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by Jonathan Howard (Author)
We are at a critical point in the history of public health. Anti-science, anti-vaccine activists are poised to take over the institutions responsible for ensuring the safety of the American people. Dr. Jonathan Howard shows us how we ended up in this situation, unpacks the reckless plans to undermine trust in public health and science in the United States, and explains just how much is at stake. This is a crucial book to help navigate a dangerous time.
-Adam Ratner, MD, MPH New York University Langone School of Medicine
As health disinformation accelerated across America during our time of Covid, NYU-Langone psychiatrist, Jonathan Howard MD, emerged as one of our pandemic heroes. Dr. Howard has chronicled the depravity of the pandemic disinformation machine like few others, paying special attention to the self-appointed health experts and contrarians who promoted an alternate universe - one that downplayed the seriousness of COVID-19, pushed discredited accounts of herd immunity, convinced Americans to shun vaccines, and even blame the scientists for creating or leaking the Covid virus. His latest book provides us with an important historical record, which will be examined by science historians for years to come.
-Dr. Peter Hotez, Dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine Baylor College of Medicine
While I was reading Jonathan Howard's latest book, a few phrases and cliches came to mind: "Idiot savants;" "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing;" "hoisted on one's own petard." I say this because the book focuses on a small but vociferous group of academics who were mostly on the fringes of their fields before the Covid-19 pandemic. The social and traditional media interest in what was happening gave these individuals bully pulpits to spread misinformation and, frankly, garbage. Howard calls them out by the highly effective tactic of using their own words against them, showing how their utterances were inconsistent over time - many social media posts aged particularly poorly. While the scientists and physicians acting in this way were not necessarily unintelligent, they displayed appalling judgment, and in doing so they betrayed the trust the public should have in those who have faculty appointments at leading universities.
-Dr. John Moore Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, Cornell University
We live in a time where Everyone Else is Lying to You is more needed than ever to help us understand how the anti-vaccine movement has infiltrated and undermined public health. Dr. Jonathan Howard lived and breathed the ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic on the frontlines along with countless health professionals who had their efforts thwarted by pseudoscientific ideas promoted in the wellness industry and perhaps more perniciously by fringe scholars existing within our academic and health institutions. Drawing on his wealth of clinical and scientific expertise as a neurologist, psychiatrist, and science communicator, Howard incisively and meticulously details the precise way in which anti-vaccine misinformation insidiously has become politicized and popularized to gravely threaten our health and the health of those we love. This book documents and exposes the naked truth about how contrarian ideology and the egoistic interests of some physicians came to trump scientific consensus and a duty to save lives
.-Jonathan N. Stea, Ph.D., R. Psych. Clinical Psychologist, University of Calgary
