Public health uses propaganda to push drugs, not data; Expediency over evidence
“To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." -- George Orwell
Last week, #VarmaGate broke out. Jay Varma, NYC Public Health official, admitted on hidden camera that he, his pediatrician wife, and 8 to 10 others, gathered in a hotel room, took Molly, striped naked, and engaged in a sex party, while NYC schools were closed, shops were locked-down, dying patients were denied hospital visitors, and outdoor funerals were banned under his decree.
On my substack, I argued that it is a mistake to think of Varma as a one off. Instead, think of him alongside: Gavin Newsom and the French Laundry, Nancy Pelosi and the hair salon, Gretchen Whitmer and the trip to Florida, Neal Fergusson and meeting his mistress, Boris Johnson and Partygate. The list goes on.
Public health officials and politicians used the police state against average citizens, purportedly to slow covid spread; they shut down parks, playgrounds, schools and forced you to mask, while they themselves often were in violation of their rules.
Public health in the pandemic meant restrictions for common people, exemptions for elites. Newsom sent his kids to private school while your kids were shut out of public school.
The fact officials were privately not worried about COVID (bc they weren’t elderly), and didn’t think the restrictions mattered is the greatest betrayal, and why trust in public health is dropping by the day. I encourage you to read the full essay here— it is one of my most popular.
As a result of #VarmaGate, Jay Varma was fired from his current job at SigaTech.
I started to investigate SigaTech. I noted that they make a drug tecovirimat for orthopox viruses, like monkeypox and smallpox. I noted no human data for smallpox, but the company appeared interested in using the product for monkeypox. I noted that the product actually only has negative randomized controlled trial data in Mpox.
Why would SigaTech hire a former public health official— whose CV, to me, shows no acumen in drug discovery— when they only have one product with poor evidence?
In my stack, I provided an answer:
This morning, hidden camera footage reveals I was correct. (watch the video online). Varma says the quiet part out loud.
Varma says “We also need to keep up the people’s belief that the [TPOXX] drug works. So, that’s why spinning it in the media is helpful.”
In the video, he says he wants the story to be that the earlier trial failed, but not because the drug doesn’t work. In fact, the message should be, we expect a future trial will work, and in the meantime we should be able to sell the drug under emergency use authorization.
Varma admits to precisely what I argued: infectious disease public health docs use propaganda and lobbying and corruption to sell products and not well designed randomized trials.
One mistake he makes in the video however is thinking the market share of tecovirimat is related to the number of pills dispensed. That’s wrong. It’s related to his ability to lobby governments to buy the drug to distribute.
COVID vaccine makers made a lot of money, whether doses went into arms or the trash, and many did end up in the trash.
Which brings me to Ashish Jha, Dean of Brown School of Public Health. On Oct 7, 2022, this is what Jha told the NYTimes
In Jan 2023, this is what Jha said
In May 2022, this is what Ashish told the LA times
This is what Jha said in July 2023, after Biden had already had COVID, multiple boosters, already gotten Paxlovid and was getting it a second time.
Ashish Jha repeatedly pushed Paxlovid on the American public. He recommended it to the president for a second time, after he had received multiple boosters and had COVID before and got Paxlovid before. Jha’s policies allowed many young people without risk factors to get Paxlovid. His prediction on deaths averted was based on false assumptions.
Ashish did this while knowing there was no good evidence to support his claims. The positive randomized trial was EPIC-HR. Variants no longer in circulation were circulating then. All participants were unvaccinated. None had a booster. You could not enter if you had previously had COVID. And you had to be at high risk of hospitalization. EPIC HR does not apply to Biden nor to nearly all people whom Jha was pushing Paxlovid upon.
Meanwhile, Jha was aware that a study in vaccinated people EPIC-SR was negative. He knew this years ago.
My research team has led a meta-analysis of Paxlovid and we show you here, that as time goes on, variants change, natural immunity grows, the data are negative. Jha surely knew this.
Ashish Jha used a media campaign to push paxlovid, just as SigaTech wanted Varma to do. Ashish exploited the lay press, and was part of an administration that spent over 10 billion dollars on the drug— without randomized data it helps Americans who had already had covid, had vaccines or against prevailing strains, i.e. most of us.
Ashish Jha is just like Jay Varma— a public health figure pushing a corporate product based on propaganda and not science. If anything Jha’s advocacy of Paxlovid is worse than Varma’s advocacy of tecovirimat for 4 reasons
Monkeypox is rarer than covid, which makes randomized trials harder.
Monkeypox began in Africa and is not actively globally consistently, while COVID was always widespread (easier to run trials)
Tecovirimat is often given to sicker pts than outpatient paxlovid (less dire)
Tecovirimat spending will be less than 10 billion.
Jay Varma admits that SigaTech wanted him to create a media narrative around tecovirimat to approve and sell it, even while randomized trials were ongoing and evidence unclear. Ashish Jha actually did create a media narrative around a costly pill with horrific drug-drug interactions to millions of Americans when the best data showed it would not help them. He did so because his boss spent billions on the drug, and had political advantage to push it, even if it were nothing better than placebo, in order to reassure his supporters who were still afraid of covid because they created exaggerated fear in young people.
Both Varma and Jha are emblematic of how public health officials sell out. One to advance his salary, the other his professional standing. Jay Varma is not a one-off. He is emblematic of the root problems in public health. Reform is desperately needed. Slowly more will see this.
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