LIVE: Jay Speaks At RFK Jr.'s Vice President Announcement Rally
Hi everyone,
Jay has just spoken at RFK Jr.’s vice president announcement rally. The livestream is here if you’d like to watch:
For Illusion of Consensus subscribers, we’d like to share with you his written speech below.
By: Jay Bhattacharya
Thank you, Mr. Kennedy, for the opportunity to speak on this important day in American history when you announce your vice-presidential candidate. I wanted to take the opportunity to explain why it is so vital for this country to maintain its firm commitment to free speech, which has come under such direct attack during the pandemic. I know this issue is near and dear to you since you have been the direct target of censorship by government regulators during the pandemic. I have, too.
I am Professor Jay Bhattacharya and I am a scientific dissident. I have been a professor at Stanford University's medical school for over twenty years. In October 2020, I wrote a document called the Great Barrington Declaration with fellow epidemiologists from Harvard and Oxford, telling the world that we did not need to close schools, churches, and businesses to deal with the pandemic. We proposed protecting vulnerable older people better and not disrupting the lives of the less vulnerable, especially children.
Following similar ideas, Sweden has protected human life better than nearly every other country without lockdowns. Their kids suffered no learning loss because they did everything they could not to disrupt their lives. Similarly, locked-down California has suffered a greater life expectancy loss, higher unemployment, and worse outcomes for our kids than Florida.
When we wrote the declaration, tens of thousands of doctors, epidemiologists, and almost a million others signed it. But the federal medical authorities did not like it one bit since it shattered the illusion that all scientists agreed with them about lockdowns. The head of the National Institute of Health, Francis Collins, coordinated with Tony Fauci to organize a devastating takedown of it. It was part of a broader effort by federal health officials to make sure that the American people never heard about scientific dissent against lockdowns.
The way the government suppressed dissident voices is by telling social media companies who to censor and what ideas should not be allowed on their platforms. The CDC, the Surgeon General's office, the White House, and even the FBI used back channels into social media companies to censor millions of Americans without anyone knowing it until the Twitter files and court cases blew open the story. Federal judges, looking at the evidence, called the effort an Orwellian Ministry of Truth in the form of a vast censorship industrial complex.
It's the kind of thing that should never happen in a country with a First Amendment protecting free speech, but it did. The government's excuse is that they were protecting the people against "misinformation" when instead, the government was protecting itself against accurate criticism that would have shattered the illusion of consensus the government used to enact pandemic-era violations of civil liberties at scale.
So what is the punchline? Free speech is essential for our health. Free scientific dissent protects us against powerful government scientific bureaucracies that have gone down the wrong path. And especially in emergencies, free speech is essential, for that is when powerful government scientific bureaucrats most need a reminder that there is no high Pope of science. Support for free speech does not mean we agree on everything, but it does mean that I support everyone's ability to speak their mind without the government censoring them.
Since I work in public health, I am not here to endorse anyone for president. In public health, we are supposed to be beyond politics, and what we say should be equally suitable and just for Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike. However, I am glad to work with anybody who stands for free speech rights at a time like now when they are in peril. And I am delighted that Mr. Kennedy has lent his considerable voice to the cause.
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You did well, spoke truth to corrupt power. Let's all do what we can to get Mr. Kennedy elected president. He does sincerely care about all the many issues that have steered our country down a course that's going to take us all over a cliff.
Dr. B, Thank you for your efforts to preserve, protect and advance Free Speech and the truths of real science. I still cannot accept that our country whose First Amendment is for absolute Free Speech, is governed by such an evil cabal intent upon banishing our greatest and most important right. I also find it beyond hard to believe that our country has become a place where an esteemed Stanford Public Health Doctor needs to BRAVE ALL with courage and endurance in order to defend our First Amendment and scientific truths. Thank you for the Great Barrington Declaration. In it, you and others provided the information and object lessons to correctly navigate the pandemic, not only to be silenced, but vilified by an extremely evil cabal which comprises our country’s leadership. I applaud and am grateful to you, Substack, Elon Musk, RFK, and more for being First Amendment Heroes.