We've got to talk about Francis Collins. Yes. That Francis Collins. Former NIH Director. Collins' recent comments are ignorant of history, public health & I thank Jeremy Konyndyk for this critique of Collins' newfound COVID revisionism on X. Not helpful Francis.And wrong. twitter.com/JeremyKonynd...
Collins' remarks are awful. Everyone I know in public health was absolutely talking about the whole picture. I even did a podcast with an economist who talked about the best way to jump the economy was to control the virus. So much revisionism.
Sadly, a necessary thread. Thanks for sharing!
He went full naturopath, never go full naturopath
“We prevented bad thing from happening, therefore our efforts were excessive.”
As a public health professional: good public health background means a very broad perspective, not at a single life the way Collins says. His background: genetic research, volunteer doc in Nigeria. No public health perspective that I could see. He doesn't know what the f*ck he's talking about.
He also made a lot of comments during earlier days of Covid that indicated he didn’t foresee the antivax stuff which most people who study that issue say was very ignorant of work on that issue.
Some of us "public health people" were screaming from the rooftops about policy tradeoffs. (Receipts: thosenerdygirls.org/new-cdc-isol...). Does his intellectual arrogance implicate ALL of us?! Oof - this really stings. (And reminds me why I quit X 🥴)
Amazing how Collins forgets that this was an unknown situation at the time and the best public health policy experts in the world were in triage mode, prioritizing protecting hospitals from being further overrun, which was already occurring in large metro areas globally.