You've written the best piece on Collins ever written. It's long needed to be said about him. I've nothing but disdain for him going back to the heydays of the ID debate. He's a bad actor through and through.
Thank you for attempting to hold Collins accountable … I no longer use the titles of those whose hippocratic oath “first do no harm” was quickly set aside, as you’ve rightly laid out, in favor of doing everything within their substantial amount of power to stop any discussion or allow any treatment with re-purposed drugs — and in addition trying to actively destroy the reputations of those that disagreed with the “one size fits all” narrative. DESPICABLE!
Using scripture as a means of coercion is something I’m still having difficulty coming to terms with as it put strain on my own family relationships which has yet to be overcome. Now is time for self professed Christians like Collins to model true humility and repentance … not impressed thus far.
I gave Collins the "benefit of the doubt" for a brief period. I assumed Collins was a good but flawed guy. Now, there's just too much evidence that he's a bad guy. He's probably good to his family and doesn't kick the the dog, but he is, or became, a very bad guy in his lofty position. He should apologize, and never be in a position of power again.
Read Drs Mccullough, Kory, Marick, Cole, the list goes on … Del Bigtree ‘s podcast “The Highwire” is particularly good — everything they say is backed up with data unlike the pronouncements of media and government agencies.
Collins' apology was a weak sauce apology if there ever was one. He expressed no genuine sorrow or contrition for the havoc his policies visited on multiplied hundreds of people who were not at any great risk of dying from Covid.
I don't know what else to say except bravo and thank you. I don't accept his apology either because it wasn't an actual apology. It was similar to what I try to do when I go to Confession - talk myself out of my sin. One day he will have to truly come to terms with is role in this debacle and when he does, he will really need prayers.
Bethel, this is an amazing piece on Collins and the aftermath of Covid policy. Thank you.
I have a son who is a Chief Medical Officer and oversees hundreds of doctors in a huge medical foundation. I heard his stories of doctors who retired due to the frenzy of fear, those who refused to work the parking lot opportunities for vaccinating patients, the doctor whose wife was an "insane" public health officer in charge of some of the most restrictive public policy. Fear reigned. He considers himself an expert on covid policy as he did Tuesday meetings for two years with groups of doctors, read research papers, oversaw treatment of thousands of patients while walking on eggshells due to the politics of the area. I am being deliberately vague. He is in California.
My other son's wife called this week with her latest health update. Shortly after being vaccinated, she developed the frightening and painful symptoms of Recurring Polychondritis and amazingly was diagnosed quickly. (Boston area) RP is a very rare autoimmune disease where the body attacks its own cartilage. Patients often aren't diagnosed for years since many doctors have never seen a patient w/RP and these poor people wander around wondering what is really wrong with them.
Last week she saw a new rheumatologist who was very interested in her history of being symptomatic shortly after vaccination and that a severe flare hit after the first booster. This doctor's husband is an epidemiologist and she said that a spike in autoimmune disorders seems clear since the covid vaccinations. I share this because it seems that the trail of physical destruction yet to be noted, researched and reported is FAR from over. BTW, RP can be fatal but always dramatically changes the life of the patient. It is awful. Meanwhile, as they continue doing battle with insurance companies regarding this strange diagnosis, some hospitals in MA are again requiring masks in hospitals. And now I have to silently scream at Fauci, Collins and their cohort of highly paid elites who are complicit in this unfathomable mess.
I am very sorry to hear about your DIL. That is truly terrible. So many people have so much for which to answer.
I'm a nurse who started her career at the height of the AIDS frenzy and I remember a similar campaign of fear being deployed, but nothing as extreme as what we saw with Covid. I still can't quite believe we lived through the last 4 years.
I, too, am a nurse and was a fairly new one when we received our first identified AIDS patient at Vanderbilt. The whole hospital was on edge with anxiety. And I remember the raw fear as we had to learn to insert IVs wearing gloves, believing at that time that the loss of dexterity would increase the likelihood of an accidental slip that could be fatal. I moved to psychiatry a few years later and there I came to resent the gloves for an entirely different reason: our AIDS patients were painfully isolated, and the protective equipment eliminated any possibility of offering what seemed to be the therapy that might have been most helpful: the occasional human touch. Almost twenty years after those initial US cases I was working on an AIDS project with an NGO in southern Africa, developing an HIV/AIDS "stigma" workshop. ARV drugs were now available but we could not get them distributed because we could not get people to admit they had AIDS, even though we knew the prevalences were running at 14% at least. Our workshop got gratifying positive evaluations from the participants, but what really turned the tide was Nelson Mandela's announcement that his son had died of AIDS. It united him with the suffering people and put a rapid halt to the stigma that was previously pervasive. Fear of disease and especially fear of isolation in terrifying times is endemic to the human condition. All the greater reason to choose for our leaders and policymakers trustworthy people who understand the absolute importance of helping people to stay calm and connected with one another, and to remain hopeful even in the face of unwelcome truths.
Not clued in on the Covid controversy, but I’ve always steered clear of Collins’ writing—from what I’ve heard from him, he always struck me as one of the less original/interesting thinker at BioLogos. Great writing as always!
He's incredibly overrated. Interesting piece! I think I can picture an apology Francis could have given that would have better satisfied your four conditions. It just wasn't the apology we got, unfortunately. At the root of it is the fact that he refuses to acknowledge his basic sin, which was pride. The fact that he's still daydreaming about Chinese totalitarianism makes this clear.
Excellent piece, Esther! My daughter, whose husband is a newbie military doc who has bought hook, line, and sinker into the jab, sent me a video of Christian leaders saying that it was the Christian thing to do to take what some of us now 'lovingly' call, the poison poke. Pretty sure Collins was one of them in the video hawking the jab. And, then to 'seal the deal', my daughter reminded me that a pastor, whom we both adore, had once sang Collins' praises years earlier from the pulpit about something or other he had said, I don't remember what. Anyway, my doctor son-in-law ended up saying some hateful things to me regarding my stance on COVID and the jab, including that doubters like me could cause docs to commit suicide. Needless to say, this whole thing has put a wedge between us. It breaks my heart because my 3 grandkids are caught in the middle. Things are a bit better now, as long as we don't bring up the "C" word when we're in the same room.
The Covid fiasco has divided so many families, along with the general "woke mind virus" regarding trans and the D.E.I. mindset. It does seem that a great spiritual delusion has spread throughout the earth.
I'm really glad you've made some information about vaccine injuries available. I hope it will help counter the appalling "anti-disinformation' propaganda that is still in play.
Tragically, we have likely barely begun to see the long term harm done to the health of those who trusted the Francis Collins of this world and submitted in good faith to the experimental gene therapy presented as "the covid vaccine.' Prof. Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, in this emotional but also informative speech to a conference of German politicians, presents something of the magnitude of the disaster, which he believes amount to medical crimes. https://twitter.com/_aussie17/status/1728754579091927287?s=20
This opinion piece on Francis Collins is very very interesting. I think it shows how the enemy seeks to influence the faithful (and how he succeeds). It shows how the faithful can become vulnerable to the enemy's lies. It is painful to read: I think it exemplifies the church's vulnerability to Satan but very few are making that connection because there is a general ignorance about the way the enemy works.
The bible says of Satan that "we are not unaware of his schemes" so I don't think we should continue as if those schemes have no relevance to our way of being and action. We should certainly not obsess about his schemes and we should not assume that his schemes are behind every twist and turn of human experience. Satan is not omnipresent and his power is seriously constrained (essentially because there is no combination of violence and lies that will prevail over God's love and light). Even so, I think the bible expects us to be aware, not to be afraid, but to seek to consciously engage in the spiritual conflict.
I am convinced that the delusion we see in the world marks a significant change in tempo for the cosmic conflict between God and Satan. (The covid fiasco presents just one example of delusion, albeit a very important one.) We humans should recognise the shift in tempo and act accordingly. We just have to. It is a moment to be seized; it is what we should be watching and praying for. Most Christians are not thinking along these lines and that leads them to perplexity and naive activity based on presumption and assumption.
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU. I love your writing - here and in World Mag. As someone who was disowned by an old friend for being "selfish" in not taking the shots, and as someone who knows a whole list of vaccine killed/injured in my social circle, one of the least forgivable things for me in the past few years was the weaponization of so-called religious leaders. Thank you for calling it out so clearly.
Yeesh. Thank you for noting the vaccine issues. I have thus far avoided being vaccinated (had Covid twice, one pretty severe, second time a mild cold). Despite the fact I have a 76-year-old woman friend, somewhat frail, for whom Covid would likely be dangerous and who would prefer I were vaccinated. The whole idea of these vaccines (except the J&J based on the tried and true dead virus technique) raises red flags.
That said I don't doubt the vaccines saved many people and that number (so far) vastly outweighs those harmed by it. As far as we know. So no clean and pretty answers here. Noting this In the interest of honoring the truth on a Christian-oriented Substack, where we all agree that truth matters even when not convenient to our mindsets.
I do follow Collins' logic where he notes that the idea of people dying in hospitals is much more viscerally compelling than the awareness that economic disruption will be the net cause of other suffering and death. Human nature. Since the vaccine has affected people you know personally you find it hard to forgive him.
I'm not putting the vaccine into my body (might if the J&J were still available) but if I were frail (by the grace of God I am not) I might roll the dice and do so.
To be clear, I would have written almost the exact same column here whether or not I personally knew anyone affected by the vaccine. I think people struggle to believe/understand this when I explain it, but it's really true. Even when my mother was injured, we didn't immediately leap to conclusions. Mom is a trained epistemologist. That's not how she operates. So this was a long process of info-gathering.
I will also say that vaccines have been pulled from the market before for adverse events, even when by sheer nose-counting those events didn't outweigh the number of people benefiting. Nose-counting isn't how public health normally operates with these things. So that's my point here, that a new normal was being created in real time which wound up being extremely costly.
You are correct about adverse events. I previously worked in clinical trials for a pediatric immunization. Four years of diligent research and at the end the cumulative AE's and SAE's (serious adverse events) led the FDA to deny approval even though an overwhelming majority of our subjects did fine. I was astonished by the speed with which these covid vaccines were brought to market. I think it was unprecedented. And given what we knew by the time they began to be distributed I think we could see clearly that the public health emergency had perhaps been oversold--and at much too high a price. Re: the idea of people dying in hospitals being more "viscerally compelling" than the awareness of suffering and death due to economic disruption. Well, ok, but this raises the matter of why we entitle some people to wear the mantle of "professional." Especially in health care, a seasoned professional is worthless if he has not developed the capacity to think clearly and quickly, to see and understand the broad picture (in public health this amounts to a broad grasp of the multiple factors involved in human flourishing of the whole community--INCLUDING supporting morale and hope and confidence in the professionals' integrity), and to act swiftly and reassuringly to attempt to preserve human flourishing, even and maybe especially in the face of sorrow or horror.
One more thing. I was a nurse for forty years. The specter of people dying, here there or yonder, does not unnerve me. It's how life is; all people sooner or later die and some die rather miserably. But the specter of people dying alone, their families barred from the bedside, will haunt me to the end of my days.
I am curious if there is any theory as to the causal mechanism by which the vaccine creates these kinds of reactions. I am not very familiar with immunology.
You've written the best piece on Collins ever written. It's long needed to be said about him. I've nothing but disdain for him going back to the heydays of the ID debate. He's a bad actor through and through.
Thank you for attempting to hold Collins accountable … I no longer use the titles of those whose hippocratic oath “first do no harm” was quickly set aside, as you’ve rightly laid out, in favor of doing everything within their substantial amount of power to stop any discussion or allow any treatment with re-purposed drugs — and in addition trying to actively destroy the reputations of those that disagreed with the “one size fits all” narrative. DESPICABLE!
Using scripture as a means of coercion is something I’m still having difficulty coming to terms with as it put strain on my own family relationships which has yet to be overcome. Now is time for self professed Christians like Collins to model true humility and repentance … not impressed thus far.
I gave Collins the "benefit of the doubt" for a brief period. I assumed Collins was a good but flawed guy. Now, there's just too much evidence that he's a bad guy. He's probably good to his family and doesn't kick the the dog, but he is, or became, a very bad guy in his lofty position. He should apologize, and never be in a position of power again.
Thanks for this. Need a lot more from a Christian perspective - This guy made it a moral issue, thus blaming the unvaxxed for covid deaths.
Well, to some degree they were. The anti-vaxxer crowd spread all of this propaganda and lots of people died because of it. You an anti-vaxxer?
I wasn't before Covid. I am now. Francis Collins, and the rest of the gang, can take the credit.
You a Kool-Aid drinker?
Read Drs Mccullough, Kory, Marick, Cole, the list goes on … Del Bigtree ‘s podcast “The Highwire” is particularly good — everything they say is backed up with data unlike the pronouncements of media and government agencies.
.
Collins' apology was a weak sauce apology if there ever was one. He expressed no genuine sorrow or contrition for the havoc his policies visited on multiplied hundreds of people who were not at any great risk of dying from Covid.
Wow, thanks for the update. Corrosive and unrepentant christians are the worst kind. A little humility goes a long way.
Thank you for such a well-written piece - I agree with you whole heartedly.
I don't know what else to say except bravo and thank you. I don't accept his apology either because it wasn't an actual apology. It was similar to what I try to do when I go to Confession - talk myself out of my sin. One day he will have to truly come to terms with is role in this debacle and when he does, he will really need prayers.
Bethel, this is an amazing piece on Collins and the aftermath of Covid policy. Thank you.
I have a son who is a Chief Medical Officer and oversees hundreds of doctors in a huge medical foundation. I heard his stories of doctors who retired due to the frenzy of fear, those who refused to work the parking lot opportunities for vaccinating patients, the doctor whose wife was an "insane" public health officer in charge of some of the most restrictive public policy. Fear reigned. He considers himself an expert on covid policy as he did Tuesday meetings for two years with groups of doctors, read research papers, oversaw treatment of thousands of patients while walking on eggshells due to the politics of the area. I am being deliberately vague. He is in California.
My other son's wife called this week with her latest health update. Shortly after being vaccinated, she developed the frightening and painful symptoms of Recurring Polychondritis and amazingly was diagnosed quickly. (Boston area) RP is a very rare autoimmune disease where the body attacks its own cartilage. Patients often aren't diagnosed for years since many doctors have never seen a patient w/RP and these poor people wander around wondering what is really wrong with them.
Last week she saw a new rheumatologist who was very interested in her history of being symptomatic shortly after vaccination and that a severe flare hit after the first booster. This doctor's husband is an epidemiologist and she said that a spike in autoimmune disorders seems clear since the covid vaccinations. I share this because it seems that the trail of physical destruction yet to be noted, researched and reported is FAR from over. BTW, RP can be fatal but always dramatically changes the life of the patient. It is awful. Meanwhile, as they continue doing battle with insurance companies regarding this strange diagnosis, some hospitals in MA are again requiring masks in hospitals. And now I have to silently scream at Fauci, Collins and their cohort of highly paid elites who are complicit in this unfathomable mess.
I am very sorry to hear about your DIL. That is truly terrible. So many people have so much for which to answer.
I'm a nurse who started her career at the height of the AIDS frenzy and I remember a similar campaign of fear being deployed, but nothing as extreme as what we saw with Covid. I still can't quite believe we lived through the last 4 years.
I would enjoy hearing more about those experiences from you. Thanks for commenting!
I, too, am a nurse and was a fairly new one when we received our first identified AIDS patient at Vanderbilt. The whole hospital was on edge with anxiety. And I remember the raw fear as we had to learn to insert IVs wearing gloves, believing at that time that the loss of dexterity would increase the likelihood of an accidental slip that could be fatal. I moved to psychiatry a few years later and there I came to resent the gloves for an entirely different reason: our AIDS patients were painfully isolated, and the protective equipment eliminated any possibility of offering what seemed to be the therapy that might have been most helpful: the occasional human touch. Almost twenty years after those initial US cases I was working on an AIDS project with an NGO in southern Africa, developing an HIV/AIDS "stigma" workshop. ARV drugs were now available but we could not get them distributed because we could not get people to admit they had AIDS, even though we knew the prevalences were running at 14% at least. Our workshop got gratifying positive evaluations from the participants, but what really turned the tide was Nelson Mandela's announcement that his son had died of AIDS. It united him with the suffering people and put a rapid halt to the stigma that was previously pervasive. Fear of disease and especially fear of isolation in terrifying times is endemic to the human condition. All the greater reason to choose for our leaders and policymakers trustworthy people who understand the absolute importance of helping people to stay calm and connected with one another, and to remain hopeful even in the face of unwelcome truths.
So, clearly I need to do a podcast with both of you now.
I read this right after uploading a piece about political apologies in general: https://open.substack.com/pub/wollenblog/p/some-notes-on-political-apology?r=2248ub&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Not clued in on the Covid controversy, but I’ve always steered clear of Collins’ writing—from what I’ve heard from him, he always struck me as one of the less original/interesting thinker at BioLogos. Great writing as always!
He's incredibly overrated. Interesting piece! I think I can picture an apology Francis could have given that would have better satisfied your four conditions. It just wasn't the apology we got, unfortunately. At the root of it is the fact that he refuses to acknowledge his basic sin, which was pride. The fact that he's still daydreaming about Chinese totalitarianism makes this clear.
Excellent piece, Esther! My daughter, whose husband is a newbie military doc who has bought hook, line, and sinker into the jab, sent me a video of Christian leaders saying that it was the Christian thing to do to take what some of us now 'lovingly' call, the poison poke. Pretty sure Collins was one of them in the video hawking the jab. And, then to 'seal the deal', my daughter reminded me that a pastor, whom we both adore, had once sang Collins' praises years earlier from the pulpit about something or other he had said, I don't remember what. Anyway, my doctor son-in-law ended up saying some hateful things to me regarding my stance on COVID and the jab, including that doubters like me could cause docs to commit suicide. Needless to say, this whole thing has put a wedge between us. It breaks my heart because my 3 grandkids are caught in the middle. Things are a bit better now, as long as we don't bring up the "C" word when we're in the same room.
The Covid fiasco has divided so many families, along with the general "woke mind virus" regarding trans and the D.E.I. mindset. It does seem that a great spiritual delusion has spread throughout the earth.
Absolutely!
I'm really glad you've made some information about vaccine injuries available. I hope it will help counter the appalling "anti-disinformation' propaganda that is still in play.
Tragically, we have likely barely begun to see the long term harm done to the health of those who trusted the Francis Collins of this world and submitted in good faith to the experimental gene therapy presented as "the covid vaccine.' Prof. Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, in this emotional but also informative speech to a conference of German politicians, presents something of the magnitude of the disaster, which he believes amount to medical crimes. https://twitter.com/_aussie17/status/1728754579091927287?s=20
This opinion piece on Francis Collins is very very interesting. I think it shows how the enemy seeks to influence the faithful (and how he succeeds). It shows how the faithful can become vulnerable to the enemy's lies. It is painful to read: I think it exemplifies the church's vulnerability to Satan but very few are making that connection because there is a general ignorance about the way the enemy works.
The bible says of Satan that "we are not unaware of his schemes" so I don't think we should continue as if those schemes have no relevance to our way of being and action. We should certainly not obsess about his schemes and we should not assume that his schemes are behind every twist and turn of human experience. Satan is not omnipresent and his power is seriously constrained (essentially because there is no combination of violence and lies that will prevail over God's love and light). Even so, I think the bible expects us to be aware, not to be afraid, but to seek to consciously engage in the spiritual conflict.
I am convinced that the delusion we see in the world marks a significant change in tempo for the cosmic conflict between God and Satan. (The covid fiasco presents just one example of delusion, albeit a very important one.) We humans should recognise the shift in tempo and act accordingly. We just have to. It is a moment to be seized; it is what we should be watching and praying for. Most Christians are not thinking along these lines and that leads them to perplexity and naive activity based on presumption and assumption.
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU. I love your writing - here and in World Mag. As someone who was disowned by an old friend for being "selfish" in not taking the shots, and as someone who knows a whole list of vaccine killed/injured in my social circle, one of the least forgivable things for me in the past few years was the weaponization of so-called religious leaders. Thank you for calling it out so clearly.
Yeesh. Thank you for noting the vaccine issues. I have thus far avoided being vaccinated (had Covid twice, one pretty severe, second time a mild cold). Despite the fact I have a 76-year-old woman friend, somewhat frail, for whom Covid would likely be dangerous and who would prefer I were vaccinated. The whole idea of these vaccines (except the J&J based on the tried and true dead virus technique) raises red flags.
That said I don't doubt the vaccines saved many people and that number (so far) vastly outweighs those harmed by it. As far as we know. So no clean and pretty answers here. Noting this In the interest of honoring the truth on a Christian-oriented Substack, where we all agree that truth matters even when not convenient to our mindsets.
I do follow Collins' logic where he notes that the idea of people dying in hospitals is much more viscerally compelling than the awareness that economic disruption will be the net cause of other suffering and death. Human nature. Since the vaccine has affected people you know personally you find it hard to forgive him.
I'm not putting the vaccine into my body (might if the J&J were still available) but if I were frail (by the grace of God I am not) I might roll the dice and do so.
To be clear, I would have written almost the exact same column here whether or not I personally knew anyone affected by the vaccine. I think people struggle to believe/understand this when I explain it, but it's really true. Even when my mother was injured, we didn't immediately leap to conclusions. Mom is a trained epistemologist. That's not how she operates. So this was a long process of info-gathering.
I will also say that vaccines have been pulled from the market before for adverse events, even when by sheer nose-counting those events didn't outweigh the number of people benefiting. Nose-counting isn't how public health normally operates with these things. So that's my point here, that a new normal was being created in real time which wound up being extremely costly.
You are correct about adverse events. I previously worked in clinical trials for a pediatric immunization. Four years of diligent research and at the end the cumulative AE's and SAE's (serious adverse events) led the FDA to deny approval even though an overwhelming majority of our subjects did fine. I was astonished by the speed with which these covid vaccines were brought to market. I think it was unprecedented. And given what we knew by the time they began to be distributed I think we could see clearly that the public health emergency had perhaps been oversold--and at much too high a price. Re: the idea of people dying in hospitals being more "viscerally compelling" than the awareness of suffering and death due to economic disruption. Well, ok, but this raises the matter of why we entitle some people to wear the mantle of "professional." Especially in health care, a seasoned professional is worthless if he has not developed the capacity to think clearly and quickly, to see and understand the broad picture (in public health this amounts to a broad grasp of the multiple factors involved in human flourishing of the whole community--INCLUDING supporting morale and hope and confidence in the professionals' integrity), and to act swiftly and reassuringly to attempt to preserve human flourishing, even and maybe especially in the face of sorrow or horror.
One more thing. I was a nurse for forty years. The specter of people dying, here there or yonder, does not unnerve me. It's how life is; all people sooner or later die and some die rather miserably. But the specter of people dying alone, their families barred from the bedside, will haunt me to the end of my days.
This is such an important point and one I hope will get much more attention in the years to come when we look back on this period.
I am curious if there is any theory as to the causal mechanism by which the vaccine creates these kinds of reactions. I am not very familiar with immunology.