Dr. Jake Scott is on the front line of his second pandemic in five years and he is not getting much sleep.
Scott works full-time as an infectious disease physician at Stanford Health Care’s Tri-Valley hospital in Pleasanton, California. When he is done taking care of his patients and his two grade-school aged kids, he often stays up past midnight writing — furiously penning op-eds, collecting studies, leading evidence reviews and posting meaty threads on social media, most of them correcting the record on vaccines.
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Often, he’s reacting to the latest maneuvers by US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. A pinned post responding to one of Kennedy’s appearances on Fox News has been viewed almost 5 million times. Another post fact-checking Kennedy’s claims about potential harms from aluminum in vaccines had 1 million views in its first 48 hours. Scott’s followers on X have doubled since April.
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“A million views for this long-winded, very detailed, kind of nerdy breakdown of the science,” Scott said, marveling at the attention it got. “I think that’s saying something, you know? People want that information, and they deserve it,” said Scott who is 48.
The Covid-19 pandemic turned many infectious disease specialists and virologists into household names. Scott’s was not one of them, perhaps because he was too busy treating patients. He didn’t stay out of the public discourse completely, however. He was one of the first doctors to tell people that Omicron didn’t seem to be as severe an infection as earlier strains of the virus, although some virologists were skeptical at the time.
In President Donald Trump’s second administration, however, Scott is taking on what he sees as a second pandemic — misinformation and disinformation about vaccines. He knows false information can be as harmful as any virus.
“When officials spread inaccurate information about vaccines, it does have real consequences, and families make decisions based on fear rather than on facts,” Scott said.
It’s already happening. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported data showing kindergarten vaccination rates continue to decline, as states make it easier to opt out of school vaccination requirements. Vaccine preventable diseases like measles and whooping cough are rising again, too.
Scott knows it could get much worse.
“In 2021, nearly every single patient I lost to Covid was unvaccinated by choice, and every colleague of mine has said the same thing.”