Censoring for me, but not for thee

Jay Battacharya and Martin Kulldorff, two of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, have been whining for months about how unfairly they have been treated, how they have been criticized and even censored for their views on COVID policy.  Yet now, at the Brownstone Institute, that illustrious citadel of liberal freedom, we find them saying this (my bold):

In public health, it isn’t enough to be trusted by only half the population. Since widespread trust is essential, the only solution is for public health to eschew coercion and embrace its traditional principles. Public health should never again manipulate or deny authentic scientific results to manipulate the public’s behavior. It should dismiss practitioners who use public health as a weapon in a cultural or political war. It should reject slander, censoring, and ad hominem attacks.

Their sense of grievance is so boundless that I suspect they have no clue how clueless they are.  And then there’s this:

Trust in vaccines can only be regained through honest, open dialogue, science-based policies, public education, long-term thinking, a strengthened vaccine safety monitoring system, and voluntary vaccinations. That is, it should return to the traditional principles of public health.

Who knew that requiring vaccines was not a traditional principle of public health?  I always learn something useful at the Brownstone Institute.

The rest of their post is an exercise in “encouraging vaccine hesitancy by “explaining” it”.  They engage in idle speculation about the causes of vaccine hesitancy which just so happens to show that people are skeptical of vaccines because of “vaccine fanatics” in the public health establishment.  And of course Krispy Kreme:

Encouraged by public health officials, Krispy Kreme offered free donuts to the vaccinated. Some people may have wondered: “If they understood public health, they wouldn’t try to fatten people with donuts. Maybe vaccines are also bad for my health?”

Words fail me . . .