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MAHA Gave Us MAGA 2.0. Remember the Enablers.
When the history of this sad era is written, MAHA doctors will be disgraced pariahs and cautionary tales. Everyone else should be remembered based only on whether they tried to put the brakes on MAHA/MAGA however they could or whether they slammed the accelerator.
The post MAHA Gave Us MAGA 2.0. Remember the Enablers. first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.
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Public health wasn’t always a dystopian hellscape intent on using police and military power to maximize compliance… But it is now!
We’ll never know, but it’s entirely possible that without the unholy union of MAHA and MAGAin the summer of 2024, Trump might not be in power today. As such, it’s important to understand how MAHA came to be. While that’s a long, complicated story I’ve explored in two books and nearly 300 essays here, SBM readers know that disinformation doctors played a crucial role in elevating Kennedy, and thus Trump.
Although MAHA doctors described themselves as “medical scholars” who based their opinions on a “sober assessment of available evidence”, in reality, they were content creators first and foremost. They rose to prominence via their emotionally manipulative social media output, and their videos, podcasts, Tweets, Fox News clips, and blogs were deliberately designed to stoke fear and rage regarding COVID mitigations.
In their telling, COVID threatened only grandma, and plagiarizing from pre-pandemic anti-vaxx agitprop, they depicted public health officials not as people struggling to stop a new virus from overwhelming hospitals and morgues, but as diabolical totalitarians who would gleefully send masked police in the street to terrorize innocent civilians.
Pre-pandemic anti-vaxx propaganda
In this video for example, set to ominous music and footage of police in riot gear, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the current head of the NIH, hysterically warned of a “biomedical security state” should another pandemic arise. The alternative he offered was “a liberal democracy, with enlightenment norms guiding science.” “Those are the stakes going forward,” he said. He wasn’t wrong about that.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya warns of a “biomedical security state.”
Dr. Vinay Prasad, a top FDA official today, sounded similar themes on social media by writing:
Public health wasn’t always a dystopian hellscape intent on using police and military power to maximize compliance with interventions that are based on 0 RCTs. But it is now!
He elaborated on this delusion in a video and essay titled How Democracy End: COVID19 Gives A Road Map for Political Control, which also warned of a police state ushered in by fascists who might seek to contain a future pandemic. Dr. Prasad wrote:
The pandemic events of 2020-2021 outline a potential pathway for a future democratically elected President of the United States to systematically end democracy… During the COVID19 pandemic, some of the most ardent calls for strong restrictions came from members of the political left… When democratically elected systems transform into totalitarian regimes, the transition is subtle, stepwise, and involves a combination of pre-planned as well as serendipitous events. Indeed, this was the case with Germany in the years 1929-1939, where Hitler was given a chance at governing, the president subsequently died, a key general resigned after a scandal and the pathway to the Fuhrer was inevitable.
Dr. Vinay Prasad warns of military in the streets.
Elsewhere, Dr. Prasad rejected calls for “forgiveness.” “These pieces of shit are still lying”, he said in his typical vulgar, vengeful manner. “They are still fucking lying.”
Although this was theatrics, an imagined, paranoid, fantasyland conjured to spread anger and doubt, it was very effective in warping public opinion. Many people are now convinced that the only problem with COVID was that Nazis from the “political left” tried to limit its carnage.
God gave us two arms. One to vote for Donald Trump, the other to give thumbs up to RFK Jr.
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