unknown future ahead.” Dozens upon dozens of scientific research publications about the harms that COVID-19 can do, even with “mild” infections, would indicate that Molly and Bryan were objectively incorrect - a new virus that emerged only two years ago was still very much unknown, and the Biden Administration should have advised caution - especially regarding children’s health.
March 24th, 2022: Death Panel releases "As Seen on TV," covering Jha's appointment as Biden's third CVD-19 Czar, and his New York Times interview alongside economist & pathogen cheerleader Emily Oster.
March 17th, 2022: Accepting the role of Biden’s COVID Czar, Jha tweets out an ominous omen, "We are in so much of a better place...because of the superb leadership of Jeff Zients. Who has used the levers of the US government to make available these miracles of science to the American people."
Continued, Jha would declare: "This President has spoken the truth about this virus. Has prioritized policies based on science and evidence. Americans are going back to work and school, and it is an honor to work under his leadership. One focused on the health and well-being of the American people."
Astounding how one's tax dollars can be burned just so one government official can post an entire paragraph of nothing but lies on the Internet, isn't it?
May 04th, 2022: Bloomberg Businessweek reports: "The Children Left Behind by Long Covid: As the world pretends the pandemic is over, at least a half-million children in the U.S. are struggling with the mysterious disease."
Even as they children are clearly not in “much of a better place,” Jha will make no efforts from the White House to help these afflicted children or prevent further kids from suffering this fate, constantly downplaying the threat.
May 13th, 2022: NBC News reports “Biden urges cities to spend Covid relief money on police, crime prevention,” instead of fighting a deadly and disabling virus.
June 2nd, 2022: Jha tweets: "When the Biden Administration came into office, only 46% of schools were open. Today it's >99%. We are 100% committed to ensuring schools remain fully open and safe in this pandemic."
The "safe" part of this statement did not materialize, even after mainstream reporting that COVID-19 infections were disabling children began to trickle in.
June 2nd, 2022: Biden declares Jha is "basically running the CDC," indicating that the White House has taken direct control over what is supposed to be an independent, science-based institution that isn't beholden to political agendas. Future CDC COVID-19 guideline revisions would make this inappropriate oversight obvious.
August 08th, 2022: As reported by CNN, at a US Chamber of Commerce event, Ashish Jha begins to put the rubber stamp on what White House Chief of Staff and 2nd COVID Czar Jeffrey Zients brought in Jha to rubber stamp with his academic credentials: "...getting us out of that acute emergency phase where the US government is buying the vaccines, buying the treatments, buying the diagnostic tests...in 2023, you're going to see the commercialization of almost all of these products. Some of that is actually going to begin this fall, in the days and weeks ahead."
In other words, the Biden Administration planned to dump the entire burden of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic onto the American public - their wallets picked apart by profiteering vultures reaping the benefits of this "commercialization." Guerilla public health efforts, like maskblocs, would be forced to shoulder the burden of what was supposed to be Ashish Jha's responsibility to organize and deploy.
August 27th, 2022: It is revealed that the government is pausing the free distribution of rapid COVID tests to the public on September 2nd, as reported by Axios.
September 13th, 2022: Chicago Magazine reports that "Long COVID is now the country's 3rd leading neurological disorder, the American Academy of Neurology declared....as of the end of May [2022], there were 82.5 million COVID survivors in the US & 30% of them - about 24.8 million - were considered 'long haulers.'"
September 19th, 2022: On 60 Minutes, Biden declares "The pandemic is over. If you notice, no one's wearing masks." As if, this was at all relevant to the reality that COVID-19 is still killing and crippling countless Americans.
September 25th, 2022: Lambert Streher of Corrente publishes "How Ashish Jha and Rochelle Walensky of Newton, MA protect their children from Covid (but not yours)" detailing how wealthy professionals lobbied to protect their own children’s health whilst abandoning yours.
September 27th, 2022: The CDC declares that masking can be optional in healthcare settings. Many patients will go on to find themselves infected with COVID-19 upon entering the facility where their health is supposed to improve, instead of decline. Jha further shrugs his shoulders at this breakdown of civilized society.
September 29th, 2022: For CSIS, "A Fireside Chat" with Ashish Jha, when asked "What would success look like, in your mind, for [booster] uptake in the next 60-90 days?" Jha reveals that they don't even care about ensuring the public has the best protection against COVID-19 anymore: "We don't have a target. I don't have a target. We haven't discussed a target internally." Can you imagine? Getting six figures to show up to work and have no tangible goals whatsoever, especially when it relates to the health of millions of Americans? Did the White House install a mimosa fountain with all of that COVID-19 relief funding, or what?
November 23rd, 2022: In the midst of the BA.5 wave, Ashish Jha bellows on Twitter: "If you are UP TO DATE on your vaccines AND if you get treated in infected, your changes of surviving COVID is close to 100%. Those are the facts. The rest is noise." While recorded COVID-19 deaths did improve, those who wound up disabled by their "mild" COVID-19 infections - and would be completely ignored by Jha. They simply became further "noise." Their day-to-day struggles facing abandonment after being disabled by the pathogen Jha told them to ignore go unanswered.
December 20th, 2022: On a videocall with reports from the Philly Inquirer, Ashish Jha makes a bold declaration that “The notion that you could cut respiratory infections—there is no study in the world that shows that masks work that well. You’re never going to get the kind of benefit from mandatory, year-round masking as you would from making substantial improvements to indoor air quality.”
Just the month before, an NEJM study showed lifting mask mandates in Boston area schools was associated with a significant increase in COVID cases. A previous study from May 2021, “Face masks effectively limit the probability of SARS-CoV-2 transmission” also confirms that PPE works to prevent COVID-19 transmission. Yet again, Jha is not staying up to date on the science - especially a field such as PPE, which Jha has zero qualifications to evaluate.
Again, it’s worth restating that Ashish Jha will do nothing to ensure indoor air quality improvements happen in schools, hospitals, or other essential services during his time as Biden’s COVID Czar.
December 23rd, 2022: Death Panel releases their Covid Year Three podcast.
2023: The Sunsetting of Public Health
Jha would not last the entire year as COVID-19 Czar, instead leaving the White House and then returning to Brown University, as the Biden Administration converted the CDC into a 2024 campaign office and doubled down on burying actionable COVID-19 data for public review.
January 12, 2023: During the winter surge of 2022-23, Jha publicly admits fear in the Washington Post: "I am worried that we are going to have, for years, our health system being pretty dysfunctional, not being able to take care of heart attack patients, not being able to take care of cancer patients, not being able to take care of the kid who's got appendicitis because we're going to be overwhelmed with respiratory viruses for ... three or four months a year."
Of course, it is well known by now that the effects of COVID-19 on the body are far more widespread than just the respiratory system. Jha is not keeping up to date with the latest science, yet again - even when it's one of the central responsibilities of his job, paid for with your American tax dollars.
Jha would never make an effort to help prevent future COVID-19 infections - in fact, he would go on to encourage them and for the public to ignore their own declining health - well, that's what happens when your goal is the "commercialization" of a still unfolding pandemic.
January 30th, 2023: In Time Magazine, Stephen Philips (formerly Medical Director of oil company Exxon) and Vice President Science and Strategy for the COVID Collaborative, an organization Ashish Jha used to be a part of, writes a horrific Op-Ed titled: “The COVID-19 Pandemic Will Be Over When Americans Think It Is,” in which Philips writes an outright sadistic manifesto, ending with “New courageous “accept exposure” policies, public education and behavior change strategies are needed to capture the benefits of the new paradigm,” demanding that Americans be forced to “accept” repeated COVID-19 infections and the risk of crippling disability.
March 10th, 2023: Ashish Jha declares via Twitter that "We've made improving Indoor Air Quality a real priority to fight COVID and other respiratory diseases." American public schools, hospitals, and other essential infrastructure have not seen a meaningful improvement to Indoor Air Quality, as many children continue to be infected with COVID-19 at school and bring home the virus to their families.
March 22, 2023: The White House announces it is disbanding its COVID-19 team in May. From a Washington Post report, it’s revealed that Jha has been yeeted from the White House: “The team’s diminished presence has manifested in diminished proximity to the president: [Ashish] Jha’s office was moved out of the West Wing this year to the neighboring Eisenhower Executive Office Building, according to three people familiar with the matter.”
June 09th, 2023: It is announced that Ashish Jha is stepping down as the final COVID-19 Czar, having left America a much sicker place than when he first started in March 2022. Many newly dead & disabled Americans, zero air quality upgrades, and an unfolding minefield of COVID-induced health complications are left in the Final COVID Czar’s wake. Job well done!
June 15th, 2023: On PBS News Hour, Ashish Jha after stepping down estimates that 36,000 Americans will die of COVID in 2023. On May 7th, the New Yorker had reported that 40,000 Americans have already died in 2023.
June 30th, 2023: Ashish Jha accepts a “Presidential Award” from the ASHRAE Annual Conference for “driving & inspiring” new indoor air quality standards the White House will refuse to implement in schools, hospitals, and workplaces nationwide to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infections.
July 06th, 2023: Ashish Jha returns as dean of Brown University's School of Public Health, having shredded the last vestiges of the very ideal in the public eye. Going forward, Jha's public tone will grow incredibly nasty and at times, even hostile, offering the public a delusional fantasy of a "new normal" in which American families should simply "ignore" COVID-19 and the growing mountains of harms that can occur.
July 31st, 2023: For the Boston Globe, Ashish Jha publishes an Op-Ed titled "With a few basic steps, most of us can finally ignore Covid." Which is what millions of Americans did before they were disabled by COVID-19, of which we still lack effective treatment or a cure for now in 2024. Gushing about Paxlovid, Jha ignores that the majority of Americans cannot afford a $1300 expense for an anti-viral that many doctors or insurance companies will deny those infected with COVID-19.
Regarding the Long COVID disability that has affected millions of Americans, Jha writes: "Those who are up to date on their vaccines are far less likely to get Long COVID, and when they do, it tends to be shorter-lived and less severe." Jha does not provide evidence for this claim, and even then, is demanding the public roll the dice on a disability that has left many bedridden and unable to work. Instead of simply telling people that yes, they should get the latest booster, and they should avoid infection with a quality respirator - the public is encouraged to "ignore" the risk of watching their "normal life" evaporate before their eyes.
A week later on August 5th in the Boston Globe, Erza J. Spier gets to write a rebuttal:
As a healthy, vaccinated, and recently boosted 35-year-old, I did what he said: I ignored COVID-19 on a weekend trip with friends in September 2022. But the infection I got as a result has all but destroyed my life.
A week after my infection, I began to experience intense fatigue, overwhelming headaches, and cognitive challenges that continue to this day. These symptoms are debilitating: I can no longer work, socialize, or travel. My finances are dire. And if I am unable to avoid another infection, my condition may deteriorate even further.
Jha wrote of long COVID “treatments” being promising. Perhaps he could clarify what treatments he is referring to, because my doctors say that there are no approved treatments for long COVID.
A recent study funded by the NIH’s RECOVER initiative showed that 10 percent of adults infected with COVID still have symptoms six months later, even with vaccination. By downplaying the prevalence and debilitating outcomes of even moderate long COVID, Jha is signing thousands of people up to the misery and despair with which I live every day.
Ashish Jha would never apologize to Erza, correct his obvious mistakes, or revise the fictionalized guidance he has misled millions of Americans with. Instead, Jha would only double down just months later.
December 12th, 2023: Death Panel releases Covid Year Four
2024: InfinityCOVID Radicalism
January 09th, 2024: As a winter SARS-CoV-2 wave infects an estimated 100 million Americans, killing thousands weekly, a reprehensible Time article titled "We're In a Major COVID-19 Surge. It's Our New Normal," is published, quoting Jha declaring "...it's not the risk it was four years ago, or even two years ago. It's totally reasonable for people to go back to living their lives." Instead of this Public Health expert telling Americans the truth and advising them to avoid needless death and disability caused by COVID-19, Jha demands that the public simply pretend this suffering caused by an airborne, socially transmitted virus simply isn't happening.
It's an impressively sadistic betrayal of the very principles of public health to demand that the public turn a blind eye to needless suffering caused from our behavior bouncing a virus that has killed and crippled so many, and for those afflicted, they simply cease to exist in the mind's eye of Ashish Jha. He got to pad his resume, stroll the halls of power in the White House, and accept fancy awards, whilst contributing to one of the largest degradations of American health, including a massive reduction in life expectancy, in our history.
January 16th, 2024: As mountains of evidence grow that COVID-19 infections are harmful to the immune system, Ashish Jha rushes to Twitter to declare that: "There's a lot of bad information out there about how covid damages the immune system. It really doesn't." Now this has been a long-held, delusional belief by pro-viral advocates attempting to normalize constant illness. "Transient lymphocytopenia after infection isn't immune damage. Folks with long COVID can have immune dysregulation. Not same as being immunocompromised. Covid still serious for vulnerable folks, especially those not up to date on vaccines. For most, not immune damaging disease."
The irony, is that around the same time Jha made this clueless tweet, not informed by the latest research (as compiled by the Pandemic Accountability Index here on a regular basis, Reddit has been overwhelmed with posts from across the country questioning why everyone was constantly sick. Now, we can get into the nitty gritty, but anyone being reinfected with the same virus, sometimes multiple times a year, in rapid succession - is a new phenomenon. Secondly, who is "vulnerable," and who is "most" in this regard? In truth, Jha's word salad is about using his credentials and resume to confuse the public and shrug off responsibility, whilst a growing mountain of evidence - both in research and anecdotally, is showing that Jha's claims simply are not holding water. Third, the term "immunocompromised" has a wide definition, of which immune dysregulation falls under.
Memorial Sloan Kettering Library: COVID-19 Immune Dysfunction
The next day on the 17th, Jha would declare: "A subset of people with long covid have immune dysfunction? Probably. A large chunk of people who get covid have immune damage in some way? No real evidence to support that."
SARS-CoV-2 Infection Weakens Immune-Cell Response to Vaccination (NIH)
Understand that Jha is not bothering to review the growing evidence - we've compiled it for you - because it means that his entire term as Biden's COVID Czar and pro-viral advocacy was an absolute and objective failure, of which he was wholly unqualified for. The shame of wasting years of your life being publicly wrong is simply too much for the wealthy and comfortable laptop academic class to bear. Soft minds and weak hearts make for poor leaders, but good followers - which is what Biden and Zients demanded and got from Ashish Jha.
March 1st, 2024: Regarding the CDC's effective end of isolation guidelines for Americans sick and contagious with COVID-19 (with many people reporting infections lasting over two weeks), Jha takes to Twitter to declare: "The infectious disease doctors of America [IDSA] agree. The change in the CDC guidelines on COVID isolation make sense. Now you can choose to [listen] to some random anonymous dude on Twitter who disagrees. Or you can listen to the infectious disease experts. I'm with the experts folks."
The former President of the IDSA, Carlos del Rio, signed the December 2021 letter by the Delta Airlines CEO demanding the original reduction in isolation guidelines from 10 days to 5, even as many remain infectious after five days - spreading the virus to coworkers, customers, fellow students, and others. Forcing Americans to work through an active COVID-19 infectious, a vascular multi-system disease, increases their risk for Long COVID disability. None of these facts are considered in Jha's endorsement of further needless infections, illness, disability, and deaths.
Don't worry, Jha only gets worse from there: "In 2024, that burden of isolation hasn't changed. But the benefit has - it just matters far less. 98% of the population has at least some immunity. Incidence of Long Covid is way down. And we have widely available effective treatments for high risk folks."
None of this is true, with many Americans watching their health decline after what is now their third and fourth COVID-19 infections. What's especially infuriating is Ashish Jha's claim that "Incidence of Long Covid is way down." By official CDC metrics, it actually increased by over four million between October 2023 and February 2024 alone. Secondly, if a Long Covid clinic fails to treat that patient (because we don't have a treatment or cure for Long Covid) and said patient leaves ineffective treatment, that contributes to "incidence" going down. No, they're not "better," we simply couldn't help them and sent them home to suffer in anguish. Some wind up in poverty, homeless, or even go on to suffer deaths of despair.
The "evidence" for Ashish Jha's claim that incidence of Long Covid is way down, is in fact, a fellow laptop class Twitter academic, Gideon "Health Nerd" Meyerowitz-Katz, who butchered the numbers to make a pitiful argument claiming that your previous COVID-19 infections reduced your chance of developing Long Covid disability to that of a "d1000 dice roll," a tortured metaphor based on the children's tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons. However, the actual facts would make it clear that Jha's encouragement of COVID-19 transmission is only going to cripple and harm many more Americans, so that is simply discarded for unscientific napkin math.
Yet again, the American people are burdened by a laptop class academic jester, looking for "evidence" from random social media accounts that tell Ashish Jha what he wants to hear, and has become completely detached from the facts and latest science, selling false assurances to cover for his own catastrophic failure.
Jha continues: "COVID-19 remains a real threat for high-risk folks. Keeping up with vaccines, getting treated when infected is how we manage that risk. This new guidance, aligned with that of the flu, acknowledges the burdens and benefits of isolation. And that makes for good guidance. End."
First of all, the government doesn't keep track of who is "high risk," mails them a card, and helps them manage the “real threat” of COVID-19. Most Americans don't have multiple stacks of $1300-1700 laying around for emergency Paxlovid that their doctor likely won't give them. COVID-19 is not the flu, as the flu has not crippled millions of Americans in just a few short years. Finally, the benefits of not being repeatedly infected on the job with a potentially disabling virus that could end your career, just like it has for millions of Americans already, is not simply a "benefit" - but an entitlement to a safe workplace that every citizen is entitled to.
This ought to mark the end of Ashish Jha's career in public health; forced to retire in exile and shame for being such a sadistically delusional failure, completely detached from the science. A historically impressive failure of a man who accomplished nothing except getting countless Americans killed and disabled, who likely can’t even be trusted to pump gas.
March 6th, 2024: For STAT News, Ashish Jha writes an OpEd titled: "The CDC's new Covid guidance reflects the best way to approach public health: as a balancing act of burdens and benefits." Impressively sadistic, the outlandish and outright fictional claims - not supported by evidence - are almost impressive.
Jha would take to Twitter, declaring: "White House Covid policy aligning with that of the CDC. Because that makes sense at this point. COVID is now a long term challenge. It must be met with long term solutions. cleaning indoor air, updating and using vaccines, having accessible treatments and so forth." Neither Jha nor the CDC would implement these changes before their latest zero-isolation guidance, which allows employers to force COVID-19 infectious employees into the workplace to spread the virus to coworkers, customers, and their families. These "challenges" will only grow worse over time, instead of fading away into the sunset.
April 18th, 2024: After getting countless Americans killed and crippled with willful mismanagement of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, Ashish Jha is invited to the University of Toronto to deliver the keynote speech at the 2024 Interdisciplinary Symposium, "Institute for Pandemics." An in-person only event, in which COVID-19 mitigations will likely be entirely absent - it's frankly an insult to the people of Canada, and the students at the University of Toronto, to be subjected to such a pompous celebration for an objective failure that contributed to the needless death and disability of so many millions of Americans.
If you are one of the millions suffering from Long COVID here in the United States, you should contact University of Toronto’s Institute for Pandemics, tell your side of the story, and to demand that the Keynote Speech slot be revoked from Ashish Jha. Only by rejecting pseudoscience and false celebrations of victory, can public health begin to undo the damage that has been done by Jha's failed leadership as Biden's final COVID Czar.
