Open Letter to Ms. Letitia James, AG of the State of New York, about efforts to control information on Facebook and Twitter.

04/09/21

Subject: WaPo article on censorship of “anti-vaxx” accounts on Facebook and Twitter — an Open Letter

Dear Madam Attorney General:

The recent opinion piece you published in the Washington Post with CT AG William Tong was very upsetting to me and I felt called upon to write this letter, as our paths have crossed many times over the years, most particularly when I was active in Community Board #9 in the Bronx, including being its Chairman for a while. I have always been an admirer of your professionalism, but this recent publication concerned me greatly and I decided it was time to speak up.

The unfortunate fact is that the coronavirus situation has been politicized, which has not helped. Clearly, President Trump tried to exploit it for political gain, but when he couldn’t, he dropped it. By that time however, Team Biden took up the cause and weaponized it against Trump, which was tantamount to an unforced error, as they had nothing to offer except bringing back Dr. Anthony Fauci, when Trump had evidently begun to think — correctly so — that Dr. Anthony Fauci was more likely part of the problem than part of the solution. The truth always suffers in situations like this. The rest is now ancient history. Sweden never bought into the general hysteria and did quite well. South Dakota did quite well, and Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida at least listened to the scientists of the Great Barrington Declaration, and very successfully changed course, leading Florida well ahead of the rest of the country. I might find very little to agree with Gov. DeSantis otherwise, but with the coronavirus, he is one of the few who actually made intelligent decisions. It seems to me that Attorneys General should never become political hacks, nor should they institute or be in charge of censorship or inquisition.

It would be good if you took into consideration the testimony of Ms. Vera Sharav, from New York, in the Corona-Ausschuss in Germany. She is a concentration camp survivor and she recognizes with brilliant clarity that the medico-fascism that is currently in the ascendancy is just as dangerous as that of Dr. Joseph Mengele in Nazi-Germany. I would have little to add to her powerful testimony.

For my own position, I will say simply this: I am the son of an MD-father, who very much wanted me to become an MD also, and while I disappointed him in that sense, my life is now involving me very deeply in the healthcare industry and I mean to make a difference. I was raised with a profound appreciation of the meaning of informed consent, about any medical interventions, including vaccinations. There are always risk-benefit analyses that should be made, and every decision is personal. The fact that one vaccination does not offer me a clear benefit in my estimation, does not make me an “anti-vaxxer,” just an educated consumer of healthcare services. Facebook, Twitter and other places have disastrously tried to initiate some control on online information, and there are never-ending examples of serious scientists who have been muzzled by these amateurish efforts which have been a threat to the first amendment if there ever was one. Needless to say, there is a clear distinction between people who are irrationally anti-vaxx, and who attempt to impose their opinions on others. They are as dangerous as the ones who promote the current generation of experimental vaccines as “safe and effective,” and thereby compromise the consumer’s right to proper informed consent and an unbiased, personal evaluation about the risks and benefits of one vaccine or another.

Evidently, in spite of what some politicians like to pretend, there is no “the science,” science is a dynamic process that is in constant flux as new facts come to light. Anyone can have a Pope if they choose to be Catholic, but for the rest of us there is, or should be, a personal right to make the decisions about our physical well-being that are right for us. Eidently, even some Catholics make their own decisions. In other words, neither Facebook nor Twitter, nor any AG are equipped to determine what is truth in this regard. The mass vaccination in the middle of an epidemic is historically totally unprecedented, and is just one of the many historical firsts that have characterized our handling of this crisis. There never was a precedent for quarantining healthy people either. Indications are already that the vaccination alone is altering the course of the epidemic, and not necessarily in a good way. There is credible scientific discussion going on about such things as:

• If it is beneficial or counter-productive to vaccinate people who have had the infection naturally. There is lots of credible information to say that doing so could create problems of its own, and it should be avoided. The last word has not been said about this, and new data is being produced daily. These are important conversations. https://www.aier.org/article/if-you-had-covid-do-you-need-the-vaccine/
• Clearly, the risk is very much skewed to older people, and conversely, children have almost no risk. There are growing indications that below a certain age, the vaccine increases risk instead of decreasing it — particularly with the Astra-Zeneca vaccine at the moment. Again, we are learning every day. That process should not be stopped.
• There are other conversations going on, such as by the Belgian doctor and vaccine developer, Dr. Geert vanden Bossche, whose expertise includes virology, immunology and vaccinology and who is promoting an active conversation about how our current mass-vaccination campaign actually drives immune escape and is becoming the genesis of new and more dangerous strains of the virus.
• There is the German Professor of immunology and infectious disease, Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, who points out that with an IFR of 0.05% for the under 70, it is simply not possible to prove to a point of statistical significance if the vaccines increase or decrease risk below that age. His conclusion is that healthy people under 70 don’t need the vaccine. I am 70 myself, and healthy, and I have had Covid — which was largely a non-event. I would have no interest in the vaccine.
• Another important voice is Dr. Michael Yeadon, a former senior science advisor to Pfizer in pulmonary disease, who likewise strongly advises against the vaccine in most cases.

We could go on. If nothing else, it should be obvious that this is a rapidly evolving situation and new information is being produced constantly and it is of vital importance that the scientific dialog goes on unhindered. It should be protected, not interfered with. Most of the efforts by Facebook and Twitter have been counterproductive. The effort at information control you and your colleague are proposing would put the blinders on our society even worse than is the case already. Of course, there are always those who, with malice and forethought, spread misinformation, just like the CCP has done to us right from the start — that is where the lockdown idea came from. When such issues can be identified, it is legitimate to try to stop it, but where a search for the truth is concerned, free speech is of the essence. Just as much as it is a proven fact today that the quarantines of healthy people are resulting in orders of magnitude greater damage than the virus could have ever done, any threat to free speech is a complication, not a solution.

What should be central is the right of people to complete information, and the protection of the interests of shareholders in the pharmaceutical industry can never trump the rights of consumers to be fully informed of the pros and cons of vital health decisions.

Commending the above to your urgent attention. I sincerely pray that you will let wisdom guide you and steer back from the precipice of thought police and other totalitarian notions. This is not what we need.

Rogier Fentener van Vlissingen

Published on Medium