Katelyn Jetelina, PhD (aka Your Local Epidemiologist) is now "overwhelmed"

And for good reason. As a mouthpiece for the CDC, what will she write about now that that agency is under a gag order?

Popular mainstream epidemiologist, Katelyn Jetelina published this substack piece “A week of chaos in public health” yesterday morning. The subtitle: The truth is, there’s a lot we don’t know yet.

A week of chaos in public health

It’s already received nearly 1000 “likes” and 150 “re-stacks”. Not surprising. The mainstream is panicking over the temporary pause in the dissemination of “information” to the public until new appointees take over. How will the puppets know up from down without someone pulling their strings?

Jeremy Faust, MD, a junior ER doctor, Fauci and Paul Offit apologist, author of substack newsletter “Inside Medicine” and Editor-in-chief of “MedpageToday”, an online publication centered on making sure their considerable medical readership keeps their blinders on also has expressed consternation over the communications blackout.

(As a reminder, Faust testified against my friend, Dr. Meryl Nass, in her hearing with the Maine Board of Medicine claiming that she irresponsibly treated her Covid patients with HCQ instead of letting them stay at home and turn blue. Faust made a fool of himself by stalling, refusing to answer simple questions and thereby tacitly admitting that he isn’t an authority on the matter on which he appeared as an expert witness).

Both Faust and KJ mentioned the absence of CDC’s MMWRs (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports) as deeply troubling. As I wrote earlier this week, it was a single CDC MMWR that turned me from a skeptic to a passionate critic of the CDC. It became clear to me that the CDC has a team of extremely intelligent data analysts to conjure up a distorted version of reality and publish them as the truth through a constant stream of MMWRs.

They’re intelligent because it is clear, at least to me, that they aren’t missing the signal, they have been intentionally focussing in on the noise when it serves an agenda. They know exactly what they are doing. And now they have been silenced.

While I was at The Defender we had our hands full responding to the kind of devious misinformation coming from CDC MMWR authors. I used this to entice KJ to respond. Here’s my comment on YLE’s recent post:

“Katelyn,

I have been earnestly leaving respectful comments on your newsletter for over two years now. I am a physician, engineer and former science editor for RFK Jr's CHD. You have repeatedly expressed concern over the shifting sands beneath our institutions of public health. You have cited poor communications during the pandemic response as a contributing factor. You have also accused misinformation spreaders like Kennedy as being culpable.

At the same time you have urged curiosity, listening and compassion when engaging with those who disagree. Yet you never have responded to my fair and measured critique of your assessments. Some of my comments on your previous posts are the most liked by your readers. I would suggest that if you are truly interested in public health it would make sense to respond.

I am part of the medical establishment. I am extremely concerned that the medical orthodoxy has lost public trust and that we may never regain it. This should be concerning to both of us. We are actually on the same team, but we just happen to disagree. The point here is that if new technologies emerge that are truly safe and efficacious what good will it be if the public doesn't trust them? All of the medical professionals I work with complied with the vaccine mandates. Very few of them plan on complying again. I know. I have asked them myself.

As you pointed out, a temporary gag order has been placed on the CDC, NIH and FDA. That order came from the new administration, and it was delivered by Stefanie Spear, the newly appointed deputy chief of staff at the HHS. Did you know that Stefanie was the managing editor of the Defender, CHD's online publication? She and I worked together daily for over a year, making sure that what we published was airtight and could not be debunked by an army of experts. As you might imagine, this sudden shift in power is head spinning to us as well.

To be clear, there was no dearth of topics to write about during the dark days of 2021 and 2022. The CDC's MMWRs offered more than enough misinformation to keep us busy. You have treated these reports as gospel--analyses done by experts that could not and should not be contested. Interestingly it was an MMWR that got me to open my eyes back in the spring of 2021. It had to do with mask mandates.

I don't claim to be an expert on RNA viruses, immunology or infectious diseases. I am an anesthesiologist. I happen to be very good at keeping people alive under the most extreme situations. I am also intimately familiar with the benefits and harms of surgical masks. It was the CDC's MMWR published in March of 2021 that caught my attention. The authors of that report claimed that 10 months of data proved that there was an association between mask mandates and a decrease in the daily growth rate of Covid infections.

It didn't seem possible (for reasons that I explain in an article linked below). When I unpacked the CDC's methodology, it became clear that they were using dubious means of arriving at a predetermined conclusion. All it took was some basic knowledge of calculus and a willingness to download reams of data and do some number crunching to prove that the CDC was misleading the public. As an epidemiologist you will have no problem following my reasoning.

I couldn't believe that the CDC would do such a thing. But why? The answer came three days later. Then director of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky used this MMWR to issue new public guidance: Masks were effective, but were unnecessary if you were fully vaccinated. It suddenly dawned on me that this was a sneaky way of getting people to accept the experimental shots. It doesn't matter whether or not you believe in the Covid vaccines. The CDC was being manipulative. That's why they have lost public trust.

You are an epidemiologist. I am a physician on the front lines. We need to work together to hold our authorities accountable when mistakes are made, otherwise we will continue to lose public trust. I cite this article as just one of many MMWRs that have been misleading.

To all readers of YLE, please feel free to leave your comments on the piece below (I don't demand a paid subscription for that privilege).

https://madhavasetty.substack.com/p/its-safe-to-drop-our-masks-but-not

You are correct, "The truth is, there's a lot we don't know yet." If there ever were a time to pause and take stock of what you know and why you believe what you believe it would be now.

I suggest that before you assume that I must be wrong you ask yourself why you are so sure that you and the CDC have been right this whole time.

Madhava Setty, MD

Twenty four hours later no response from YLE. But a few of her paid subscribers had something to say about my comment to her:

““I am a physician, engineer and former science editor for RFK Jr's CHD." Well, useful of you to out yourself right up front so we know the kind of rank dishonesty and delusion you're dealing with.

BTW, as far as I have been able to determine, you are, in fact, an anesthesiologist. That does not make you a "a physician on the front lines" and gives you no authority to pontificate on subjects about which you clearly know nothing.

You also claim to be an electrical engineer, but I can find no evidence that you have any credentials in this area. It's an odd thing to boast about, given that even if it were true it would add noting to your credibility, such as it is.”

and…

“He also outed himself by calling the Covid vaccines "experimental shots."

Vile lie.

Yet he couched it in a verbose post where he pretends to be so accommodating, so sensitive, so rational, so compassionate, so humane, so "why can't we all just get along?", when in fact it's all just a smokescreen.”

Sigh.

Why, you may ask, am I interested in comments like these? It is because I am fascinated by the way people think and how they respond to opinions that contradict theirs. In the end, if we truly want to move in a positive direction we will have to do so together, otherwise we will be battling the whole way.

Katelyn Jetelina may very well be a shill used by the medical establishment to help spread disinformation in a way that resonates with people who think they have a grasp of things well beyond their capability. She could also be an earnest epidemiologist who found her calling as an independent science reporter. She could be both at the same time. It doesn’t matter. She has done the hard work for us. She has captured the attention of hundreds of thousands of minds, even if we exclude a hundred thousand fake subscribers as some have suggested.

These are the minds that I seek to change because in the end, it doesn’t matter who is running the HHS. Why would vaccine fanatics believe official data if the CDC is headed by a Trump appointee? You cannot change someone’s mind by official statements. The MAHA movement is the testament to that. We are dealing with collective cognitive distortions which sooner or later have to be recognized and corrected.

Here’s what I see:

1. Katelyn never responded. I am not surprised. Her posts gets thousands of comments and mine isn’t well “liked”. It also wouldn’t serve her mission. She wouldn’t able to debunk my analysis. It’s simple and devastating to the credibility of the CDC MMWR system.

2. The second commenter outs themselves as completely uninformed. The shots were (and still are) experimental. Nobody can get the “approved” formulation in this country. I am not telling “vile” lies.

3. The first comment demonstrates the dogmatic trap they are in. I support CHD, so they know I am wrong a priori. Interestingly they immediately fall into a logic trap. They acknowledge that I was fully transparent by admitting my association with CHD but then refer to my rank dishonesty. Which one is it?

4. Because they have already concluded that I could not be right, there is no reason to assess the proof I offer of the CDC’s deliberate manipulation of data to reach an incorrect conclusion. Why examine proof if it overturns your understanding?

5. That reader also has very little understanding of how medicine is practiced. Who do they think gets called to acutely manage people who were going into respiratory failure from Covid-19 back when the pathogenic Wuhan strain was ravaging a non-immune population? Anesthesiologists are airway experts. We routinely get called to the ICU and the Emergency Room to manage these situations. People needed urgent and emergent operations during the pandemic. Some of them had active Covid.

6. The same reader states that as an anesthesiologist I have “no authority to pontificate on subjects about which you clearly know nothing.” The evidence which I used involves the utility of the kinds of masks used during the first 10 months of the pandemic. I guess they have never been under the care of an anesthesiologist before (we tend to wear masks a lot)

7. Being an engineer and a doctor is a potent combination when it comes to understanding the data behind scientific opinion. My critique of the isolated MMWR is a purely mathematical argument, one that I know most of my colleagues in medicine would shy away from. So it isn’t “an odd thing to boast about” if you actually knew what you were up against.

8. There is a subtle tone of a personal attack. I boast. I pontificate. I lie. Though appearing to be accommodating, sensitive and rational, I am, in fact, pretending. Using ad hominem is a lazy way to avoid the central point.

Finally, a third response came in this form:

“I looked at your Substack bio and the articles and memes you're promoting. I think we all know what we can do with your "respectful comments."“

I mention this one because this reader chose to actually glance at this newsletter to get a feel for where I stand, as if my comment didn’t already make that abundantly clear. What were they expecting? An homage to Anthony Fauci? I have no issue around this but when they stop there and refuse to examine the evidence I offer, they aren’t being thorough at all. They’re prejudiced.

Is there a way to get through to people in these cognitive distortions?

Please leave your comments.