Just ran into a crazy video from a guy who claims many things, most of them untrue about the virus, masks, and vaccines. What follows is a takedown of his insane quackery at a School Board meeting in the enlightened state of Indiana. Some one please save us from these buffoons.
From Edward Niremberg at Deplatform Disease:
A surprisingly large number of people have sent me a video that is inundated with disinformation about COVID-19 and its reach seems considerable so I have deemed it significant enough to address. In the video, one Dr. Dan Stock from Indiana at a school board meeting opines at length about all the things we’re supposedly doing wrong with COVID-19 (by the way, the FSMB has now stated that spreading misinformation about COVID-19 vaccination may put medical licenses at risk, though state medical boards have final say it seems; rest assured I will be examining the rules in Indiana quite closely). The speech is little more than a verbal gish gallop: a tactic used by science denialists wherein they post a bunch of links that they claim to support their points but in reality most of the citations are unsupportive or even unrelated to their claim- but this serves the appearance of evidence. He is doing this but with words- he is making a series of incorrect arguments (that are self-contradictory) and essentially seeking to overwhelm opposition with the volume of arguments he makes. The thing is, as I’ll discuss, he discredits himself very early on, so you don’t have to subject yourself to listening to his vile nonsense because I did it for you.
To begin, the speaker describes himself as a “functional family medicine physician,” which per him “means [he] is specially trained in immunology and inflammation regulation.” Firstly, this isn’t even how most sources define functional medicine. The Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine defines functional medicine as
a personalized, systems-oriented model that empowers patients and practitioners to achieve the highest expression of health by working in collaboration to address the underlying causes of disease.
This definition, admittedly, is completely meaningless because the foundation of literally all medicine is built on understanding the pathophysiology of conditions and addressing their underlying cause whenever that is possible (which unfortunately isn’t always feasible) and the implication that other clinician specialties do not do this is on its face pretty offensive. It is furthermore not what Stock describes, which most closely seems to describe an allergist/immunologist, which he is not. The title of “functional medicine physician” is usually a red flag for quackery and he’s already misrepresented his own expertise, so this isn’t off to a great start. An explanation of the problems with functional medicine generally may be found here. Also functional medicine is not a specialty recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties nor the American Medical Association.
Next he claims that coronaviruses and all respiratory viruses are spread by aerosol particles which are small enough to go through your mask, which is a misleading in several ways. Aerosols refer specifically to very small droplets which in general can linger in the air for prolonged periods of time. While there is evidence that during certain medical procedures like intubation, SARS-CoV-2 can become aerosolized, most contact tracing studies do find that prolonged close contact with individuals is needed for transmission to occur (but obviously there are exceptions). There is definitely a role for aerosol transmission in COVID-19 but precisely how much is not well-defined. He then argues that masks don’t work because viruses are small enough to pass through them. The problem with this reasoning is viruses do not travel as individual viral particles- they are inside the aerosols and droplets. That’s what the masks block. The IDSA has graciously compiled the multitudinous, surfeit evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of masking here which anyone is free to peruse at their leisure.
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