(The Center Square) – Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita sent a memo listing what he says are inaccurate or false claims about the COVID-19 pandemic to the U.S. Office of the Surgeon General.
He said those claims have caused damage that he says will take decades to repair.
“The spread of inaccurate scientific information has made it difficult for the public to make the right decisions to protect themselves, their families and their communities from COVID-19 and the collateral public health damage arising from the pandemic countermeasures. As such, the disinformation has led to great harm in the lives and livelihoods of Americans,” according to the memo.
The memo was in response to a March 7 request for information from the surgeon general on the effects of COVID-19 misinformation on the public.
Epidemiologists Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, senior research fellow at the Brownstone Institute and former professor at Harvard University School of Medicine, joined Rokita in singing the memo.
The memo details nine instances of false or inaccurate messages given to the public. First on the list is the overcounting of COVID-19 cases due to problems in data collection.
“The government spent close to $5 trillion fighting COVID-19, but still can’t provide Hoosiers with an accurate number of deaths or hospitalizations from COVID-19,” Rokita said.
Also the authors allege “the CDC director and other health officials falsely claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine prevents the transmission of COVID-19 to others.”
The authors also cited as problems the overcounting of cases, exaggeration of the risk of death, and erroneously stating that mask mandates and contact tracing would reduce the spread of the virus.
Bhattacharya and Kulldorff have opposed lockdowns and mask mandates since early in the pandemic.
Along with fellow epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta, the pair coauthored the Great Barrington Declaration in 2020, which advocates a herd immunity strategy among low-risk groups while targeting higher-risk populations with focused prevention efforts.
