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After the Great Barrington Declaration was announced in 2020, Harvard Professor Martin Kulldorff suddenly emerged into the public consciousness as a controversial figure. Despite data showing his skepticism about lockdowns and vaccine mandates were ultimate legitimate, especially in his home country of Sweden, Professor Kulldorff was fired by Harvard. Why? UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers spoke to him to find out.
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SubscribeThat really was a moving interview. I was particularly struck by Kulldorff mentioning he’s a single father of two young kids. He must surely have known that by taking his public stance on covid, contrary to the prevailing dogma, he was likely putting his career in jeopardy. That is a big risk to take when you have kids to raise.
My fear is we have learned nothing. So long as Western countries are wealthy enough to sustain their populations through lockdowns, then lockdown will be the default response. Perhaps there is a silver lining to the dark economic clouds threatening the West: we won’t always be so rich we can endanger our economy for the sake of virtue signaling.
Harvard University isn’t running on fumes just yet, but it’s getting close. In a few short years it loses in the U.S. Supreme Court its blatantly racial policy of denying admission to the most qualified students based on their race; it almost succeeds in firing its most brilliant economist (Roland Fryer) because a Black American professor publicly states that the FBI data clearly indicates that American police do not treat Black American men unfairly; it elevates to president an, at best, mediocre black woman of questionable academic ethics and it terminates (fires) an eminent scientist because he courageously and correctly calls into question Covid lockdown policies, and it treats academic freedom and free speech in general so badly that it justly places last by FIRE.
While Professor Martin Kulldorff is in a tough spot for the moment, he should wear his termination as a badge of honor. Harvard on the other hand has given new meaning to “giving it that old college try”. Luckily for Harvard it has roughly a $50 billion endowment as it enters its declining years.
Harvard is so stupidly woke, that should Donald Trump win re-election this November, all those within a 10 mile radius of Harvard Square will need to be put on suicide watch. Are there enough first responders to stop the carnage?
A brave man. I remember he appeared on RTE (Irish State television) in Aug 2020 debating a masked zero covid advocate who was calling for yet more repressive measures in the journey towards the utopian covid-free society.
Asked to respond to the proposition that we needed to eliminate covid entirely, but briefly as the segment was out of time, he deadpanned simply:- “I don’t think that’s possible”….
He was right of course. The perfect contrast to the histrionics of the other side.
Thank you Freddie for interviewing Professor Kulldorff. I can’t begin to express my outrage against Harvard and other elite universities calling Kulldorff and his fellow epidemiologists of the Barrington Declaration pseudo scientists. Also thanks for continuing to update the UnHerd readers of the consequences of the vaccines and lockdowns.. I kept watching the interviews, you conducted, during this dismal period, and it certainly gave me a different perspective from the usual outpourings by most of the MSM and government agencies. I think this is the main reason I am sticking to my UnHerd subscription.
Could you please now follow up on the Climate Change scientists, because I feel something similar is happening there. Any contradictory opinion is suppressed, and Climate Scientists, who don’t follow the Herd are getting fired, losing jobs, because they dare speak out and proclaim that Climate Science isn’t settled.
“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”
Voltaire
His big mistake was not to be a black plagiarist, clearly.
It would help if Freddie got his facts straight and if Kuhldorf actually corrected Freddie rather than simply saying “yes”. The J&J and AZ vaccines were NOT traditional vaccines. They were DNA-based vaccines and therefore the principle was identical to that of the mRNA vaccines. Both highjack the cellular machinery to make the spike protein; the only difference is that the mRNA is translated directly into the protein, while the DNA one is first transcribed into mRNA which is then translated into protein. i.e. J&J and AZ vaccines require an additional step to be accomplished within the cell (DNA to mRNA). Further, and here Kuhldorf is completely misrepresenting things, is that the dosing schedule is not set in stone. It is simply what was trialed by the different companies. Pfizer, Moderna and AZ trialed a two-dose schedule while J&J simply did a one dose schedule. (For all intent and purposes the AZ and J&J DNA-based vaccines were identical). But there is no scientific/medical justification for 2 doses versus 1 dose other than the assumption that two is more effective than one.
All that being said, Kuhldorf’s firing from Harvard is a complete and utter disgrace. Indeed the imposition of vaccine mandates was completely and totally unethical as the vaccine did not prevent infection or transmission. i.e. it was of no benefit to 3rd parties. Whether the vaccines even reduced the probability of hospitalization and death is up for debate and simply represents wishful thinking because none of the RCTs ever demonstrated that the vaccines did anything of the sort. Indeed, the statistically trickery used by Moderna and Pfizer would have resulted in a 50% efficacy for a vaccine with 0% efficacy (recent paper published in the BMJ). So in all likelihood the vaccines, even at the outset, against the strain they were initially targeted against, were only 50% effective at best.