REVIEW: Everyone Else is Lying to You by Dr. Jonathan Howard, MD
The Long-Feared Sequel to "We Want Them Infected" Has Arrived
The Pandemic Accountability Index was lucky enough to be provided with a pre-release copy of EEILTY for review. You can find it available for pre-order at Redhawk Publications’ website for $30.00.
"Liars do not fear the truth if there are enough liars." -Fox Mulder, The X-Files
Everyone Else is Lying to You: How our medical establishment weaponized doubt to spread COVID, normalize quackery, and undermine public health (EEILTY) is the sequel to neurologist Dr. Jonathan Howard's We Want Them Infected, (WWTI) published in 2023 by Redhawk Publications, a definitive account of the Trump Administration's mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and how the anti-vaccine movement gained mainstream influence over our politics. Just two years later, our situation has rapidly declined, as many of the anti-vaccine influencers Dr. Howard profiled in WWTI have now been given senior positions under a second Trump Administration. EEILTY is an incredibly thorough history of just how rapidly our situation has declined.
While WWTI is a robust tome, clocking in at 603 pages, EEILTY is a solid brick at 755 pages. There is hardly a single page without at least one direct quote, thanks to years of material freely contributed by COVID-19's worse disinformation artists' constant broadcasting of falsehoods across cable news and social media. What makes author Dr. Howard's task so difficult is just how chaotic things have become at our federal public health agencies under the leadership well-profiled in WWTI. Devastating headlines seem to occur on a near-daily basis, including a recent attempted massacre of the CDC by someone who was radicalized by years of the same anti-vaccine propaganda Dr. Howard has documented.
As a fellow traveler who shares Dr. Howard's passion for documenting blatantly false statements by public figures, I am intimately familiar with the material EEILTY covers. It's safe to say that the book is an essential reference for what has quickly become an existential crisis in American medicine & politics and should be required reading for the next generation of American doctors. Like it or not, but the anti-vaccine project to politicize vaccines and intrude on the trust patients have with their doctors has been realized, to disastrous effect. It's critical that our last line of defense against pestilence is familiar with the many techniques of how these disinformation influencers mislead the public.
On the flipside, EEILTY could also be considered a guidebook on how to sew distrust amongst qualified, experienced medical & scientific professionals for the sole purpose of promoting oneself on cable news & social media. As another thorough compilation of do-nothing yappers, EEILTY is a pretty damning rogues' gallery that anyone should feel embarrassed to be included in. Amidst all the death and devastation COVID-19 has caused since 2020, what Dr. Howard refers to as "WWTI docs" believe is that the greatest challenge for public health was that people sought to protect themselves and their loved ones from a harmful virus. No amount of evidence which contradicts their views could change their minds, as they had numerous wealthy interests bankrolling their gimmick - from tech moguls to advocates for teen smoking and child labor. This wasn't scientific debate; this was propaganda.
EEILTY isn't necessarily partisan either, naming non-Trump affiliated COVID minimizers such as David Leonhardt of the New York Times, who laundered such absurd myths such as "immunity debt" into the mainstream. Sadly, voices such as Leonhardt have no regret about their role in helping the worst anti-vaccine propagandists come into power. As Monica Gandhi showed in a recent New York Times opinion editorial, they blame everyone else for not embracing the SARS-CoV-2 virus sooner to stop Trump's war on science.
Everyone Else Is Lying to You is a roadmap of just how we got to the current state of chaos under a second Trump administration, and the challenges that American medicine and public health must address head-on, instead of shying away from conflict. It's impossible to have a "debate" with dishonest charlatans who refuse to acknowledge how their previous proclamations have been proven dead wrong, as Dr. Howard shows numerous times in this extensive archive. As such, there's no point in entertaining such voices as part of any serious discussion about critical issues such as pandemics, public health, or vaccines.
The secret sauce that binds EELITY together is Dr. Howard's scathing wit; a thorough dismantling of his beloved flock of "WWTI docs" that imagined an elaborate "mirror world" in which the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic conformed to their elaborate fantasies. For all of the supposed wisdom these abrasive personalities have brought to our federal public health agencies, Dr. Howard merely contrasts their own words with what happened in the real world. Egged on by conservative social media fans, these "WWTI docs" grew further and further detached from reality, as EEILTY chronicles in exhaustive detail. If you want to watch the FDA's Vinay Prasad fry his credibility in real-time, check out our 2020-2023 profile:
If Richard Evans' seminal 1987 history Death in Hamburg was a guidebook on how to mismanage a public health crisis, then Dr. Jonathan Howard's Everyone Else is Lying to You is a handbook for the next generation of self-promoting anti-vaccine personalities. America has regressed into a truly diseased society, in which arrogance, dishonesty, and incompetence are rewarded with wealth and power. Future medical histories will not look back on this chapter kindly, much less have anything positive to say about men like NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya or FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, who have silenced themselves in a passive endorsement of Trump and RFK Jr.'s war on the world's health.
Everyone Else is Lying to You is essential reading to ensure that the catastrophe American medicine is experiencing now is never repeated, to deny future charlatans the power to compromise our response to future public health disasters. While many might find this thankless work, it is none-the-less essential. Sadly, I fear this will not be the last history of medical disinformation Dr. Jonathan Howard ends up writing.
The Pandemic Accountability Index was provided with a pre-release copy of EEILTY for review. You can find Everyone Else is Lying to You on the Redhawk Publications website, available for pre-order at the price of $30.00.
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