I wouldn’t cite Dr. Robert Redfield if he said blood is red.

The promotion of dubious Trump admin characters with checkered right-wing histories by progressives and lefties is perplexing and problematic.

Professionals, doctors, and progressives should probably be more cautious about promoting comments by the Trump administration’s problematic CDC director as some kind of thought leader. People are repeating stuff the guy said on “fox news lite” media NewsNation, presenting bird flu as a “plandemic” style “gain of function” plot, as they have pushed this conspiracy fiction about the covid pandemic. He literally told NewsNation that he’s not really concerned about viruses causing pandemics, but that the threat he saw was from “gain of function research” and deliberate lab leaks.

Robert Redfield is the guy presided over the testing debacle at the start of the pandemic. A CNN article from 2020 reported that he “denounced distribution of sterile needles to drug users and condoms to sexually active adults” in a 1990 book, and in the early 1990s was in a scandal over AIDS research where he “oversold data and cherry-picked results”.

Has he redeemed himself in the intervening years? In 2021 he was criticized for potentially exacerbating anti-Asian sentiments with his Wuhan lab leak comments. And the CNN article states he later “clarified” by saying that condoms reduced but didn’t eliminate the risk of HIV. To me this sounds an awful lot like the anti-masker arguments against masks — making the perfect the enemy of the good.

Broken clocks are wrong most of the day. You wouldn’t give a broken clock to someone as a useful tool, so why would you point to often-wrong politically extreme voices for healthcare information? For example, a Qanon anti-vax proponent could say something real once in awhile, but it’s not going to be helpful to point to them as an authority if they’re also saying 50 things that are pure bullshit. If something’s legit, it shouldn’t be too hard to find somebody at least halfway sensible saying that the sky is blue.

I feel like people are being set up to look like cranks by jumping on these right-wing bandwagons without perhaps knowing the full picture. For example, journalists failed to report the connection of reported Long Covid blood donor concerns with the right-wing disinformation movie called “Plandemic” and the discredited doctor. It almost looks like there’s an effort to trick lefties and progressives into promoting MAGA and Qanon disinformation. And because people are in silos, people might not be aware of the right-wing ties of these narratives. Some people may be unaware that “early treatment” is a right-wing buzzword — that is not terminology normal healthcare professionals would be using. They might not know Michael Flynn is going on right-wing podcasts saying basically that all infectious diseases are lab manufactured. Many don’t even know that he’s the disgraced and Trump-pardoned right-wing organizer who’s been doing tours around the country to rally people, many who are posse comitatus type militia enthusiasts, and that Flynn was implicated in a reported coup plotting meeting — described as “unhinged” — leading up to the January 6th insurrection.

This is from where all these “plandemic” and “lab leak” conspiracy fiction dramas emanate.

When professionals and other public health concerned people promote narratives and personalities who are soaking in the covid contrarian and far-right milieu, it could come back later to be used to smear them as right-wing extremist weirdos. Of course sometimes these questionable lefty influencers start sneaking in stuff and then eventually they reveal themselves later as just simply being right-wing.

There are deliberate agitators and inauthentic actors mixing it up in any topic that’s a political hot button or used as a political football. Suspecting inauthentic behaviour is not paranoid, since it’s verified as having happened in the past: COINTELPRO or TigerSwan, for starters. This isn’t made up, the internet of fakes is documented fact.

While there are those who served in positions in the Trump administration who were not total weirdos and covid deniers, and appear to demonstrate common sense, such as Deborah Birx or Jerome Adams, and sensible career scientists who just happened to work during the Trump years — that’s not the case with Robert Redfield. He was appointed because of his politics. He continues to sit on the far right, promoting dubious stuff instead of public health. I wouldn’t point to him if he said grass is green, because I don’t recommend using broken clocks.