Jonathan Howard: Contrarian Doctors & The Failed Quest For Herd Immunity

This is a segment of episode 349 of Last Born In The Wilderness, “We Want Them Infected: Contrarian Doctors & The Failed Quest For Herd Immunity w/ Jonathan Howard.” Listen to the full episode: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/jonathan-howard

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Jonathan Howard MD joins me to discuss his timely book, We Want Them Infected: How the Failed Quest for Herd Immunity Led Doctors to Embrace the Anti-Vaccine Movement and Blinded Americans to the Threat of COVID, published by Redhawk Publications.

As much as Jonathan Howard’s book is a scathing examination of how various very influential and contrarian doctors misled the US public about the coronavirus pandemic, it is also a historical document. By meticulously, carefully, and thoroughly quoting countless social media posts, statements, essays, op-eds, and interviews from certain highly accredited doctors, Dr. Howard compares their claims to actual reality as the virus began to rip through the population. Over and over again, these outspoken figures made bold and inaccurate claims that the pandemic was just about to end; herd immunity was just around the corner; the worst of the plague had already past; children were unaffected; and so on. Over and over again, these contrarian figures were proven wrong. And yet, despite overwhelming evidence, they still maintain their professional status and accreditation to this day, seemingly unhindered—professionally, at least—by the widespread consequences of their repeated false assumptions and claims.



In this interview, Dr. Howard goes through the timeline of some of the claims made by these individuals, elucidating the origins of various bits of misinformation that persist up to the present. He describes what the Great Barrington Declaration is and its significance, and how the dubious public health recommendations relayed through it made its way into the highest echelons of US political and executive power. We discuss how this contrarian view of public health is informed by far-right libertarian philosophy, and how it is animated by a negative conception of liberty. And finally, we conclude by Dr. Howard sharing his views on the value, or lack thereof, of debate with individuals this book highlights and critiques, and how these media-trained, eloquent, and Gish galloping contrarian figures thrive in a media environment that allows their false claims to go largely unchallenged, and what that portends for our response to present and future public health emergencies.

Dr. Jonathan Howard is an Associate Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at NYU Langone Health and the Chief of Neurology at Bellevue Hospital. He is the author of Cognitive Errors and Diagnostic Mistakes: A Case-Based Guide to Critical Thinking in Medicine as well as several textbooks in neurology. He has been interested in vaccines long before the pandemic.

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