Marcel A. Muller

1K posts

Marcel A. Muller

Marcel A. Muller

@MarcelAMller

coronavirus researcher #ChariteVirology. Opinions are my own.

Berlin Entrou em Eylül 2013
826 Seguindo1.8K Seguidores
Marcel A. Muller retweetou
Krutika Kuppalli, MD FIDSA
Krutika Kuppalli, MD FIDSA@KrutikaKuppalli·
This response is from our current @NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya who is not a board certified clinician, has never been responsible for the care of patients and never led a public health crisis. Prior to #covid he was focused on economics (not science). He sits in an ivory tower in the comfort of hindsight and abstraction continuing to minimalize #Covid He didn’t run hospitals. He didn’t manage outbreaks. He didn’t staff ICUs, surge wards, or morgues. He didn’t hold iPads for dying patients’ families. He didn’t make real-time decisions with incomplete data while systems were collapsing He accuses public health leaders of ignoring data, yet his narrative selectively cherry-picks facts divorced from context. In early 2020, the central problem wasn’t arrogance—it was uncertainty, exponential growth, fragile health systems, and the absence of vaccines, therapeutics, or immunity. Decisions weren’t made in an ivory tower; they were made in emergency rooms, on patient wards, ministries of health, and crisis rooms under conditions you never experienced. He also continues to misrepresent history. #WHO did not “mandate lockdowns.” Countries made sovereign decisions based on local epidemiology, political realities, and system capacity. To rewrite that complexity as a moral failure of public health leaders is not analysis—it’s ideology. What’s striking is not that mistakes were made—every crisis reveals blind spots. What’s striking is the confidence with which people who never carried responsibility now lecture those who did. It’s easy to critique from the sidelines. It’s harder to lead when people are dying. That difference matters and if you want to talk about leadership now, look at today. #Measles is resurging in the U.S. — entirely preventable — and children are being hospitalized and dying as vaccination coverage falls and disinformation spreads. So where is your leadership in this crisis? Where is the accountability? Where are the results? From the frontlines, the problem isn’t too much humility from public-health leaders — it’s too much confidence from people who’ve never had to lead at all.
Jay Bhattacharya@DrJBhattacharya

I think this thread is posted in at least a simulacrum of good faith, so I'll give a substantive response. It is obviously true that in the moment of crisis, leaders face tremendous pressure to do something dramatic to address the crisis, and often those decisions turn out, in retrospect, to be wrong. In the case of the covid crisis, the problems were confounded by a determined unwillingness of scientific and public health leaders to respond to data -- in real time -- that showed that core assumptions underlying the lockdown strategy were wrong. Here is a short list of facts about covid that undermined these leaders' core assumptions: * covid is airborne, * covid spreads asymptomatically, * covid infection fatality rate << case fatality rate, * covid has a sharp age gradient in its infection mortality risk, * lockdowns cannot suppress covid spread or protect the vulnerable for long, * lockdowns crush the lives and well-being of children, the poor, and the working class, and almost everyone other than the laptop class * lockdowns cause a form of psychological terror that guarantee they could never last just two weeks The WHO and public health leaders got all of these facts wrong in 2020, which I suppose is understandable. What is not understandable is that these same leaders conducted "devastating takedowns" of even well-credentialed outside critics who pointed out that the WHO's core assumptions were incorrect, and accepted these assumptions as true even as overwhelming data to the contrary emerged in real time. What is not understandable is the utter confidence that the WHO and public health leaders expressed in these ideas and lockdown policies to the public as the only way to protect the population, going so far as to call for censorship of contrary voices on social media and elsewhere. The closest analogue I can think of is the set of "best and brightest" advisors who told Pres. LBJ that victory in the Vietnam War was just around the corner, based on a whole host of faulty information. Leaders who come out of such situations having embraced such a litany of catastrophically failed ideas and policies have a few choices on how to handle the post-crisis era. 1) They can, in good faith, admit their failures and work to reform systems so the disaster never happens again. This would be best, though I would understand why the public would want a new set of leaders to design and implement the reforms. I personally am very happy to work with and learn from public health leaders who choose this option. 2) They can pretend to have done nothing wrong, clinging to power for as long as they can, hoping against hope that history will vindicate them, crushing public trust in the institutions they lead. 3) They can try to pretend they never recommended or adopted the catastrophically failed policies, hoping that the public has a short memory. This is the current strategy that the @WHO is taking. 4) They can appeal to the difficulty of the job of handling a crisis under considerable uncertainty, not in a spirit of reform, but rather as an excuse to avoid responsibility for their failed crisis management. This is the approach that Koopmans is taking in her thread. I have very little sympathy for the covid crisis leaders who choose options 2, 3, or 4. Their job was to manage the uncertainty with wisdom and humanity, which they failed to do. They cannot, at this juncture, turn around and expect public sympathy because their job was hard, or expect the public to forget their failure. These leaders have destroyed public trust in public health, and should step aside as a new set of public health leaders works to fix the damage they caused.

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Marcel A. Muller retweetou
MicrobesInfect
MicrobesInfect@MicrobesInfect·
Multiple independent acquisitions of #ACE2 usage in #MERS-related coronaviruses. • Two European bat MERS-related coronaviruses use ACE2 as their receptor • ACE2 N432-glycosylation restricts viral recognition by MOW15-22 & PnNL2018B cell.com/cell/fulltext/…
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Marcel A. Muller
Marcel A. Muller@MarcelAMller·
Interested in doing a PhD in my group? You have a background (Master degree) in virology, biology, biochemistry or equivalent? Plan your own PhD project with me in the field of highly pathogenic CoV and comparative pathogenesis! (deadline March 23rd) karriere.charite.de/en/job-vacanci…
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Marcel A. Muller retweetou
Stefan Pöhlmann
Stefan Pöhlmann@snpoehlm·
Host cell entry and neutralisation sensitivity of the emerging SARS-CoV-2 variant LP.8.1 - The Lancet Infectious Diseases thelancet.com/journals/lanin…
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Marcel A. Muller retweetou
Friedemann Weber (@friedemann.bsky.social)
Friedemann Weber (@friedemann.bsky.social)@Friedemann1·
Der eine hatte sich jede Woche durch Studien gequält und sie in möglichst verständlicher Weise für die beunruhigte Bevölkerung aufgearbeitet -> konstruktiv Der andere fiel und fällt durch konstantes „dagegen“ auf, Aufklärung wo genau? Einer kämpft für dich, einer für sich
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Marcel A. Muller retweetou
Friedemann Weber (@friedemann.bsky.social)
Friedemann Weber (@friedemann.bsky.social)@Friedemann1·
Anscheinend ganz gut, dass Fachleute ohne Corona-Revisionistenschlagseite noch hier in der Cloaca maXima verblieben sind. Manche hatten sich schon gefreut, dass ihre Faktenverdrehungen ungebremst unter die Anhänger bringen könnten
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Marcel A. Muller retweetou
Friedemann Weber (@friedemann.bsky.social)
Friedemann Weber (@friedemann.bsky.social)@Friedemann1·
Also ein von Republikanern dominiertes politisches Gremium kommt nach Anhörung von GBD-Autoren und RFK-Fans zu dem Schluss, dass die GBD recht hatte. Und sie wUrdDen gAnZ ScHlimM aUSgeGreNZT. Was sonst noch so zB in dem Papier steht... 1/n
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