When I first started writing about Covid, I thought it would be just one more topic for me to explore and discuss, and then I would move on.
Unfortunately it has ruined my life, leading to my dismissal from medical school.
I never thought that people who I knew and trusted would have the nerve to do such a thing to me.
The truth wins, right? The people we know and trust around us will stand up for the truth. Right? When rumors are spread and crazy claims are made about us, people who know us and know our value will stand up for us. Right?
I learned that these assumptions were not true.
Or at least, when it comes to really powerful people, and when it comes to hysterical mobs, having a few allies, and being known by one’s peers, is not enough.
I thought other people were at least roughly like me, with some differences. They aren’t.
I thought that when I transferred my interpretive skills from nutrition and evidence-based medicine to Covid, this would be honored. It would be readily understood how I was right. All I had to do was explain it. Right?
This assumption, too, was wrong.
People are much more emotional and political than I had realized. Even incredibly smart ones. Often the smart ones are the worst—they have lived an entire lifetime being more right than their peers about most things. This experience couples with the strength of their convictions to create a veritable wall that prevents them from understanding that they have been fatally wrong.
They also have a faith in the institutions—a faith I once had—that makes it really difficult for them to accept that large, integral parts of those institutions could be so incredibly wrong or harmful.
So incredibly wrong and harmful, as they have always been at certain points in history—and will be again someday. Because that’s simply the nature of every human institution. Medicine and public health are not exempt from this iron law.
Now, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on my situation and a lot of time talking to smart, impartial people who work in medicine about my situation. I’ve also spent lots of time with my eyes closed, laying down, thinking about what I want. I’ve also had many ideas, and I’ve discovered that those ideas are not for me. I’ve, in short, spent a lot of time going very deep, understanding who and what I really am, in a way that only a period of serious adversity can foster—as has happened when my worldview was shattered and I was cast out of school by hurt and confused people who should have done better, but like all humans do, made flawed choices in a moment of emotion.
And so what I have concluded is that I really cannot afford for the moment to talk about Covid or much else that is controversial in public for the time being.
The world that I thought existed—a benign one where pre-eminent men and women running our institutions stand in benevolent, wise, impartial judgment of controversy—does not exist. Or at least does not exist anymore.
I could, in theory, write a big Covid book in secret. Or I could journal or talk with my friends as much as I like. Or I could work on Covid research as a job. Or I could write anonymously for this or that high-profile organization. In theory.
But for now, I need to go back to the drawing board—to things that I love learning about but that are much less controversial.
One is the nitty-gritty nuances about the frontiers of health science.
And maybe a few controversies in niche communities in nutrition science.
And, occasionally, some topics in exercise science.
So this substack will become about those things.
If you signed up as a paid subscriber for a year and you are disappointed by this development, please send me a DM, and I can refund you on a prorated basis.
But I will offer some consolation for those who will indulge me: I’m not done. Maybe, just maybe, there might be some big Covid book someday, when the powers-that-be do not feel like they are on their heels, when as a society we are ready to accept a rational discussion about the topic, when society has become much less insane.
If you ask me, I think we’re in for a rocky decade or two. So it might have to all wait until after then. Who knows.
But someday, I have to revisit in a more systematic and comprehensive way.
For now, it’s time to pivot back to what I originally started out with—and work on my long-term goal in that domain: helping to make the world healthier.
Kevin, Well you have to do you, but this sounds generally in the "I have decided to go along to get along" category of approaching life -- can't fault you as that is what most people do.
You have written some of the best, most incisive covid stuff out there -- and I read it all. As you told us to wait until mid-June before you really got going again, I have been waiting to see you pick a direction so I could suggest to Brownstone that you should be considered as a Brownstone Fellow. (Yes, there are substantial numbers of people who support the narrative of "truth without retreat" out there.)
I am sure that whatever you write will be interesting to someone, somewhere. By the time you get around to it, there will be 100 historical books on covid -- I know plenty who are waiting for it to be completely safe to write them. So you will have lots of company.
Life is hard. We all hope you find peace in the direction you have taken. But the world will likely be a less-good place than it might have been if you had chosen differently.
Excellent description of what sooo many honest and caring really-smart people have been going through these past four+ years. Most people in 'democratic' nations would never have thought so many 'normal' people would bow down to despots to ensure their own safe passage while knowingly throwing their friends and colleagues off the ship and into shark-infested waters.