108 Comments
Nov 17, 2022Liked by Jessica Hockett

It's worthwhile for those reading this to go back and read through Burnett's series of tweets.

There are multiple examples of appeals to emotion, appeals to authority and other logical fallacies.

This alone lends itself to damaging his credibility.

But let's put that aside and have him come forth for an open debate on this. I'm certain that multiple people on 'team reality' would be up for this.

Most of these individuals like Burnett rarely, if ever, come out of their twitter echo chamber as once scrutinized their claims crumble. Frankly I think this guy is being dishonest through and through.

Someone might also want to clue this character to the fact that all PCR "diagnoses" (for the millionth time PCR is NOT a test) are inherently fraudulent.

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It's troubling that you'd catch flak for digging into what researches with integrity should looking into as relating to the reported high # of deaths out of NYC at that time... what was it killing those people then that isn't killing others now? Don't they want to know? What happened to that Nurse who was reporting on all the ventilators that they needed? Where are those vents now?

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Nov 17, 2022Liked by Jessica Hockett

I know that another major hospital system in New York published quarterly data about admissions, discharges, etc in their financial statements that showed the hospitals weren't over run in spring 2020.

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I'm glad the Brownstone Institute is running some of your articles. The BI has been a ray of sunshine in an otherwise dark world. As you probably know, they've published a couple of my articles as well.

Here's my latest - that wasn't published at the BI, but I think some of your readers might be intrigued by the theme - which is how "logic" has not been applied to our times.

https://billricejr.substack.com/p/what-if-bill-gates-was-an-epstein

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On footnote 7, about the NAAT tests: someone appears to have confused "highly sensitive" with "highly accurate." The testing is very sensitive due to the amplification - but as with any test, when sensitivity increases, specificity decreases.

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I will address this all in my response. But you really have no idea what you’re talking about. You mention patients running out of sedation and paralytics, do you know why that is? Did you ever think to ask someone why those things might have happened? You’ve created this fantasy world where EDs were empty yet there were hospitals full of vented patients without meds. And you fail to understand the link between ED visits and hospital capacity in a pandemic. I will be present all the data that portray what actually happened in nyc.

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Respectfully, I’m not insulting you. You’ve continued to gaslight me and other HCW and complain about ad hominem attacks. Saying that you’re confused isn’t an insult, it’s a legitimate observation based upon your data analysis. Saying that your data analysis is flawed isn’t an insult against you personally. I know you’re probably very proud of your work and perhaps even view it as an extension of yourself. But it’s very obvious to anyone who actually works in a hospital that your analysis is flawed. Hopefully my post will allow you to see that.

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Thanks for the advice. Trust me, I used your post as a template and break each claim down using actual data. It's very granular and goes into a tremendous amount of detail, detail that I don't think you even considered when you wrote your post. I hope you actually learn something from it.

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I maintain you have no idea what you’re talking about and your confidence on this subject is perplexing to me. I will let you know when I publish my critiques of your points. I doubt it will change your mind, you seem rather intransigent, but it will at least let others know how wrong you are.

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Again, I don't have an issue with the data, I have an issue with your interpretation of them and the conclusions you arrived at as a result. I've mentioned this several times.

So you don't dispute that hospitals were overwhelmed but still say that EDs weren't. So you'll forgive me if I don't believe you have an in depth understanding of how any of this works. Which is why I maintain that speaking to an actual HCW before posting might have done you a world of good.

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I was referring to Allen's comment, not yours. He is a complete COVID denier, but you do seem to like a lot of his comments.

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The fact that you still don't get where I'm coming from is mindboggling.

You're attempting to re-write history here. You're gaslighting me and other HCW who worked on the frontlines of this pandemic, and you ask me why I'm taking it personally? Are you serious?

You are dismissing the experience of thousands of healthcare workers because your data analysis (which is very flawed and demonstrates a critical lack of understanding of how any of this works) doesn't fall in line with the testimony of HCW.

The fact that you don't understand that ED visits are directly linked to hospital bed capacity shows me that you are very, very confused about even the most basic facts of hospital operations. yet you still somehow feel emboldened to make these posts. You post them in an echo chamber and never get called out on it, you insulate yourself here and then when someone actually challenges you what do you do? You retreat to countless whataboutisms and change the subject. you refuse to actually engage them in a live debate, and just come up with a string of excuses.

Perhaps ask yourself the question "when my data conflicts with peoples experience perhaps I am the one who's wrong. Perhaps I don't understand the data and should ask for some help." your hubris here is something else.

You sat in the safety and comfort of your own living room, hundreds of miles from NYC, you looked at numbers on a screen and made assumptions on what life was like inside NYC hospitals. You have the audacity to gaslight HCW and then refuse to speak with them.

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I'm not going to engage with someone who denies reality.

You're asserting that COVID diagnoses were fraudulent, you're 100% wrong. You're persisting in a delusional fantasy realm, being fed misinformation that you blindly swallow because it confirms your preconceived biases. That's a really sad way to live life.

I'm not going to write paragraphs explaining the COVID protocols employed in the spring of 2020. My guess is you will ignore anything I say because it's clear from your response you're not living in reality. I would likely be wasting my time. As I have told Jessica and you, I will be more than willing to have this conversation face to face, the fact that you both have refused to discuss this with me is very telling. Again, you're worried about stepping out of your echo chamber, which I can understand, being uncomfortable isn't fun. But why don't you act like an adult and say this to me face to face. You seem very confident in your assessment as you're stating it unequivocally. So what's holding you back?

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I will address all of this and more in my written response.

Just gauging your understanding here: what are the criteria to intubate a patient in respiratory failure? For example when would you decide to intubate a patient presenting in the setting of acute hypoxemic respiratory failure from COVID?

What do you know about COVID ARDS? What do you know about the management of ARDS in general? What do you know about the non-pulmonary complications of critically ill COVID patients? For example: renal failure, hematologic complications such as DIC, neurologic complications from CVA, cardiac complications, and how they impact mortality?

These are all pieces of background information that you should probably understand before you start making assumptions about COVID mortality and labeling them as "vent-expedited deaths"

Again, I think these queries could have been answered if you bothered to talk to even a single physician who cared for COVID patients in the spring of 2020.

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So what are you implying here? That the EDs were empty but the hospitals were full of dying patients? We were using bad protocols on patients that just teleported into the hospital? Where do you think the admitted patients came from, Jessica? I really do think you’re very confused about how all of this works, again confusion which could have been avoided if you actually talked to anyone who works in a hospital. I don’t want to engage in an endless back and forth in the comments. I will post my breakdown of your claims soon, I’m adding more data as we speak. Please, take me up on my offer to have this conversation face to face. It doesn’t have to be public if your concerned it may harm your reputation.

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Again, you're looking at numbers without putting them in the appropriate context. This is where talking to someone who actually worked in a hospital in the spring of 2020 would have been helpful. But you seemed to have skipped that.

You continue with your attempts at gaslighting by claiming that we "felt" overwhelmed but somehow your data analysis doesn't confirm our feelings/experience. Jessica, this is gaslighting, plain and simple. You refuse to actually have a face to face discussion with anyone who actually lived through this. You hide behind the comments section of this substack rather than engage in an actual conversation.

You're assuming that a decline in ED visits meant that EDs were not overwhelmed. You do realize that the ED can become overwhelmed for a variety of reasons, right? An increase in the acuity of patients can quickly overwhelm the system, as high acuity patients require more resources. You do realize that non-acute ED visits declined during the spring of 2020 (visits for headaches, back pain, nausea, minor traumas, etc), while ED visits for COVID increased, right? You do realize that COVID patients presenting to the ED were very sick, ie the acuity of illness was very high. I can ask you what do you think would be more burdensome and overwhelming to an ED: 100 patients with minor traumas, or 40 critically ill patients?

You state there are many reasons we felt overwhelmed, yet not one of your suggestions are actually backed up with facts. You talk about protocols, but I don't think you've ever asked an actual NYC physician what those protocols were, how they were developed/implemented. Perhaps you could have asked an actual HCW why they said we were overwhelmed rather than just mused on it from the comfort of your living room. This is exactly why I am asking you to have this conversation with me face to face.

I would be more than happy to tell you my roles and responsibilities at my institution during the surge of 2020 (I will focus part of my written response on that). But again, this would be better discussed face to face. But briefly: as a hospitalist one of my roles is to admit patients from the ED to the various general medicine services. Because our hospital quickly ran out of beds to send admitted patients to they needed to board in the ED until such a time that a bed became available in the hospital. This means they were under my care, but still physically in the ED. The avg length of stay for some COVID patients exceeded 3 weeks, which is another reason our hospital became overwhelmed. I would take care of patients boarding in the ED, some of whom became critically ill as their disease progressed necessitating transfer to the ICU. In fact we needed to open up a pop-up ICU in our ED to care for critically ill patients in the emergency room. I would ask you why would we need to do this if we weren't inundated with sick patients?

On face value your entire series of posts amounts to a poor attempt at gaslighting HCW who worked tirelessly during an unprecedented pandemic. You keep saying we felt overwhelmed but you don't buy it, your data analysis says otherwise. Why won't you actually speak with a HCW and ask them directly? Why won't you ask them if your data analysis is in line with reality? I want to challenge you, Jessica, step out of your echo chamber, step out of your comfort zone, defend this data analysis, have an actual conversation with me. You seem very confident behind your keyboard, I wonder if that confidence will hold fast while speaking to me face to face.

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