My offer to Dr. Celine Gounder to end COVID misinformation

I just sent off this email. I'm hoping she'll agree to help put me on the right path.

Céline Gounder

Executive summary

All my misinformation spreader friends say the same thing: the data looks bad and nobody will take the time to explain why we are misinterpreting it.

I’m trying again with my email to Celine Gounder.

About Celine Gounder

Céline Gounder is an internist, infectious disease specialist, and epidemiologist. She is a CBS News medical contributor and senior fellow and editor-at-large for public health at the Kaiser Family Foundation. Gounder is also clinical associate professor of medicine and infectious diseases at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine. An expert in science, medicine, and public health communication, she advises policymakers on public health issues, including epidemics and pandemics, the health impacts of climate change, mental health, drug overdose, and disinformation. Full bio

Dr. Gounder is also an expert on combating health misinformation.

Her husband, Grant Wahl, died unexpectedly at age 49.

AP News said it couldn’t be caused by the COVID vaccine, even though a search of VAERS for the past 30 years for all vaccines shows that the only vaccine linked to aortic aneurysm is the COVID vaccine:

This is not just correlation. Here’s an email I just received from one of my readers in the UK:

Morning Steve, my husband Peter died at the age of 48 from an aortic aneurysm and I definitely attribute it to the vaccine. He has aortic dissection and rupture on his death certificate. First thing listed is massive thoracic haemorrhage. No mention of aneurysm or high blood pressure although his doctor's records say he did have high blood pressure years before and since refused to take the medication for it. But the coroner said there was nothing of concern on his doctor's records as far as she was concerned and said we'd never know what caused his heart to rupture. 

This was seven weeks after his Phyzer vax. His mother also died within weeks of her Astra Zeniker, from a massive cerebral haemorrhage.

I have been turned down for the VDPS here in the UK because they concluded it won't have been the shot, suggesting this isn't a side effect. I have asked my funeral director, who had a good knowledge of the state of my husband's body, if any clots were seen or inflammation but as yet I haven't had a reply. I only asked her a few days ago though so I may yet. I am appealing you see, so seeing your email this morning gave me the shivers. 

I have sent a screenshot of your picture of the vaers report to my solicitor who is looking into the rejection for me. I'll be interested in any other information you discover regarding such huge damage to the heart, and any other victims, wonder how many of them there are? 

Many thanks for your determination in this matter, it's very much appreciated.

Today, I sent her this email

Hi Dr. Gounder,

My name is Steve Kirsch. I am contacting you because you are an expert on COVID misinformation.

Quick background on me: I trusted the CDC and FDA and had two Moderna shots in March 2021. But after my friends died or were injured after getting the COVID vaccine, I directly looked at the data and became a journalist to tell people what I found.

I have two degrees from MIT, one of the auditoriums at MIT is named after me, and I have a respectable h-index despite the fact that I went into a business career immediately after graduating from MIT. Over my years of funding medical research, I have developed a strong understanding of research studies, evidence-based medicine, and statistics. I have spent many hours doing VAERS queries, reading the medical literature, and talking directly with world experts.

What I found was quite troubling to me. But even more troubling was that none of the members of the medical community were able to explain the data I uncovered from disparate sources. And all that data was consistently showing the vaccines had an unfavorable risk/benefit ratio.

Today, I’m considered one of the world’s top “misinformation spreaders.”

In fact, if you do a Google search for “misinformation superspreader” I’m the top hit.

To be honest with you, I don’t really want to spread misinformation, but nobody will explain the data to me, even after I offered to compensate them up to 10X their normal consulting rate for their time.

If someone would just agree to do this on camera, even though there is no guarantee that it will change my mind, I’m sure the video of an expert calmly explaining how we got it wrong will be useful in changing the minds of my millions of followers who currently believe what I’m saying is true. So they are as confused as I am.

So it’s a worthwhile endeavor and will help to reduce vaccine hesitancy.

Since you are a professor of infectious diseases, perhaps you would be willing to do this yourself?

I have reached out to Peter Marks and Peter Hotez to request their assistance, but apparently they believe that I’m more likely to change my views if they ignore me.

This is clearly not the case.

In fact, it’s backfired. I have more and more followers every day.

More troubling of course is that there isn’t a single example of a prominent expert who flipped from anti-vax to pro-vax after looking at the evidence.  And fewer and fewer people are getting the boosters.

So the current “ignore them” strategy is failing badly. Will the medical community continue to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different outcome?

One of us is wrong. I’m sure we both agree that misinformation costs lives. We simply disagree on who is spreading it.

I believe that the best way to resolve this is through open civil dialog where we ask questions and the experts simply answer our questions.

The former Dean of the Harvard Medical School apparently agrees with this approach because he wrote an op-ed about it.

Censorship hasn’t worked.

Don’t you think it is time to give this a try? It would only take one person a couple of hours to clear the confusion.

Will you be willing to do this? Or help me to find someone who is?

Thanks!

-steve

Dr. Gounder is ghosting me

I’m truly baffled. She could single-handed end the misinformation with 2 hours of her time. I’m even willing to compensate her generously for her time to do this tremendous public service. But she did not respond to my offer.

As I wrote in my letter, ignoring all our offers to have a civil dialog to resolve our differences is not productive.

If she has a better path, why aren’t they pursuing it?

Arguing that the dialog will not be productive before trying it is coming to a definitive conclusion with no data. That’s not scientific.

Summary

I sincerely hope that Dr. Céline Gounder will agree to answer my questions and show the world that I’m simply misinformed and/or confused.

While there is no guarantee she’ll change my mind, I will share her answers with all my followers so that they can benefit from her insights into the data.