In my wide-ranging talk with the Stanford professor, we discussed, in particular, what happens special-interest groups are confronted with good, yet inconvenient news about their area of concern.
I think he was pilloried because he falsely claimed in easily discredited research that vast numbers of people had been infected with COVID, the fatality was less than the Flu, and when confronted with bad research and poor conclusions simply doubled down.
Standing back, the original paper was wildly inaccurate - at 1.2 million dead from COVID in the US today, his data would imply over 720M people were infected, but the population is only 330M - his numbers were at least twice as high as reality; the fatality rate of COVID fatality was 10x as high as the flu
He declared that we should allow the virus to progress unchecked to acquire herd immunity without proof - and today we know that neither vaccination nor prior infection creates herd immunity, though vaccination in most cases reduces fatality to zero.
Excited to listen to this conversation!
Let me know what you think. I just happened to have it on hand when the news came down the pike about his nomination.
Will do! Here is our post about Jay's nomination- it includes the trailer for our upcoming documentary 15 Days - Jay is at the heart of it: https://restorechildhood.substack.com/p/our-favorite-fringe-epidemiologist
Great conversation. I learned a lot. Thanks!
Thanks!
I think he was pilloried because he falsely claimed in easily discredited research that vast numbers of people had been infected with COVID, the fatality was less than the Flu, and when confronted with bad research and poor conclusions simply doubled down.
The original paper:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1.full.pdf
The initial response from peers:
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/04/19/fatal-flaws-in-stanford-study-of-coronavirus-prevalence/
Expanded response from Dr J
https://www.hoover.org/research/fight-against-covid-19-update-dr-jay-bhattacharya-1
Expanded pushback
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09332480.2020.1820254
Summary:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/04/20/feud-over-stanford-coronavirus-study-the-authors-owe-us-all-an-apology/amp/
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Standing back, the original paper was wildly inaccurate - at 1.2 million dead from COVID in the US today, his data would imply over 720M people were infected, but the population is only 330M - his numbers were at least twice as high as reality; the fatality rate of COVID fatality was 10x as high as the flu
He declared that we should allow the virus to progress unchecked to acquire herd immunity without proof - and today we know that neither vaccination nor prior infection creates herd immunity, though vaccination in most cases reduces fatality to zero.