World Health Network’s maskless mascot and their loss of credibility
Picture this.
The CEO of the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program snorting lines of cocaine at a party.
The founder of PETA eating a juicy rare steak at a fancy restaurant. (PETA is alleged to slaughter animals, but the hypocrisy is the same.)
AIDS activist Larry Kramer giving this passionate speech in 1991…
Then going on to have group sex with strangers every night, no condoms to be seen. (He died during the early months of the COVID pandemic in May 2020, and to the best of my knowledge he never was a hypocrite in real life.)
When Ashton Kutcher was caught writing a letter to a judge pleading for his convicted rapist friend Danny Masterson to be granted leniency because Masterson is supposedly such a great guy, the anti-sexual abuse trafficking organization Thorn made Kutcher step down as their representative. Kutcher founded Thorn, by the way.
Enter WHN
The World Health Network (WHN) was founded by New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) founder Yaneer Bar-Yam and Eric Feigl-Ding, “an American public health scientist who is currently an epidemiologist and Chief of COVID Task Force at the New England Complex Systems Institute,” according to Wikipedia.
Speaking of Wikipedia, Wikipedia suspects that Bar-Yam has been engaging in less than ethical behavior with his own Wikipedia page. As of October 2023, a warning at the top of his page says “This article may have been created or edited in return for undisclosed payments, a violation of Wikipedia’s terms of use. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia’s content policies, particularly neutral point of view. (January 2023)” Ouch.
I was enthusiastic about volunteering with WHN at the beginning of this year. I have probably spent a hundred hours or so doing volunteer work for WHN in 2023. I have directly interacted with Bar-Yam several times. Most of WHN’s internal communication is conducted in their Slack group. There are several meetings of various WHN groups every single weekday. Bar-Yam attends many of them. In the many months that I’ve been on their Slack, I have never seen Feigl-Ding. Not even once.
By late August or early September, I was made the new head of WHN’s Platforms group because their previous leadership left WHN. WHN’s Platforms group operates Covid Meetups now. The Platforms group develops and maintains the Covid Meetups platform.
When I became the leader of the Platforms group (a position I just fell into reluctantly), a bunch of former Platforms group developers and leaders messaged me privately with a lot of unflattering information. For the sake of their privacy, I won’t name them. But there were at least six or seven people who told me what was going on in the Platforms group from their perspective. Some of those people developed a lot of the computer programming code that Covid Meetups currently uses.
The Platforms group has had very, very high turnover. And so have many other groups at WHN. Yaneer Bar-Yam’s NECSI receives a lot of grant money each year. And one of the allegations made against him is that most of NECSI’s income goes to his very generous salary. I’ve been shown IRS forms. It appears as if Bar-Yam makes his generous salary off of the unpaid labor of hundreds of unpaid volunteers. That’s capitalism, baby!
I will use the words “allegations” and “alleged” so I can write openly without much litigation risk. I’m used to writing stuff that gets checked by lawyers before publication. But it’s always been for private companies and their own legal counsel. For this post, I would be using my own legal counsel. Fortunately, American courts have a stricter standard for considering communications to be libel or slander than they do in the UK. So I will say “alleged, alleged, alleged,” but if I’m asked for sources, I have the receipts. It’s video footage and screenshots. And really Yaneer, would you like to welcome The Streisand Effect upon you?
Enter Maskless Feigl-Ding
A picture is worth a thousand words. I write words for a living but even I know that what you do is way more important than what you say. I have my own PR agent and because she’s good at her job, she would strongly advise me to not do anything publicly that contradicts what I write, nor what I say in media interviews.
Feigl-Ding is best besties 😍 with Peter Hotez, another rich and famous medical academic. Because Hotez researches vaccines, it appears as if he thinks he mustn’t ever mask because that would suggest that the Covid vaccines don’t prevent infection or transmission. Alas, there is an overwhelming amount of scientific research and personal anecdotes that prove that the vaccines don’t prevent infection or transmission. The best we can hope for is that they reduce the likelihood of imminent death in the acute infection phase. They don’t prevent Long COVID either. It’s a massively dangerous misconception that the acute infection phase (first month or so) is all that COVID is. Meanwhile, your elevated risk of sudden death can last for years. COVID has been shown to fuse brain cells together. COVID has been shown to cause likely permanent brain damage. COVID has been shown to destroy immune systems in similar ways to HIV. There’s also lots of evidence of longterm heart attacks, strokes, and a plethora of other nasty stuff.
Respirator mask mandates save lives:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Wcd2t9l96fqrcAeUYE_b3Ta_2ueCjPDq/view?usp=sharing
The vaccines don’t prevent infection, nor transmission. Nor long COVID:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-risk-of-vaccinated-covid-transmission-is-not-low/
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01453-0
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-30992100768-4/fulltext
Covid brain damage:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/15YRN2FCUDsiodGDz9zeDo2XFW-S89LD1/view?usp=share_link
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HSWSBzX9OZCH9A00KFwlAMg5gGTiPyNS/view?usp=share_link
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14QWNESukVgrGm76b55oNhefMGlh0MG67/view?usp=share_link
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11v-ccbnyhP5M3z2-8ugBs65LND3NHIFb/view?usp=share_link
https://drive.google.com/file/d/15jyBQO25KAgBrJOpyRrsjRTR5Sfg_2-V/view?usp=share_link
“Public health experts” and the harm they’ve done so far in this current ongoing pandemic:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13tvWgUS-kqogoKy2Nt50R1n1MxlwRblK/view?usp=share_link
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q6h6pK2EQwDLyL6VmcIKVzDgrjKToGdG/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10C1RUruhLn4JKuclYBAJ3Sz6oFPvm9ft/view?usp=sharing
Long COVID is alarmingly common:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G9R5VCIPi0wuCqaEoRVt2Ux1xA9bg2yW/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13DbXhRt5fPnngsWTDP7fBkfEWzJNkHf5/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PLrnZTpDfZJKgTaj0GR826mOBnNDtlVv/view?usp=share_link
Covid damages the cardiovascular system:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/17-Ls2od-pL03bsYm4nKpFhRubQ-wuhcw/view?usp=sharing
Covid destroys the immune system:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-oueBx_ncf3-awhwusdtHMp29THR2ypx/view?usp=sharing
Covid infection levels in September 2023 are near 2020’s peak:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13V-QtYHtOAVLUaq8wlmtu940VDbwRqW1/view?usp=sharing
Covid is a level three biohazard (BSL3) and people in BSL3 labs wouldn’t dream of taking their PPE off for selfies:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11gujWIFcQMqDaCS7gF4nkgqF2lwrz_NM/view?usp=sharing
Covid also infects outdoors! Ventilation and air filtration are great, but they’re an augment for masking, not a substitute:
https://fortune.com/well/2022/07/09/can-you-get-covid-outside-outdoors-omicron-ba5-ba4/
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/12/health/covid-humans-deer-study/index.html
My appearance on the Blueprints of Disruption podcast to discuss my thoughts on Covid and how I’ve been able to avoid infection:
https://blueprints-of-disruption.captivate.fm/episode/covid-conscious-under-capitalism
But it’s possible that Hotez is an agent of the vaxx and relax contingent that has been pushed by the US government to get people to resume wage slavery and restaurant spending for their capitalist overlords maskless. I beg of you, please get vaxxed, but you certainly shouldn’t relaxx.
Anyway, here’s a bunch of pictures for a bunch more words. Alt text is provided for everything.
BTW, here is communication between Impact Research and the Biden administration in February 2022.
This is part of the mass vaxx and relaxx propaganda campaign. The Biden administration and the CDC knew long before this letter that the COVID vaccines don’t stop infection or transmission. But the sight of masks hurts consumer spending and it’s very bad for capitalism!
WHN: Don’t judge our founder Feigl-Ding, look at our words!
WHN’s response to me and my friends bringing up Feigl-Ding’s public masklessness at a WHN meeting was tense. We seemed to make Bar-Yam very uncomfortable. I have lots of witnesses. (I and my friends confronted Bar-Yam at one meeting. Then Bar-Yam said he would have another meeting to make everything better a couple of days later. I didn’t attend that second meeting.)
One of my witnesses observed this regarding the WHN meeting that I didn’t attend:
“Yeah, people tried to bring it up several times and he just started talking nonstop for 6 minutes. L**** wrote in the chat that people had their hand up, but he didn’t let them speak. S** quit in disgust. I just contacted some long COVID sufferers who were upset about the maskless pics to let them know the WHN is a money laundering cult and Eric has to be stopped from running for political office. I offered to share everything I know. They may not be interested, but they should know money and volunteers are being diverted from them, for a grift.”
And WHN’s public response is such obvious propaganda that I felt dirty letting my web browser load the page:
“Embracing Multiple Strategies for Confronting the Pandemic” is covering-your-ass propaganda speak for “it’s okay to go around maskless in public if you socially distance and open some windows.”
It’s total fucking bullshit.
I have citations for Covid transmission outdoors, the space with the best possible ventilation. Plus, “social distancing” is bullshit from the myth that Covid spreads through droplets that stay within six feet. The truth is that Covid is airborne and one infected person’s breath could fill a gymnasium’s air, even with the tallest ceilings.
Air filtration and ventilation is very important. My own apartment has a HEPA filter in every room (including my bathroom!) and ventilation that keeps my home’s CO2 at around 450ppm in the long term. I applaud efforts from groups who are fighting to improve air quality in schools and hospitals.
Air quality measures may be able to remove Covid from the air in a room in 30 minutes or an hour. But it does fuck all for near field transmission. If I was maskless outdoors, the place with the best ventilation, I could easily get infected by an infected person walking past me.
Just like HEPA and ventilation can get rid of the smoke in a room over time. But if someone smokes a cigarette near you, you could breathe in their smoke regardless. COVID TRAVELS LIKE SMOKE.
Imagine applying WHN’s “embracing multiple strategies for confronting the pandemic” to HIV and AIDS.
“It’s okay that our leader has sex without condoms and uses needles that have been used by other people. They limit their number of new sexual partners to two per week, only choose people at the bar who aren’t that drunk, and ask their friends if they have HIV before sharing a needle with them. We’re embracing multiple strategies.”
On that note, “I only took my mask off for that selfie” is just like “I only had three drinks, I can drive. I do my best to follow the rules of the road. I’m used to drinking a lot. I’m embracing multiple strategies.”
Poignant thoughts from Katie Schmitt
I have spoken with dozens of people in the COVID cautious community. They include people who have never been infected (a status I use every ounce of privilege I have to maintain), people who have been infected (often through no fault of their own), and people with Long Covid.
My COVID cautious friends are all outraged by WHN’s public masklessness, plus WHN’s pathetic reaction to our outrage. The people with Long COVID are rightfully among the most outraged. Most of these people have shared their pain and distress with me in confidence.
I maintain an over year old COVID cautious group chat on Signal with nearly 150 members.
One of my friends who has Long COVID has an especially traumatizing experience. He had a good paying job in the tech industry. When the pandemic started, he was divorced and co-parenting his school aged child with his ex-wife. He offered to give his ex-wife more than enough money for her to pay her bills, live on, and co-parent their child if she would stay home and homeschool their kid. She refused. Public schools are hotbeds for COVID infection. Their child brought home COVID, infected his ex-wife, and infected him. His Long COVID is from that infection. Now he’s too disabled to work, and his ex-wife keeps sending their child to public school to get infected over and over again.
There is one person (I don’t know her health status, nor does it really matter) who really wanted to get her thoughts out there publicly.
Her name is Katie Schmitt. She’d like to share her words about WHN maskless-gate and be credited for them. Here’s what she wrote, sharing with her permission:
“The integrity and direction of the World Health Network (WHN) have been notably challenged.
At the heart of the matter is a co-founder who has chosen to repeatedly post maskless selfies. Such actions aren’t just about a fleeting digital image, they convey a message, one that diminishes the importance of one of our most immediate and universal preventative measures.
Despite these overt displays, the subsequent non-reaction from the organization amplifies the concern.
Several members, including myself, have raised our voices, seeking a definitive response or at the very least, some form of organizational introspection. The recent update to the five pillars’ statement, while comprehensive, is not enough It seems to miss the forest for the trees. Masks, in the current global context, are not just another item on a list- they are central, symbolic of our collective effort and unity
Given these circumstances, I must ask: Without directly addressing and rectifying these maskless appearances, where does
the organization draw its boundaries? Today, it’s a maskless selfie: tomorrow, it might be a platform for dissenting voices that challenge the core essence of public health guidelines
In light of these developments and the evident caminution of the paramount importance of masks, I’ve come to a regrettable but necessary decision. I am disengaging from the WHN.
It is urgent to remember and prioritize the core values vital for the network and the countless communities relying on its guidance.
Katie Schmitt”
A call to action
Our currently ongoing COVID pandemic has so far been full to the brim with “public health experts” and “infectious disease experts” posting maskless selfies. They go to huge offline conventions and many other sorts of public places completely maskless. Even to infectious disease and public health conventions. My late father wrote fiction for a living. If these were events in my novel, he would suggest for me to rewrite them because they’re too absurd to be believable fiction.
The vast majority of medical and academic “experts” have been outrageously, horrendously hypocritical. Anthony Leonardi is one of the very few good ones. The rest in Leonardi’s field have been extremely dangerous.
Even the few who say all the right things undermine everything with their public masklessness.
The antimaskers and the public at large look at these photos and say “See! I don’t have to mask!”
The gullible masses see them and go “I see they don’t mask. So I don’t have to mask.”
And the few of us who are clinging onto our respirators in public for dear life have to worry about assault and other sorts of violence that these maskless selfies help to intensify.
I have consulted lawyers about what I could do to protect myself from violence if an antimasker assaults me. A punch in the face would be less harmful to me than breathing in a level three biohazard proven to cause brain damage. So my respirator goes on before I leave my front door. My respirator stays on in public, both indoors and outdoors. Even if doing so attracts violence towards me.
Meanwhile, all Feigl-Ding needs to pull his 3M Aura down inside of a bookstore is a little bit of peer pressure from his best bestie 😍 Peter Hotez.
Feigl-Ding’s cowardice (and WHN’s cowardice) is just one of many examples of how dangerous and reckless these so-called experts are.
I will never have anything to do with WHN ever again. Fuck them.
Please don’t waste your time and energy volunteering for organizations run by academics and other sorts of well funded bigshots.
Don’t worship academics and celebrities.
If you want to help, send money to people with Long COVID on GoFundMe.
Help out your local Mask Bloc.
Volunteer for organizations that are grassroots. Only support organizations run by people who don’t have a lot of money, power, influence, or academic institutional heft. Organizations run by people with Long COVID are more likely to be credible, those are people who know they have skin in the game.
Here are some handy links to get you started:
https://www.instagram.com/trianglemaskbloc/
https://www.markedbycovid.com/
Take care, and keep your respirator on.
