Understanding Emily Oster's Calmmongering
The Perils of the Bloodless Quant
By now, you have no doubt heard about the contaminated lettuce that is causing explosive diarrhea all across the country via Cycloporiasis. It has spawned memes about “the parasite” haunting the nation’s grocery stores, restaurants, and general food supply. Like clockwork, economist Emily Oster has taken to The New York Times to insist that yet another public health crisis is actually no big deal, and a scare invented by the fearmongering media:
It’s worth noting that FOX News and other reactionary blowhards at the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic also used this same logic to downplay the threat. On the Substack blog Emily Oster calls herself the “CEO” of, Oster has compared media reporting on pediatric COVID-19, which has killed and disabled countless American children, to that of shark attacks. Her latest screed in The New York Times is employing this same tactic of downplaying the significance of any threat to the public’s health.
Why does Oster do this? As an economist who no real medical or scientific credentials, who is paid to write her opinion in the newspaper, Oster is far removed from the consequences of her words. One of the core tenets of modern American economics theory - following in the footsteps of vile racist Milton Friedman - is that government intervention and regulation, in any form, is stifling the economy and a grave trespass against freedom. This includes prohibiting the sale of unpasteurized (or “raw”) milk, which provides zero nutritional benefit and has put numerous children in the hospital, something Emily Oster has said we shouldn’t be concerned with - as exploitative scam artists call themselves “pioneers.”
These cyclospora outbreaks are caused by feces contamination and inhumane working conditions, and a lack of regulation enforcing sufficient sanitation. So no, you shouldn’t be surprised to see an economist influencer defending the conditions which has led to thousands of Americans nearly shitting themselves to death. How else will she get funding from wealthy corporate executives who are united in pursuing a dismantling of government regulations?
I have warned since the very beginning of this second Trump administration that eliminating federal regulatory authority in its entirety, and this would naturally result in compromising our food supply. Unfortunately, this process did not begin in January 2025, as a 2024 listeria outbreak which killed 10 Americans can be directly linked to meddling by the Biden Administration in the wake of a hands-off pandemic response which killed and disabled millions of Americans. From a September 2024 report by Alexander Tin of CBS News:
“...Department of Agriculture records show that Biden administration officials quietly made significant cuts to planned testing for germs across America’s food supply . . . The Biden administration has not provided an explanation for the decision to make the chances. And questions are now being raised about why the Boar’s Head plant’s years of violations didn’t spur regulators to reverse course, do more testing and step up federal scrutiny.”
To be in compliance with food safety regulations, a company has to expense some percentage of their budget. In an economy focused on infinite, often unsustainable growth, eliminating all “unnecessary” expenses becomes a priority. If thousands of Americans have to nearly shit themselves to death, that’s a sacrifice they should be willing to make for the glorious economy. It’s worth noting that ancient pagan societies routinely practiced human sacrifice in the hopes that the Gods would deliver a good harvest.
What Oster is doing on behalf of her wealthy benefactors, including MAGA-aligned billionaires such as Peter Thiel and Mark Zuckerberg, is selling the public on accepting a higher threshold of sickness and death from future viral outbreaks caused by climate collapse, and a contaminated food supply caused by reckless deregulation. It also gives RFK Jr. cover from accepting any responsibility for what a major part of his job as the Secretary of Health and Human Services is. Modern American economics theory does not comprehend that one of the essential pillars of a strong economy is the American people knowing that spending their hard-earned dollars at the grocery store won’t poison their children. It haphazardly argues that this relentless pursuit of unsustainable short-term economic growth at all costs will trickle down into prosperity for all, even as America’s disparities grow worse year after year.
These aren’t wise economic insights, nor well-informed public health guidance. It’s the same unrepentant calmmongering rooted in a hands-off, do-nothing approach to public health that Emily Oster has championed for decades, being wrong on everything from Hepatitis B to HIV/AIDS to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome to COVID-19 to raw milk, and now an increasingly contaminated food supply. She has even gone so far as to argue that the precautionary principle of public health is oppressive to women in defense of drinking during pregnancy. As a wealthy and comfortable empty-headed pundit, there is no bottom that will be a line too far for Oster. Emily Oster is a complete fraud; a broken record who should be rambunctiously laughed out of the room whenever she opens her mouth. Shame upon The New York Times and every other media outlet that continues to platform her as a serious, legitimate voice.
Regardless of whatever tired, old Friedman era myths you’ve heard, the market is not going to magically regulate itself. It will justify selling poisoned food on the marketplace if it saves a few bucks, and everyday Americans need to simply shoulder the burden for the wealth and luxury of a few, no matter what form that comes in, even if happens to be explosive diarrhea.
You don’t need to be a bloodless quant to see how absurd this is.
Oster is beyond awful - deliberately and cruelly clueless. She should, indeed, be laughed out of any room that she gives her idiotic, brutally wrong and deranged opinions about medicine/public health/health care. Listening to her is as utterly ridiculous as putting Kennedy in charge of HHS or Bhattacharya in charge of the NIH. The utter stupidity and deliberate cruelty/eugenics of the malignantly insane Trump administration.