Paul Offit is an expert on vaccines and is very worried that people are becoming more hesitant to trust public health officials. 

Yet he is a perfect example of why fewer and fewer people do. In a recent podcast, he explained Fauci's rationale for outright lying about the necessity for most people to get COVID-19 vaccine--and then failed to condemn Fauci's lies as unethical. 

Watch:

Striking revelation with more independent testimony of the former NIAID director's dishonesty: If truth results in "garbled messaging," then it is OK to deceive the public and recommend shots to millions of low-risk people who do not need them. Even more disturbing, Dr. Offit… https://t.co/2EtI23vIYN

— Joseph Marine (@DrJMarine) June 12, 2024

Offit's half-hearted questioning of Fauci's rationale for lying to the public--and the continued lying that goes on to this very day in the United States--isn't based on the ethics of lying to people or potentially causing them great harm through side-effects. 

Instead, he criticizes Fauci for not testing the hypothesis that lying was effective. Perhaps lying was good, perhaps not. We should have tested that hypothesis. 

Meet your public health mavens. It never even occurs to them that it is unethical--even immoral and violating the Nuremberg Code--to not get informed consent. 

INFORMED. Meaning people know about what is being proposed. CONSENT. As in getting consent from people to subsequently do the procedure. 

Offit doesn't even consider the potential harm from side effects--he presents the vaccine as, at worst, benign and unnecessary and at best, life-saving (for a tiny fraction of the population).

He is obviously wrong on that one, and by now, even he must know that the vaccine can cause great harm to people; even if the number is low, hiding this fact is grossly immoral. Forcing people to take the vaccine when it will present absolutely no benefit to them or others is even worse. 

And Offit still justifies the vaccine mandates, despite his admission that they did absolutely no good for anybody but people at great risk from COVID-19--a group he admits is a small fraction of the population. 

Offit, in this interview, provides a lot of BS explanations for why vaccine mandates were great--none of which hold up to scrutiny. Even scrutiny that relies on Offit's own assertions. He admits in the clip at the top of the post that vaccines really did no good for most people, and the recommendations were designed for "messaging" clarity and not actual health reasons. 

CDC and NIAID messaging has, from the beginning, been entirely based not on science but on ensuring a single narrative was pushed. The public shouldn't be confused by the facts, by the messiness of reality, but should simply do what they are told to do by the "experts."

This is The Science™ as it exists today. It is how climate science is presented, how gender science is presented, and most of all, how public health operates. 

What is shocking to me is that so many people are fine with this. A large fraction of the country believes they have the right and the responsibility to impose their will on the other. Whatever their preferred experts say--even if it is a lie and they know it is a lie--should be treated as the Word of God Himself. 

One of the things I did early on in the pandemic is look up the standards of public health ethics, and it is striking how divergent practice was from what was supposed to happen. Even in the woke era, some things stand out:

Were all members of the community engaged? Obviously not. Were public health officials honest and accurate? Not even close, as even Offit acknowledged above when describing the need for a messaging strategy that wasn't "garbled." Was the risk described accurately and in a variety of ways intended to not overstate or understate it? 

C'mon, man. Not even close. 

Here's what the Nuremberg Code says about medical experiments, which also applies to medical treatments (although I would argue the vaccine was experimental and unique):

The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision. This latter element requires that before the acceptance of an affirmative decision by the experimental subject there should be made known to him the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it is to be conducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonably to be expected; and the effects upon his health or person which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment. The duty and responsibility for ascertaining the quality of the consent rests upon each individual who initiates, directs, or engages in the experiment. It is a personal duty and responsibility which may not be delegated to another with impunity.

Ironically, I agree with Offit on the facts of who benefits from the COVID-19 vaccine. I think there is a rationale for the old and very sick to get it, since the risk/reward calculus suggests benefit. I agree that most people shouldn't get it, as he admits. 

But then he goes off the rails. He doesn't seem bothered by the ethics, just the potential inefficacy of lying to people. That is unethical, and given the potentially lethal side effects, also immoral. 

What's so hard about recognizing that, saying that, and fighting against lying to the public? 

At the end of that video, he provides the answer: with regard to public health, you are either on the bus or off the bus, meaning that unanimity is far more important than telling the truth. 

Public health officials don't serve public health--they serve their community of "experts." They aren't loyal to the community, but to each other. 

And this, my friends, is why people no longer trust public health officials: because they shouldn't. Public health officials have their own best interests at heart, not yours.