Julia Hartley Dooda PWNED Again

There are real journalists out there, trying to find stories, check them for factual accuracy, perform follow-on research, and all the while ensuring that they are not distracted by misinformation. And then there are those who simply refuse to listen, and instead continue to peddle opinion masquerading as fact, doing so loudly and persistently. In the latter category are pundits like self-promoting TalkRADIO host Julia Hartley Brewer.

Pretentious? Who, moi?

Ms Hartley Dooda has been unswerving in her opinions on the Covid-19 pandemic: face coverings don’t work, lockdowns don’t work, and so nothing must be permitted to get in the way of Herself Personally Now going off on expensive and ostentatiously trailed long haul holidays, not that she’s just rubbing it in the noses of the less well-off, of course.

Evening all

To this end, she decided to intervene in a discussion on the pandemic involving MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan, after he had correctly asserted “To pretend 3k dead a day [that’s in the USA] - around a fifth of whom are vaccinated - is the time to ‘move on’, that this isn’t a state of emergency, is objectively bonkers. Our vaccination and booster rates suck. None for kids under 5. Long Covid is a thing”. Ms Hartley Dooda wasn’t letting that one pass.

“Children don't need Covid jabs, let alone boosters. And there's not a single study showing mask wearing in the real world has any effect at all. You used to be a journalist who looked at facts rather than virtue signalling to get approval. What happened to you?” It was soon made clear to her that face coverings do work, and a whole host of studies showed that they did (a PNAS evidence review makes for a good, if long, read - HERE).

It was also made clear to Ms Hartley Dooda that this was a campaign destined to develop not necessarily to her advantage. Some Tweeters reported her for misinformation. She was told “There are hundreds of studies showing exactly how much masks reduce and contain the spread of airborne respiratory droplets and Covid”, to which all she could manage in response was “There aren't. Really. There aren’t”.

Hasan, meanwhile, applied the most severe of burns when he responded: “You never were one so I won’t ask you that question back … Also, you, like me, have a degree in politics, philosophy, and economics, so save your anti-vaxxer, anti-masker ‘views’ on epidemiology and virology for your conspiracy crowd. Thanks”. In other words, OUCH!

But she was not downhearted: “I've never been anti-vax. I've had Covid twice, am jabbed and have never indulged in any conspiracy theories. I'm not anti-mask, I'm pro-scientific evidence”. She indulged Mike Yeadon until his sick bigotry was exposed. And she was an unswerving supporter of the Great Barrington Declaration. Remember that?

The Declaration’s Wikipedia page notes “The World Health Organization (WHO) and numerous academic and public-health bodies have stated that the strategy is dangerous and lacks a sound scientific basis … [the Declaration] was sponsored by the American Institute for Economic Research, a libertarian free-market think tank associated with climate change denial”. But Ms Hartley Dooda supports what the GBD proposed.

Moreover, she has asserted “the [GBD] was and is correct”. So her assertions are at the very least shaky, and at worst plain flat wrong. And being “pro-scientific evidence” does not mean ignoring the bits that are inconvenient to you. Dooda duly Pwned. Again.

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