The public health sector has been hit by tragedy. Frau Doktor Professor Leana Wen, who most of us remember as the head of an organization devoted to slaughtering children and an advocate of forcibly confining unvaccinated citizens to their homes, has been selected to be a speaker at the November gathering of the American Public Health Association as part of a panel discussion titled “Backlash.”
An email Wen has sent to MedPage Today says:
“I was invited to speak on a panel entitled ‘Backlash’ that specifically addresses how difficult it is to navigate public health policy against a backdrop of challenging politics,” Wen said in an email to MedPage Today. “It’s my understanding that the panelists were selected because we have experience dealing with controversy.”
“Public health practitioners are often in positions where we must balance competing priorities, which results in criticism from all sides,” Wen added. “These are important experiences to share and to discuss with fellow practitioners, students, and the public.”
The backlash she has received since her participation was chosen is quite understandable. Here’s how David ZweigIn the Boston Globe, she frames events.
Boston hosts the American Public Health Association annual meeting, which is the largest conference on public health in the world. The past meetings attracted more than 12,000 participants. There will be hundreds of sessions, and many presentations. However, Dr. Leana Wen, former president and CNN medical analyst, is scheduled to speak. A public letter was released by some of the members this week, which has been signed by over 500 people. It seeks to ban Dr. Leana Wen from speaking at that meeting.
The list of grievances against Wen — together with the demand that her invitation to speak be rescinded — exposes a strain of thought among a section of the public health field that is wildly out of touch with the values of most of the American public. The list is indicative that at least some of the public-health establishments have lost trust with regular Americans.
Wen is referred to as “unscientific” for suggestingIt is expected that this spring, all vaccinated individuals will be able to resume pre-pandemic conditions. She is called “unethical” for largely agreeing with the new guidance for schools from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which relaxed restrictions on distancing, masks, and automatic quarantine after the agency weighed the harms of such interventions against the fact that today COVID-19 poses a far lesser threat than it did earlier in the pandemic. Her mention of learning loss is an area of concern in regards to keeping children out of school was criticized. And, among still other complaints, Wen is accused of being “fatphobic” for saying that eating doughnuts every day is not healthy.
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Wen had been an extremist until she made the decision to moderate her views, which angered many of her critics. While she was a strong advocate of limiting vaccinations and imposing harsh, authoritarian measures on anyone not covered by them, Wen lost her way. In the fall of 2021, she said unvaccinated people shouldn’t be allowed to leave their homes and likened them to drunk drivers. The main problem isn’t with Wen, her views or the culture which spawned it. Deplatforming speakers, refusing to hear views that differ from one’s own, and hyperbolic rhetoric intended to demonize those with whom one disagrees is an intellectually bankrupt way for anyone to conduct themselves. It is even more disappointing that scientists and academics are trying to cancel the proceedings. dissenters within the field have pointed out.
An online petition has been circulated calling on the APHA to disinvite Wen.
As public health practitioners, educators, students, advocates, and allies, we are deeply concerned about the decision to make Leana Wen, MD, MSc a speaker for the 2022 American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting. Currently, Dr. Wen is slated to be a speaker presenting on “Backlash,” and particularly regarding misinformation. We demand that public health professionals and leaders reconsider Dr. Wen’s replacement with someone with antiracist, antieugenicist practices in public and community health.
Through her platform on news outlets and social media, Dr. Wen has promoted unscientific, unsafe, ableist, fatphobic, and unethical practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, in a recent article, Dr. Wen suggested that infection should be accepted as a “new normal.” In another article, she writes about how learning loss is a threat to children from parents who want to keep their kids safe; despite the fact that as of 8/6/2022, 1,376 children have died from COVID-19 infection. In yet another article, she advocated for “hot vax spring,” suggesting – while still in an omicron surge – that municipalities lift all protections except vaccination. Her recommendations also included the unscientific and nonsensical suggestion of designating a section of planes to wearing masks in response to an airborne pathogen.
It is kind of hard to argue against Wen’s track record of being a eugenics promoter; I mean, when you head up an organization that was founded specifically to carry out a eugenics program, that would be Planned Parenthood, that is baked into the resume. That said, it is hard to accuse Wen of spreading misinformation, at least in the sense that it is interpreted by the US media and social media conglomerates when she’s little more than a sockpuppet for whatever the CDC is saying today. When the CDC supported lockdowns and quarantines, Wen was right there. As the CDC guidance morphed to “living with COVID,” Wen became a booster of “getting back to normal.”
The best and worst thing about Wen is that she will parrot whatever those in political power in the public health community want her to say. What she has run afoul of are the more deranged voices that purport to care more about stomping on civil liberties than Wen. For instance, Twitter troll Eric Feigl-Ding (it must be hard living with a surname that sounds like a variety of clap) claims he’s resigning from the APHA because she was invited.
I will be cancelling my membership in the APHA (@PublicHealth) because of this horrendous move.
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) August 11, 2022
Other would-be Brown Shirts also weighed in about what kind of a bad person she is.
So, first. 70% of Americans are not fully immunized against SARSCOV2 (both initial doses, booster series). 1/ pic.twitter.com/wIcmvy2gXW
— Gregg Gonsalves (@gregggonsalves) August 17, 2022
On the one hand, I’m inclined to sympathize with Wen. I think most in conservative media would be. On the other hand, we’ve lived with the looney left attempting to silence and deplatform us for years. For a pluralistic society to function, citizens must be able to challenge ideas and policies without having the weight of government and mega-corporations brought down upon them. Otherwise, we are Communist China. The extent to which anyone tries to deprive someone else of their livelihood or liberty based on their opinions is a direct assault upon the freedom of all.
On the other hand, we have this:
And we have this:
People on here are sticking up for Leanna Wen, who played a key role in tormenting me and other Americans mere months ago. They say she doesn’t deserve to have her career or reputation damaged
I thought about this carefullyPlease see the following: disagree. Her actions are a scourge and her punishment is severe. pic.twitter.com/unkoOSYbir
— missed.information (@s00nd) August 17, 2022
According to CNN Newsroom’s April 29th, 2021 appearance, we have the following statements:
“If we can tell those individuals who otherwise would not get vaccinated, if we say to them, “The moment of freedom for you is when you get vaccinated, when you reach the two week mark,” these are people that You might be ineligible to receive vaccinations, so let’s give them that incentive.”
More of Wen’s wisdom can be found at this link.
Before she took over Planned Parenthood, she led a “cancelling” movement of her own.
Dr. Leana Wen, the new Planned Parenthood boss, believes in “practicing what we preach”.
A Chinese immigrant who fled her native country when she was eight, she has campaigned to reveal doctors’ private information including political affiliation, views on abortion and money they received from pharmaceutical companies.
Fox News, however, can reveal that her affiliation and money received from other firms.
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In 2014, Wen launched a website called “Who’s My Doctor” aimed at revealing personal information about doctors, including their political affiliation, their views on abortion and whether they are receiving any outside funding.
She tried to portray patient advocacy as a way to get rid of doctors who oppose abortion or other leftist ideas.
One person being silenced in the mob’s eyes is equivalent to all of us being muzzled by it. However, in practice, I’m not sure that is the case when dealing with civil wars on the left.
Fucking LOL at Eric Feigel-Dingbat resigning APHA because they’re platforming “covid minimizer” Leanna Wen, who wrote in 2020 that BLM rallies were safe for covid and Trump rallies were not because of the difference in perceived covid caution in both groups of attendees. https://t.co/rSImYhky4W
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) August 13, 2022
If these people want to bully and intimidate one another, don’t expect help from the people you regularly abuse and demonize. Not once since the COVID “pandemic” erupted has Wen ever gone on record in favor of debate. She instead presented her views, almost all of them wrong, as the solution. The mob is angry that she fed them and supported them. People who made a rational choice to skip vaccination have been demonized by her. What she is experiencing is not “cancelling,.” She’s just seeing how the shoe fits on the other foot. You can make her quiet if you want. It is her choice to embrace totalitarianism and should not be taken away from her.