Paul Thacker relitigates criticisms of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and the Nice Barrington Declaration

Monday morning, you positive don’t look high-quality

I all the time realize it’s going to be an…attention-grabbing…week every time I get up on a Monday morning to seek out an electronic mail from hack conspiracy journalist and assault Chihuahua for all issues COVID-19 contrarian and antivax, Paul Thacker. This time round, as has been his standard MO, Mr. Thacker cc’ed my division chair and medical faculty dean, a clear tactic that cranks of all stripes have used to attempt to intimidate me into silence courting again to, effectively, April 2005. Mr. Thacker has a little bit of a twist in that he says his “editor” wants remark by a sure deadline, his editor being him. (He publishes a Substack entitled The Disinformation Chronicle, for which he seems to be the principle blogger, though one other previously respectable journalist turned conspiracy concept muckraker, Matt Taibbi, is additionally listed.) I due to this fact instantly knew it was, as all the time, a lure, and that, it doesn’t matter what I responded, Mr. Thacker would do his greatest to make me look as dangerous as he presumably may.

The final time I handled our ever intrepid newshound conspiracy hound was final April, once I obtained an identical electronic mail, characteristically additionally cc’ing my division chair and medical faculty dean, requesting “remark” about whether or not Allison Nietzel was an actual doctor provided that she hadn’t performed a residency after medical faculty or obtained a medical license. My sarcastic reply was sure. Dr. Nietzel earned a sound MD at an accredited medical faculty, and the American Medical Affiliation “affirms {that a} doctor is a person who has obtained a ‘Physician of Drugs’ or a ‘Physician of Osteopathic Drugs’ diploma or an equal diploma following profitable completion of a prescribed course of research from a college of medication or osteopathic drugs.”

I additionally threw in a little bit of a rejoinder about Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Stanford well being economist and co-author of the Nice Barrington Declaration, a really influential doc printed in October 2020 that advocated a “let ‘er rip” strategy to the COVID-19 pandemic—earlier than there was even a vaccine but!—to realize “pure herd immunity,” with a tacked-on sounding bit about “targeted safety” to maintain secure these at excessive danger of extreme illness, problems, and loss of life from COVID-19 (e.g., the aged and people with persistent illness). Sadly, Dr. Bhattacharya and his co-authors Drs. Martin Kulldorff and Sunetra Gupta, appeared to not have thought too deeply about any of it, notably the targeted safety half, provided that they actually proposed no lifelike technique to realize such safety. At its coronary heart, the GBD was a profoundly social Darwinist doc that, in essence, advocated abandoning the weak to the virus in order that the sturdy may “open up” the financial system once more. Mainly the GBD may by no means have labored, as one among its supporters implicitly admitted, however managed to do devastating harm to public well being, on account of its affect.

Right here’s what I mentioned about Dr. Bhattacharya:

Lastly, I’d additionally level out that, like Dr. Neitzel, somebody whom you clearly admire given your latest look on his podcast (Stanford Professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya) has no postgraduate medical coaching past finishing medical faculty both. (Look it up should you don’t imagine me.) But Dr. Bhattacharya payments himself as a doctor in his bio at Unherd, a publication with a a lot bigger readership than SBM. Now that you understand this, could I belief that you’ll additionally ask the editors of Unherd the identical questions on Dr. Bhattacharya that you’ve got requested me about Dr. Neitzel, provided that the State of California defines “doctor” equally as “a person issued a license permitting them to observe drugs”? In spite of everything, if it’s flawed or misleading for Dr. Neitzel to invoice herself as a physician-writer in her transient bio on our weblog when she doesn’t have a medical license, then it ought to additionally be flawed for Dr. Bhattacharya (who equally has no medical license or NPI) to do the identical factor in a publication like Unherd, shouldn’t it? And you might be somebody with integrity, who couldn’t presumably have a double normal about issues like this, proper?

The rationale that I point out it is because it’s good to know that Paul Thacker actually has a bug up his posterior about my earlier writings on Jay Bhattacharya and the GBD. Come to think about it, as you will notice, so does Dr. Bhattacharya. That is considerably alarming provided that Dr. Bhattacharya is poised to be confirmed because the Director of the Nationwide Institutes of Well being. His affirmation listening to yesterday earlier than the Senate Committee on Well being, Training, Labor, and Pensions gave the impression to be the pretext for Mr. Thacker’s assault on critics of Dr. Bhattacharya and the GBD.

So let’s get to the letter.

Paul simply wrote me a letter

On Monday morning, I fired up Outlook to test my morning electronic mail, solely to be greeted by this missive from Mr. Thacker, with my division chair and medical faculty dean cc’ed in addition:

Whats up Gorski, 

I’m engaged on a narrative, and my editor wants remark again from you by Tuesday, 12 midday. I’m looping in your division chair and dean to offer you skilled help as this appeared to work out prior to now.

You posted false and deceptive statements concerning the security AstraZeneca’s vaccine, which was discovered to trigger blood clots. The UK authorities stopped providing the vaccine and the corporate now faces authorized legal responsibility for its COVID vaccine, in line with a number of information accounts. A number of medical specialists inform us your Science Based mostly Drugs website serves as pharma advertising and marketing and you’ve got zero experience in vaccines or infectious ailments.

You additionally posted false and deceptive statements about NIH Director nominee Jay Bhattacharya in an error-riddled BMJ essay. The BMJ later corrected some, however not your whole falsehoods. 

We want responses to the next questions.

1) Why have you ever not corrected the document concerning the documented risks of AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine? 

2) Do you disagree with AstraZeneca’s admission in courtroom that their COVID vaccine causes unwanted side effects? 

3) Why do medical specialists tells us your Science Based mostly Drugs web site is only a pharma advertising and marketing web site used to harass medical doctors?

4) Why have you ever not corrected the document about your documented falsehoods within the BMJ, as defined in a number of totally different essays?

5) Why have you ever not written for The BMJ since they needed to right your essay?

6) Something now we have missed?

Once more, we’d like your response by 12 midday on Tuesday.

Thanks,

Paul– 
Paul D. Thacker
https://www.pauldthacker.com
[email protected]

“On the sound of the intruder, a canine barks. The opposite 99 canines bark on the first canine.” – Hannah Arendt

“Whats up Gorski”? Properly, hiya Thacker, I suppose.

My first thought, me being me, was that I needed to reply. Certainly, I wrote up a response, which I’ll publish right here, simply on your edification. I, too, cc’ed my dean and division chair, as a result of there was a message for them in it too:

Whats up Thacker,

Good to listen to from you once more. Thanks on your concern that I obtain “skilled help,” however I don’t assume that I want it. It was very form of you, although.

One notes that you just don’t record exactly which statements concerning the AstraZeneca vaccine you contemplate to have been “false and deceptive,” nor do you hyperlink to any particular posts by which these allegedly “false and deceptive” statements had been printed. Equally, you don’t specify which “medical specialists” declare that our weblog, Science-Based mostly Drugs, serves as “pharma advertising and marketing” or any of the specifics of what they mentioned and why they mentioned it. Absent extra info on these two factors, it is rather troublesome for me to formulate a response to those two claims, apart from a basic response to your slur about SBM: SBM receives no monetary help from pharma. Provided that I’m not the one who does any of the funds of SBM, I’m letting Dr. Steve Novella, who based SBM and manages its funds, learn about your inquiry.

As for the 2021 commentary in The BMJ co-authored by Prof. Gavin Yamey and myself,  COVID-19 and the New Retailers of Doubt, let’s be frank. Concerning the “falsehood,” I contemplate that to have been considerably sloppy wording that by some means made it via the editorial and fact-checking course of however was in a short time corrected with an addendum explaining the clarification made. That error didn’t hurt Drs. Bhattacharya or others. Fairly the alternative, in reality, it gave the defenders of the Nice Barrington Declaration (GBD) a handy pretext to take one error and attempt to discredit every thing else said within the commentary.

Furthermore, nobody, not even you, seems to be denying that AIER, the fitting wing “free market” assume tank at whose headquarters the assembly at which the Nice Barrington Declaration was drafted was held, did certainly obtain funding from the Koch Basis. One additionally notes that Jeffrey Tucker, who on the time was serving as Editorial Director for AIER, organized this convention with Martin Kulldorff, one other co-author of the GBD. To me, Mr. Tucker’s involvement within the GBD makes it troublesome to argue that AIER was solely simply the host of the assembly and had little or nothing to do with organizing and selling the GBD. Certainly, Mr. Tucker bragged about establishing the assembly on a YouTube video (the place he additionally bragged about being “within the room the place it occurred” when the GBD was drafted), and AIER registered the GBD web site a day earlier than the declaration was issued.

I believe that I answered most of your questions within the textual content of this letter. Additionally be aware that, relying on what I see in your closing model of your Substack publish, I reserve the fitting to publish a public response and/or take different acceptable motion. In spite of everything, I’m about nothing if not science-based drugs and transparency.

Greatest,

David

P.S. Since you’ve got performed what you and folks in search of to assault me for science advocacy often do to attempt to intimidate me, particularly looping in my division chair and dean (a tactic all too often utilized by folks such as you to attempt to silence me courting again 20 years), I believed it solely acceptable to incorporate in my response a bit about your historical past and techniques. The very first thing they need to know is that you just write a Substack (The Disinformation Chronicles, which I encourage them to peruse), and your solely “editor” is you. The second is that claiming your “editor” wants a response by a sure deadline is a tactic you’ve got used on me earlier than, as defined right here and in #4 beneath. Second, I’ll embrace a little bit of commentary about you and your historical past of dishonest journalistic techniques, in order that they’re as conscious of what you actually are and the way you use as I’m, ought to they’ve the time and inclination to peruse the articles beneath:

1. Paul Thacker amplifies antivaccine messaging by attacking science communicators
2. Paul Thacker Trolling Skeptics on Vaccines
3. What the heck occurred to The BMJ?
4. Hack conspiracy journalism: Paul Thacker vs. the definition of “doctor”
5. The As soon as Promising Journalist Who Grew to become a Sadistic Troll
6. Thacker parrots an previous antivax trope: “Vaccines are magic!”
7. “Transparency” shouldn’t equal a license to harass scientists

Keep in mind how I (partly) entitled this “Paul Thacker relitigates criticism of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya”? Mainly, that’s as a result of that’s precisely what Mr. Thacker is doing right here. I really answered loads of his loaded questions/criticisms three years in the past, when GBD supporters, together with Martin Kulldorff and Jay Bhattacharya, struck again. On the time, I expressed shock that it took them a month to push again. At this time, I categorical shock that, greater than three years after that BMJ commentary and greater than 4 years after the GBD was printed and I wrote my preliminary criticism of it, I nonetheless appear to be residing rent-free in Dr. Bhattacharya’s head, as do a number of different critics. Predictably, Mr. Thacker is attempting to painting us at SBM as huge pharma shills; so let me simply interject once more: SBM doesn’t obtain funding from pharmaceutical firms.

I used to be all set to hit “ship” on what I considered an epic response, once I communicated with a colleague with a cooler head, who suggested no contact with Mr. Thacker. I thought of it, and I agree. Much better to publish a public response, fairly than to electronic mail him solutions that he may cherry decide and warp! So I didn’t ship the e-mail to Mr. Thacker, though I did ahead it to my dean and division chair, the higher to remind them who Mr. Thacker is.

Earlier than I transfer on to Mr. Thacker’s hack smear-job, let me simply amuse you by mentioning that Mr. Thacker adopted up the subsequent morning with this, cc’ed (as all the time) to my dean and division chair:

Whats up, now we have not obtained a response. We want your response by 12 midday, immediately.  

Thanks, Paul

I ignored this, and yesterday morning I used to be greeted with one other electronic mail, once more cc’ed to my dean and division chair:

Whats up Gorski, you didn’t reply to questions however the piece is out. 

The COVID-Period Smearing – and Resurrection – of Trump NIH Appointee Dr. Jay Bhattacharya
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2025/03/04/the_covid-era_smearing_and_resurrection_of_trump_nih_appointee_dr_jay_bhattacharya_1095151.html

I wrote and pushed via the regulation that addresses conflicts of curiosity in drugs and helped the NIH to reformulate their regs on the matter. So I’m nonetheless somewhat confused by the error-riddled essay you wrote within the BMJ on Jay Bhattacharya. In case you’re taken with changing into a forward-facing, productive member of the scientific neighborhood on monetary conflicts in drugs, I’ll refer you to some crucial factors of curiosity.

Right here’s a chat I gave at Harvard Regulation College on the matter and why coping with corruption in drugs is so vital: https://hls.harvard.edu/immediately/at-hls-former-investigator-questions-the-relationship-between-physicians-and-pharmaceutical-industry/

And right here’s a bit I wrote for the Safra Middle on getting the regulation and regs adjustments performed: https://petrieflom.regulation.harvard.edu/2014/09/30/the-father-of-sunshine-2/

Take pleasure in your day,

Paul

I did really take pleasure in my day, as I seemed ahead to penning this response yesterday night, a part of which was already written, because of my electronic mail above. I additionally loved the remainder of my day, content material in understanding that, opposite to Mr. Thacker’s smear, I obtain no cash from huge pharma. Certainly, he’s greater than welcome to look the Open Funds database described in his article for the Safra Middle. (I guess he did and was upset.) I’ll admit to being mildly stunned that Mr. Thacker’s response hadn’t been printed on his Substack, however fairly on one thing referred to as RealClear Investigations. Possibly he does have an editor in any case, no less than this one time! Perusing the web site, the editor of RealClear Investigations is Tom Kuntz, of whom I’d by no means heard earlier than. If Mr. Thacker’s “exposé” is typical of the standard of the “investigations” reported there, that is clearly an unreliable website.

Aha! I see what’s happening right here:

Mainly, it seems to be as if the GBD authors shaped their very own doubtful journal, supported by the RealClear Basis and related to the RealClear Media Group. Reasonably than an actual peer-reviewed journal, it seems to be as if it’s designed to be an echo chamber:

In response to the academy’s tips, public well being researchers can turn out to be members via invitation or nomination from different members. New members are accepted based mostly on whether or not they’re “good scientists,” Kulldorff says, one thing the academy establishes “both by understanding it already from our personal expertise as scientists, or by studying what they’ve printed” and checking for sound strategies and interpretation. Kulldorff says he doesn’t know what number of members the academy at present has, however Stanford doctor scientist George Tidmarsh, an writer on one of many eight papers, mentioned membership was “rising quickly by the hour, and it’ll proceed to develop indefinitely.”

As soon as members, researchers can publish “any of their public well being analysis” within the journal, in addition to contribute views and evaluations of papers in different journals, in line with the submission tips. “If anyone’s an excellent scientist, we predict they need to have tutorial freedom to publish what they assume is vital,” Kulldorff says. He notes that the Proceedings of the Nationwide Academy of Sciences (PNAS) used to permit members of that academy to forgo peer assessment. (This strategy has since confronted sturdy criticism, and PNAS has adjusted a few of its insurance policies through the years to extend oversight of submitted articles.)

PNAS printed some completely atrocious crap, together with its great things. For instance, Linus Pauling, as a result of he was a member of the Academy, was allowed to publish his doubtful analysis on vitamin C in PNAS. This new journal doesn’t have the heft of an actual Nationwide Academy of Sciences behind it, along with its editorial board together with a who’s who of COVID-19 contrarians, “respectable” antivaxxers, and grifters, a number of of whom have been featured on this weblog. I suppose that that is what they name “model synergy” within the biz. Good work if you may get it.

Let’s dig into the ultimate product, The COVID-Period Smearing – and Resurrection – of Trump NIH Appointee Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. I’ll focus totally on what he says about me, as a result of it reveals his lying. On the identical time, I couldn’t assist however chuckle once I noticed my photograph within the article, with the caption “David Gorski: Antagonist of Bhattacharya.” I’m significantly pondering of including that to all my social media profiles. It has a pleasant ring to it. Thanks, “Thacker”!

Residing rent-free in Dr. Jay’s (and Paul’s) head

Mr. Thacker begins by portraying Dr. Bhattacharya as a struggling hero for scientific fact:

Jay Bhattacharya was in fairly horrible form 5 years in the past. He was dropping sleep and weight, not due to the COVID-19 virus however in response to the efforts of his colleagues at Stanford College and the bigger medical neighborhood to close down his analysis, which questioned a lot of the federal government’s response to the pandemic. 

Poor child. Promote dangerous concepts, and there will probably be pushback. “Freedom of speech” doesn’t imply “freedom from penalties,” and, I be aware, the latest consequence for Dr. Bhattacharya’s advocacy of mass an infection has been for him to be nominated to run the NIH, regardless of his being grossly unqualified to carry that workplace on the idea of his not being a physician-scientist with a powerful observe document of biomedical analysis coupled along with his lack of any discernible expertise operating a big group just like the NIH. Naturally, Mr. Thacker touts his “vindication”:

Within the years since, lots of Bhattacharya’s scientific issues concerning the efficacy of lockdowns and masks mandates have been corroborated. Fauci, in the meantime, accepted a pardon from President Biden, defending him from COVID-related offenses courting again to 2014, the 12 months he began funding analysis at a Wuhan, China, lab that U.S. intelligence companies now imagine most likely began the pandemic. And this week, Bhattacharya seems to be set to realize stunning vindication because the Senate holds a listening to on his nomination to move the NIH, in a Division of Well being and Human Companies run by science nonconformist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

What apparently led Dr. Bhattacharya to have such agita 5 years in the past was the response to his notorious Santa Clara County seroprevalence research, initially printed as a preprint in April 2020 coauthor by (amongst others) his Stanford colleague Dr. John Ioannidis, which used flawed methodology to provide a a lot larger estimate of how many individuals had been contaminated with COVID-19, the higher to provide a a lot decrease estimate for its case fatality price. Its methodology was extensively criticized, and this research was one of many first research through the pandemic to have extensive affect regardless of having solely been printed on a preprint server. (It didn’t hit the peer-reviewed literature till a 12 months later, and its flaws had been largely uncorrected.)

Certainly, if there’s one factor that Mr. Thacker avoids just like the plague in his search to painting Dr. Bhattacharya as a scientific soothsayer unjustly persecuted by the scientific Powers That Be, in addition to their obvious lackeys (e.g., me), for talking COVID-19 fact, solely to be vindicated later is how, over and over and over, Dr. Bhattacharya has been so flawed as to be not even flawed. Our personal Dr. Jonathan Howard documented his many pronouncements that turned out to be flawed in his e book We Need Them Contaminated. Mainly, fan of “pure herd immunity” fan that he’s, Dr. Bhattacharya predicted that we had achieved “pure herd immunity” and/or that the pandemic could be over in 3-6 months so many instances that it’s a operating joke.

Certainly, it’s superb how briskly Dr. Bhattacharya went from authoring an article in March 2020 entitled Is the Coronavirus as Lethal as They Say?, by which he wrote:

If it’s true that the novel coronavirus would kill hundreds of thousands with out shelter-in-place orders and quarantines, then the extraordinary measures being carried out in cities and states across the nation are certainly justified.

To this:

Though, Dr. Bendavid ultimately admitted their predictions had been “means off“, Dr. Bhattacharya by no means seemed again or deviated from this message, whatever the actuality on the bottom. Because the pandemic progressed, he prematurely declared the hazard to be gone and minimized each variant. He mentioned COVID had been “defanged” on: April 14, 2021; Might 3, 2021; July 21, 2021; July 28, 2021; and January 6, 2022.  In 2021, he tremendously over-hyped vaccines, saying they blocked transmission and eradicated extreme illness. Future historians can perceive how the pandemic unfolded by studying Dr. Bhattacharya’s predictions and understanding the alternative occurred.

In July 2020 he mentioned Sweden had reached herd immunity. Months later, Sweden restricted public gatherings to eight folks amidst a COVID surge. In Might 2021, he mentioned COVID was “clearly a seasonal illness” and mentioned herd immunity within the U.S. by saying “we’re form of already there.”

And this:

Weeks later, Florida reported document COVID deaths, and colleges, “drowning in COVID”, couldn’t keep open. Undaunted, Dr. Bhattacharya recorded an interview titled Why No One Ought to Panic In regards to the Omicron Variant. The headlines later reported hovering loss of life charges in older folks and a document variety of pediatric hospitalizations and deaths. 

Weeks later, Florida reported document COVID deaths, and colleges, “drowning in COVID”, couldn’t keep open. Undaunted, Dr. Bhattacharya recorded an interview titled Why No One Ought to Panic In regards to the Omicron Variant. The headlines later reported hovering loss of life charges in older folks and a document variety of pediatric hospitalizations and deaths.

In fact, later, Dr. Bhattacharya turned in opposition to COVID-19 vaccines, ultimately beginning a Substack and podcast with Ray Arora, the Phantasm of Consensus, which has featured among the many vilest of antivaxxers, together with Steve Kirsch and Kevin Bass, amongst others. He held a “debate” with Joseph Fraiman over whether or not authorization for present COVID-19 mRNA vaccines needs to be suspended and concluded:

By the tip of the talk, Joe had satisfied me that not pulling the authorization makes it extra possible that we’ll by no means get good medical trial proof testing to test whether or not such teams nonetheless exist in a setting of widespread recovered immunity. 

Peruse his Substack, and search it for “vaccine.” You’ll see what I imply. It’s a festering mass of conspiracy theories and pseudoscience about COVID-19. So is his newer Substack, Science From the Fringe, the place it’s extra of the identical, together with a “dialog” with Joomi Kim, who went out of her approach to defend antivax activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

By no means thoughts all that, although. The entire first a part of Mr. Thacker’s article portrays Dr. Bhattacharya as a heroic warrior at no cost speech and scientific inquiry whose first well-known pandemic research was unjustly “canceled” via an “inquisition” by a cabal of scientists that included Stanford colleagues, then-NIH Director Francis Collins, and, after all, Anthony Fauci. The actually hilarious factor is {that a} implication and outright narrative operating via Mr. Thacker’s article is that every one of us, myself included, who criticized Dr. Bhattacharya and the Nice Barrington Declaration did so on the behest of Anthony Fauci and/or Francis Collins, beginning with the predictable reference to Fauci’s electronic mail about The Nice Barrington Declaration:

That month, Bhattacharya and professors Martin Kulldorff, then at Harvard, and Sunetra Gupta of Oxford launched the “Nice Barrington Declaration,” which referred to as for rejecting dangerous COVID lockdowns in favor of “targeted safety” for society’s most susceptible, such because the aged. With the declaration constructing help, Collins, 4 days later, on Oct. 8, 2020, despatched Fauci an electronic mail with the topic line “Nice Barrington Declaration.”

“This proposal from the three fringe epidemiologists who met with the [Health] Secretary appears to be getting loads of consideration – and even a co-signature from Nobel Prize winner Mike Leavitt at Stanford,” Collins wrote. “There must be a fast and devastating printed take down of its premises. I don’t see something like that on line but – is it underway?”

Some hours later, Fauci forwarded Collins a “refutation” of the Nice Barrington Declaration written for The Nation by his pal and advocate Gregg Gonsalves, an AIDS activist who’s now a professor at Yale. Fauci rose to prominence within the Eighties as an HIV/AIDS researcher. “Certainly, and effectively mentioned,”replied Collins. The Gonsalves essay referenced no precise science however denigrated Bhattacharya, Gupta, and Kulldorff for ignoring what he referred to as “progressive ideas of justice and equality” in favor of “survival of the fittest.”

Fauci has praised Gonsalves a number of instances through the years and, in his latest memoir, singles out Gonsalves and a handful of different activists “for his or her unflinching help over the previous few years.”

Dr. Collins was proper about one factor and flawed about one other. The three co-authors of the GBD are undoubtedly fringe, however solely one among them, Sunetra Gupta, is a authentic epidemiologist.

Let’s skip forward to what Mr. Thacker wrote about me, first:

Gorski is a self-described “misinformation debunker” and runs an internet site referred to as Science Based mostly Drugs. It doesn’t all the time get its information straight. After the European Medicines Company concluded in April 2021, for instance, that uncommon blood clots needs to be listed as a really uncommon facet impact for AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine, Gorski decried the choice on his X account claiming, “Reported blood clots look like no larger than background and really possible unrelated to the vaccine.” The UK authorities ultimately stopped providing AstraZeneca’s jab, and the corporate lastly admitted that its COVID vaccine causes hurt in what The Telegraph reported may end in hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in authorized claims.

That is very typical of Mr. Thacker’s techniques. For instance, he cherry picked a single Tweet, with out really linking to the Tweet, and uncared for what I later wrote concerning the AstraZeneca vaccine. As a substitute, he linked to an Substack article by him attacking Steve Novella and me, whose misleading spin and misinformation each Steve and I debunked proper after the Substack was printed. Right here’s the Tweet referenced: