REVIEW: Stanford's "Pandemic Policy" Conference
Dispatches from the Anti-Vaxxer Playdate
It's an oddly disappointing feeling to make a bold prediction upon an upcoming event, only to find said predictions completely and totally validated. As we previously wrote in our extensive preview (PAI) of Stanford Medicine's "Pandemic Policy" Conference which took place at Stanford Health Policy on October 4th, it was apparent that there was no "debate" being held. Instead, Stanford would host a masturbatory pageant of frauds designed to rewrite history and lay the foundation for poor policy-making that would lead to bad outcomes in future pandemics.
Admittedly this review is a little late, having followed the event and the fallout afterwards, but every word of our Preview of this event came true: There was no new research presented, there was little serious debate, and attendees came away knowing less than when they had entered the venue. Notably, the organizers and speakers could not agree upon a hashtag beforehand, leaving attendees to spread their thoughts across three or four separate hashtags on Twitter.
What is worth talking about is what was notably absent from Stanford's "Pandemic Policy" conference, which we'll touch upon after reviewing the day's events.
A Day At Plague-Con
SPOILERS: None of this is new material. It's like a festival of aging rockers playing their greatest hits, long past their prime. Feel free to skip to the next section if you're familiar with these names and their history of spewing unscientific hoghwash.
♦ Former Swedish State Epidemiologist Anders Tegnell boldly claimed "I think people didn't use the data we had." This is a lie - Tegnell ignored the scientific data from SARS-CoV-1 and instead embraced a right wing conspiracy theorist Youtube personality named "Fat Emperor," abandoning his responsibility to the Swedish people - many of which are now disabled or suffering from cognitive impairment as a result of mandated COVID-19 infections before a vaccine was available.
Tegnell continues, "We also found trust in societies is incredibly important. At meetings like this we can rebuild trust." This is hilarious coming from Anders, who is a dishonest narcissist focused on promoting himself as some sort of intellectual titan of ultimate rationality, lining his pockets from speaking fees taken from the academic speaking circuit by professing the wisdom of outdated and long debunked anti-vaccine pseudoscience.
This entire "conference" was about extremely untrustworthy people demanding faith from the general public and their centuries-old fantasy that nakedly embracing pathogens is a net positive for society, when scientists and doctors with real world responsibility have binned this garbage long ago. Tegnell was hailed as a celebrity by his fellow conference speakers, who all lined up to take selfies with their beloved overseas fraud.
♦ Stanford's own Jay Bhattacharya, another chronically incorrect fraud who got many Floridians killed when he mishandled the pandemic response for Governor Ron DeSantis, rushed to the stage to blatantly misrepresent the day's event:
"During pandemics, the public depends on experts to share their expertise openly without fear or favor and to speak their minds openly about their scientific and policy evaluations. By hosting this conference on pandemic management with a wide range of voices, subjects, ideas, and expertise, Stanford is setting an example for how universities can best contribute to the public good in the event of any future pandemic."
This is yet another blatant lie. The speakers are overwhelmingly vocally unscientific anti-vax, anti-mask, anti-public health loudmouths that found each other on social media. As predicted, Stanford's Jay Bhattacharya and others are using the legitimacy of the Stanford name to construct a fraudulent "consensus" of "experts," a totally fictional mirror to the overwhelming consensus of COVID-19 scientists and doctors that have spent years understanding how SARS-CoV-2 harms the body. (PAI) It's worth noting that this "pandemic post-mortem" occurred on the four-year anniversary of the "Great Barrington Declaration," an online petition calling for widespread infection of hundreds of millions of unvaccinated Americans, written by Stanford's Smilin' Jay and ex-Harvard Martin Kulldorff.
Martin wrote on Twitter on Oct. 4th:
"Four years ago today...we published the [Great Barrington Declaration], advocating focused protection instead of school closures and other lockdowns. Thank you to all 940,000 co-signers. We were proven right!!"
It's worth noting that the list of co-signers has been hidden because it contained such prestigious names in the medical and scientific fields such as Dr. Fart, (Youtube) and that there was no serious plan for "focused protection" in the GBD. Here's what that would have looked like in reality:
Modelling a "Great Barrington" Pandemic Response
♦ Federalist Society hack Jenin "LeftyLockdowns" Younes cried that the First Amendment was "trampled” by the “Pandemic Industrial Complex," (?) and how this somehow killed more people than COVID-19. Desperate to the Princess Leia of her own Rebel Alliance, Jenin struggles with separating reality from her narcissistic fantasies. Younes continues, "The government does not get to censor free speech during an emergency. That is the time when we need the most discussion and the greatest diversity of opinions." The reality that Jenin and her fellow conference speakers refuse to accept that is they were heard - everywhere from FOX News to social media - and were soundly rejected. Because this reality contradicts their fantasy of rebellious heroes for liberty, these quacks soundly reject the shame of being told no.
Jenin also boldly claimed she "doesn't believe in misinformation," in a rather Trumpian "alternative facts" moment. In the realm of science and medicine, not all opinions are weighted equally. Facts don’t care about your feelings, as conservatives often love to screech.
♦ Neil Malhotra proclaimed "We have experts in science, but nobody is an expert in values. Closing schools was not a science-based decision, it was a values-based decision." This is the fraudulent "consensus" that this “Pandemic Policy” conference wants to enshrine in future pandemic policy: that children, their families, and especially teachers are to be mass-infected with any and all new pathogens that arrive on our shores, especially in the opening waves of a new pandemic. This is a completely obscene and unrealistic demand. Delusions and fantasy are taking priority over reality at Stanford, with devastating consequences.
♦ Rabid misogynist and anti-vaccine social media grifter Alex Berenson boldly proclaimed, "Sometimes you're not wrong. Sometimes you're just ahead," inferring that we should have done absolutely nothing about COVID-19 in the Spring of 2020 and simply let it sweep over the nation as hospitals were crashing and doctors were committing suicide, so Berenson could ridicule those suffering from the disease he personally profits from championing. This is the sort of voice that Stanford Medicine thinks need to be heard by their students.
After reaching out to dozens of Stanford Medicine, Stanford Health Policy, and Stanford University administration & staff, none were brave enough to comment on how they felt about the University's decision to give such an abusive misogynist pig like Berenson a platform. To legitimize loudmouthed and abusive anti-vax grifters with the name of one of America's leading medical schools is an absolute disgrace, and the refusal to speak out is a damning indictment of Stanford’s (lack of) leadership.
♦ Great Barrington Declaration co-author and laptop class academic Sunetra Gupta proclaimed: "Lockdowns were put forward as a solution without any evidence to halt the spread." This is objectively false; stay-at-home orders and other measures such as mask mandates and remote schooling were incredibly effective in reducing transmission during the early stages of the pandemic in NYC, 2020. Fellow "Pandemic Policy" speaker Alex Berenson falsely claimed that mass infection had induced herd immunity and that the pandemic was over in 2020. Alex wasn’t “ahead” - he was dead wrong.
♦ Vinay Prasad of University of California San Francisco Medicine openly mocked Peter Hotez, a scientist with real-world achievements such as inventing lifesaving vaccines, for rejecting an invitation to waste a perfectly good Friday afternoon entertaining abusive anti-vaccine cranks.
Vinay Prasad then proceeded to do an in-person version of a recent Substack rant, making a completely obscene leap in logic that - because former NYC public health official Jay Varma is a rich dickhead who flaunted stay-at-home orders in 2020 to attend an orgy - that this is scientific evidence that COVID-19 was harmless and the government knew this all along - if this is the standard of intellectual rigor that one can expect from UCSF Faculty, then their students should start demanding tuition refunds. This isn't "Evidence Based Medicine," as Prasad pretends to be a champion of. It's conspiracy theory nonsense.
"I would be surprised if there is a resurgence in trust in public health. It deserves to be distrusted," Prasad proclaimed, as he is currently whining about mask mandates at the hospital which employs him; crying that he is expected to fulfill his professional responsibilities and prevent the spread of airborne pathogens at his place of employment: a large building full of sick people - including those exhaling SARS-CoV-2, a virus that has already killed and disabled millions of Americans.
One actual "debate" managed to take place, between Prasad and economist Anup Malani, on the challenges of performing Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) on pandemic policies. Long-time readers of the Pandemic Accountability Index will know that RCTs are one of Prasad's favorite things to rant about - even though he, with his own lab named after himself, has failed to design, perform, or participate in a single RCT. Prasad screeches and squeals demands that everyone else perform RCTs, including highly unethical and unscientific RCTs for scientific fields outside of clinical medicine, including PPE engineering. Prasad's defense is simply "it's too expensive not to do RCTs," which is not an argument. Sadly, Malani's attempts to explain entry-level science and ethics to Vinay Prasad were in vain.
Prasad ended his time cracking a joke about how he had a cough due to COVID-19, and everyone laughed - establishing that a virus which has killed and disabled millions of Americans is nothing more than a "joke" to these supposed "experts" of "Pandemic Policy." This is the sort of reckless, unprofessional garbage that UCSF Hospitals continues to employ, putting the health of their patients at risk.
♦ Scott Atlas, a former Trump advisor boldly proclaimed: "A peaceful society is built on trust. That won't continue if it's filled by people who lack the moral compass to admit their heinous errors and who refuse to allow views to counter their own." Atlas has a long, well-documented history of being dead-wrong about COVID-19, leading many Americans to their graves. Since then, he has insisted that he has been right about everything since March 2020. Atlas is making a threat: that if people do not submit to his fantasies of genius, then American society will collapse into violence. This is the sort of voice that Stanford Medicine believes their students need to hear.
Atlas also celebrated being compared to Anders Tegnell, for their agreement that children should be infected with new SARS viruses as quickly as possible, even if they may have been designed in a laboratory.
♦ John Ioannidis, who claimed COVID-19 would only kill 10-40,000 Americans and that we should all embrace SARS-CoV-2, gave closing statements. He asked the attendees "to have an open spirit of challenging things - and destroying things if we find that they are incorrect." This is darkly hilarious, considering that Ioannidis destroyed his own credibility by refusing to destroy how his overly optimistic perspective led him to wildly underestimate COVID-19.
"We failed our children. We failed our future," John proclaimed. No, he wasn't talking about himself or his many faults. He was looking at thousands of children killed by COVID-19, many more disabled, and a growing mountain of evidence showing how repeated SARS-CoV-2 infections negatively affect pediatric health & development - and insisting that those numbers simply aren't high enough.
John continues, "we need to think positively about the future - I don't want to think our future will be a death spiral of wrong decisions." The subtle inference here is that Ioannidis believes that, even when his projections of COVID-19 being no worse than the flu were proven dead wrong, that the public health measures made in 2020 were a "death spiral of wrong decisions," and that he deems himself fit to judge everyone but himself, assuming intellectual superiority over the rest of the nation.
This is the sort of unscientific, narcissistic fantasy that Stanford Medicine believes its students need to hear: that there are no consequences for getting the science wrong or harming people. In fact, you’ll be rewarded with wealth and prestige for failure.
What Was Missing?
October 4th profoundly embarrassing day for what is supposed to be one of America's leading medical institutions. As said before, there was no new science or research presented. This "pandemic post-mortem" was all a massive repeat of the same material these cranks have been spewing since 2020. Several hours of nothing more but narcissistic fantasy that has been repeated and looped so many times over that you can start to hear the record skip. However, there was something noticeable that none of these "Pandemic Policy" speakers were brave enough to admit.
Take a look at these photos, and see if you can find what's missing:
There's a lot of empty chairs, for starters. Overwhelmingly, attendance was fellow conference speakers, and their fanboys: old white male MAGA/Q-Anon conspiracy theorists who radicalized themselves on social media to embrace unjustifiable anti-vaccine quackery. What was missing (with a couple minor exceptions) was the students of Stanford Medicine.
Are you trying to tell me that this is the sort of fresh face of the next generation of leading doctors in America? Desperate to misrepresent themselves as intellectual and moral leaders in public health and medical science, the "Pandemic Policy" speakers and organizers were overwhelmingly rejected by the students of Stanford University.
Preaching at the choir of your own captive audience of Twitter wackos is not the purpose of a medical or scientific conference. This was an organized playdate for adults who are too selfish and too immature to handle the responsibilities of dealing with a global disaster such as the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, desperate to pretend that they're Serious Thinkers for a day. Sadly, Stanford Medicine was willing to tarnish their own legacy in order to lend credibility to such a pitiful display of mental incontinence, by a gaggle of vapid creeps who are desperate to roll up to the roulette table in Vegas and gamble with your family’s health.
This didn't stop Jay Bhattacharya from proclaiming the event "an enormous success," as if repeating the same slop you've being saying for years at a room full of empty chairs and unquestioning sycophants wasn't a deeply embarrassing failure - a total vilification of their views. The hard truth these cranks refuse to accept is that these extremist, anti-vaccine views rooted in the embrace of pestilence have been largely rejected by American society - especially the next generation of doctors and nurses coming from Stanford.
Did Stanford Host a Money Laundering Summit?
October 4th was a failed day of anti-vaccine cranks repeating the same tired old lies, funded by "Collateral Global," another sham resume-padding organization that misrepresents itself as an "education charity" that takes money from conservative billionaires and, bizarrely, the American office of the Belgian “King’s Baudouin Foundation,” which is not required to disclose its funding sources? The Counter Disinformation Project covers this story in detail:
Collateral Global has direct ties to the Great Barrington Declaration, and Carl Heneghan of the fraudulent Cochrane review of masks fame. They even infamously once published a video about how mass infecting millions of unvaccinated adults with SARS-CoV-2 would rapidly induce "herd immunity" and an end to the pandemic.
Fellow "Pandemic Policy" participant, laptop class academic Kevin Bardosh of the University of Washington, hosts Collateral Global's podcast. On September 19th, 2024 they uploaded an episode titled, "The (Critical) Left during Covid: What happened?" Bardosh's guest is Geoff Shullenberger, a useless opinion-editorial spammer for right-wing pissrags who is not left-wing, nor critical in any way. In fact, Geoff endorsed a totally unscientific screed from The American Conservative in May 2023 titled "Mask-Wearers Are Poisoning Themselves," in which Geoff bravely declared: "Hypothesis: a non-trivial portion of "long Covid" symptoms are the result of mask-wearing." This is the level of intellectual rigor that Collateral Global and their "education charity" podcast chooses to endorse and platform.
Considering the incredibly low-effort and repetitive content of the speakers, it's not hard for one to infer that Stanford's "Pandemic Policy" conference was little more than money laundering. A fraudulent, poorly organized event by Stanford Health Policy's Jay Bhattacharya, endorsed by President Jonathan Levin, taking money from Jay Bhattacharya's Collateral Global, was used to funnel extremist billionaire money into the hands of the many speakers, who have a long history of publicly displaying moral depravity and unscrupulous motivations. It's an easy payday: sit in a largely empty conference hall for a few hours, rattle off the same garbage you've been spewing on social media for years, and cash an easy paycheck.
Stanford University must open an ethics investigation and condemn any and all misbehavior involved by the organizers and attendees, who, as reported by the The Stanford Daily, have an extensive history of baselessly threatening and attacking Stanford researchers and students. This event was an insult to their students and a total perversion of the legacy of Stanford. There is no place for anti-vaccine sentiments in any medical university, and students should not be going into debt for universities that waste money, time, and resources on organizing playdates for immature brats that wish to play at intellectualism for a day, all while people are being disabled and dying in the real world.
