Please listen to Dr. Michael Patmas's story
He reported Dr. Robert Malone to the boards and was subsequently the target of a hate campaign
We have seen an increase in targeted attacks on healthcare workers thanks in no small part to anti-vax champion Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover. In our piece about The Unity Project Peter McCullough’s latest attack on Team Halo, we shared Tyler Kuhk NP’s story of being targeted by his colleague American Frontline Nurses founder and former Nevada Board of Nursing member Nicole Sirotek.
While the mainstream media is beginning to talk more about targeted attacks on healthcare workers, I would like to highlight Dr. Michael Patmas’s story. Patmas was one of the early individuals in healthcare to speak up against Covid and vaccine disinformation by reporting Dr. Robert Malone (The Unity Project) to his state medical boards. Malone launched a merciless attack on Patmas in return. As we have pointed out, medical boards have failed to act to control dangerous disinformation and extremist behavior from physicians like Malone et al. Here is Dr. Patmas’s story.
History has seen some pretty elaborate and successful disinformation / propaganda campaigns; Hitler and Mussolini come to mind. They each had their targets. Trump’s targets are unique, they include our public health infrastructure and medical education system. He has elevated marginal and unqualified physicians to prominence as experts while vilifying true experts. Anyone who dares challenge them is doxxed, attacked and silenced through SLAPP lawsuits.
I was “outed” on Twitter to hundreds of thousands of antivaxxers who were invited to attack me. That was just the beginning. Shortly thereafter, I was “outed” on the Joe Rogan Podcast to an estimated audience of 50 million. I had a frivolous complaint filed against my license, endured behind the scenes pressure to be fired from my job, gotten innumerable threatening messages including death threats and been threatened in every other manner imaginable. I have even had my social media voiced nearly obliterated.
Why? Because I stand up for science, real science. I expose fake experts by reading their publications and CVs and point out the red flags in them.
Some will claim I am a liberal partisan hack. In truth, I am a registered Republican. I have never voted for a Democrat in my life.
I have always supported vaccination, since medical school in the 1970s when I saw a previously healthy young man die of Influenza.
As the nexus between Trump and the antivaxx movement became clear, I was shocked and appalled. Now I get it. We live in a new era where a technology enhanced propaganda machine makes disinformation spread more rapidly and penetrate more deeply. It has been extraordinarily successful. The Trump - Antivaxx propaganda - disinformation machine has managed to convince half the country to decline a proven safe and effective vaccine because they simply will not believe the data. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died as a result. They have managed to dupe every Republican in the House of Representatives. The pandemic was prolonged because of it. But it is the distrust in medicine, science and public health that is most concerning.
Lies have become the truth. Fake experts have replaced real experts. Junk science replaces the New England Journal of Medicine. As long as the Trump disinformation - propaganda machine continues to confuse the public about COVID we will continue to be adversely impacted by it.