Dear Lord, protect us from Our Local Epidemiologist

She knows not what she’s doing and she and her ilk are killing and harming too many people. Amen.

Your Local Epidemiologist at one of her Disinformation Galas promoting “the truth” and how we should all “trust” our important institutions. FWIW, she doesn’t look too traumatized to me.  

America’s local epidemiologist is a lady named Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, who publishes the most popular and lucrative “Science” newsletter on Substack. The Substack is called Your Local Epidemiologist.

Since she is my local epidemiologist and has more than 211,000 subscribers (more than 20,000 paid), I sometimes read Dr. Jetelina’s dispatches to see what I shouldn’t think.

Her latest dispatch informed me our local epidemiologist is extremely concerned about the rise in vaccine hesitancy. But what really frightens her is the continued prevalence of misinformation and disinformation and the fact fewer people seem to be trusting our trusted public institutions and experts like herself.  

A few excerpts from recent newsletters should give readers a sense of why this particular influencer is terrified for her own safety and the safety of all the other scientists she argues are being “harassed” for speaking “the truth.” As I’m prone to do, I’ll offer a few of my own editorial comments on her editorial comments.

***

In her most recent article, the headline expresses Dr. Jetelina’s concern.

Drop in routine vaccinations

Driven by an increase in vaccine exemptions and misinformation.

The lede paragraph (emphasis added):

“CDC released the latest vaccine exemptions and routine vaccination rates data for last school year. This, coupled with new data on growing acceptance of vaccine misinformation, shows a slow, painful bleed.”

Re-stated: Despite 46 months of highly-coordinated, non-stop, ultra-expensive efforts to defeat vaccine hesitancy, it turns out too many members of the the public still have a “growing acceptance of vaccine misinformation.” If this was not the case, “Our” Local Epidemiologist (OLE) wouldn’t be so alarmed and wouldn’t have written all these stories.

OLE asks, “What is indirectly causing a decline in vaccinations?” and then answers her own question:

“Misinformation is increasing. Our information landscape has dramatically changed—false news spreads 6 times faster than the truth on social media, and 70% of Americans get health news on social media. Public health has not kept up.”

One might ask who gets to determine “the truth?” The answer, of course, would be: People like Our Local Epidemiologist. 

By far, the most massive “social media” platform is Facebook … so I guess Facebook is letting vaccine “false information” spread to its one billion users. 

This strikes me as a giant fib as I personally know Facebook has suspended my account at least a half dozen times and, when my account wasn’t suspended, any post I made about a Covid topic was “flagged” or seen by zero people brave enough to hit my post with a “like.”

It would be interesting information to learn how many millions of people have been temporarily or permanently banned or shadow-banned by Facebook’s algorithms, Artificial Intelligence and the company’s more than 15,000 “content moderators.” 

Whatever this number, it’s not nearly large enough for America’s terrified and frustrated local epidemiologist. 

Get Vaccinated or Else …

More specifically, OLE says the lack of sufficient censorship is “is directly impacting behaviors like getting vaccinated.” 

I now know the answer to just about every public health issue for OLE is more vaccines and more people getting more of these vaccines. 

Like the devil, OLE mixes the truth with lies. The first five words of this sentence convey an obvious truth:

“Loss of trust in institutions also drives misinformation and behaviors,” she writes, adding, “This … will surely have dire consequences to communities.”

So what really bothers OLE is that more people have “lost trust in institutions.”

In the thousands of words she’s written about the plagues of misinformation and disinformation, she doesn’t tell us why so many people might have lost faith in their now non-trusted institutions …. except, the only possible answer (for her) … the public has been getting “disinformation” from social media. 

It took Our Local Epidemiologist years to get her credentials to become OLE, but one could condense the operative curriculum message to one sentence: “Everyone get your dad-blasted vaccines!”

I think I’ve got it. Not enough censorship = too much disinformation, which leads to too much “vaccine hesitancy” which = “dire consequences” - which means everyone is going to die … from Covid, the flu, RSV and the measles.

***

In a linked article from June 27, 2023, OLE agues that not only are communities going to be in dire straits due to vaccine hesitancy, the nation’s narrative-spouting scientists are also increasingly coming under attack. 

The headline gives us OLE’s “truth” …

‘Harassment is out of control’

In this article, OLE reports that she feels increasingly threatened and gives us the example of another scientist, Peter Hotez, who “experienced pile-ons, stalking, and bullying after events unfolded on Twitter. So much so that law enforcement got involved. A complete nightmare.”

Some readers will remember Hotez as the pediatrician/scientist who was afraid to debate Robert Kennedy, Jr. on Joe Rogan’s podcast show. 

As far as I can tell, nobody has physically attacked Hotez and his family members are still alive. This ensured that the “survival rate” (from mob violence) of narrative-spouting epidemiologists remains 100 percent.

Whatever happened to the Hotez family …“… He’s not alone. These nightmares are now a common occurrence for scientists and physicians in public health. Both online and offline. For vaccines. For gun violence. For reproductive health. And apparently for wildfires now, too.”

“It’s gotten out of control, which becomes an individual risk as well as a risk to the communities we serve.”

According to this sub headline ….

This is a huge problem

Vaccine deaths, injuries and lockdowns that caused suicides and millions of people to lose their jobs was NOT even an itty-bitty problem … but all these nightmarish non-attacks on well-paid, heroic scientists and doctors are a “huge problem.”

I didn’t know any of this, but I do now. 

In her article on terrorized scientists, OLE doesn’t mention whether any “pro-vaxxers” have threatened the life of, say, Robert Kennedy, Jr.. Or if any of the hundreds of thousands of scientists, doctors and nurses who questioned the necessity of Covid vaccines have perhaps suffered some measure of unpleasantness due to their views.

Per Our Local Epidemiologist, it’s only “anti-vaxxers” who bully, smear and attack others. 

A political scientist might also ask who actually possesses the power to fire large numbers of people or who has the power to discriminate against unpopular minorities who should not be allowed to use a water fountain … attend a play or travel outside of the country.

OLE informs us with another sub-headline:

‘Women scientists are particularly at risk’

OLE even published an anonymous note someone left her.

I hate to suggest I might be tougher than Our Local Epidemiologist, but if someone left me a note like this I don’t think I’d be traumatized the rest of my life … or even for two seconds.

Speaking for all the terrorized scientists, OLE writes:

“… too often scientists assume the consequences alone. This takes a significant personal toll.”

Which makes me wonder what terrible consequences people like her have been forced bear alone or what this “significant toll” really was or is.

In the case of OLE, before Covid, she was an obscure epidemiologist nobody had heard of. Today, she is a millionaire Substack author who also works for the CDC and the White House. 

As she informed us in another article, Dr. Jetelina has been asked to speak at “quite a few” conferences:

“Last week I was invited to the Nobel Prize Summit on information integrity at the National Academy of Science. I’ve attended quite a few of these types of events lately—discussions on mis- and disinformation’s impact on truth, trust, and hope.”

So one toll on her is that she’s been invited to participate at the “Nobel Prize Summit on information integrity at the National Academy of Science” plus a lot of other swanky Disinformation Galas.

I’m sure she was heckled relentlessly by her colleagues and was constantly looking over her shoulder in case some bellboy slipped her a note saying he’s not impressed by her brand of epidemiology.

I include this excerpt to illustrate it’s not just OLE who’s worried about mis- and disinformation - it’s everyone who’s attending all these summits.

My main take-away from the whining of OLE is that her colleagues (millions of them) mean business about stopping this mis- and disinformation.

If you haven’t picked up on her views yet, here they are in another sub-headline:

Mis/disinformation is a major problem.

This sentence must be what really irks our local epidemiologist:

“Truth is now debatable.”

Here, I can only assume that her debating point is that the truth should NOT be “debatable.” 

However, I bet she’d get a debate on this point from Socrates, a man who was put to death for asking politically-incorrect questions.

“No questioning allowed” equals no debate, which actually equals no Scientific Method - which is what Our Local Epidemiologist really espouses.

These sentences dropped my jaw:

“The major challenge in scientific communication is that the truth is now networked by peers. Because of this, disinformation and misinformation are eroding public trust in science, becoming a threat to the planet, and costing lives."

(Aside: The same day I read several articles by OLE, I listened to this classic rift from the late great George Carlin, who told us years ago our planet was one tough sucker and was going to be just fine - even if too many people used plastic or drive in gas-powered cars.)

MORE worry-mongering from OLE …

“But it goes beyond a pandemic—climate change, routine vaccinations, gun violence, reproductive health. Everyone—the private sector, government, researchers, and communities nationally and internationally—is rightfully worried.”

FWIW, this is brazen misinformation.  Everyone is NOT “worried.” For example, I’m not.  In fact, for hundreds of millions of people, the things that worry Our Local Epidemiologist have never caused us to lose one wink of sleep.

This, in fact, is what really worries OLE and her colleagues at the Disinformation Junkets. Not enough people are worried about the things she says we should be worried about.

Not only do we no longer trust our institutions - which have been spectacularly wrong on everything Covid-related - we don’t trust people like her either. 

In fact, what worries us is that people like her have so much power and influence over our lives.

Not only this, she wants more control and power. And since she is our local epidemiologist and consults with the CDC and White House, she’s probably going to get what she wants.

Let me close with a headline that gives us OLE’s professional diagnosis. When it comes to the plague of disinformation and misinformation, What the world has is …

Too much talk. Too little action.

Writes OLE:

“I’m getting increasingly frustrated with inaction.”

“Institutions are needed for the long-term solution:

• Governments. Congressional courage is needed. In the U.S., other government entities have a role, too: the National Institute of Health (train scientists to communicate and translate; prioritize funding more research in this space), the FDA and CDC … Department of Defense (create a robust, well-funded surveillance system to understand where, how, and what health misinformation is circulating in real-time) …. State governments have a role with medical boards and local action, too. 

• Private industry needs to get their act together: Is this truly the future we want? The lowest hanging fruit is transparency: content moderation, algorithm impacts, data processing, and integrity policies …”

OLE is not subtle; I get her point …

It’s not like Our Local Epidemiologist is camouflaging what she wants. What OLE really wants is for Big Brother to quit pussy-footing around and scare the hell out of many more people, create a lot more “surveillance systems” and use our state medical boards to repeal the licenses of more “science deniers.”

In conclusion, Our Local Epidemiologist is a menace; she’s the worst nightmare for anyone who still values free speech, scientific debate and prefers a “public health” system that’s not killing and maiming so many members of the public.