Doctor to Speak at ASU on Aftermath of COVID-19 Pandemic

SAN ANGELO, TX — Angelo State University will host Dr. Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist and founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Academy of Public Health, for a special guest presentation on the lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Thursday, March 27, at 5:30 p.m. in the Carr Education-Fine Arts Building, 2602 Dena Drive.

Sponsored by the Texas Tech University Free Market Institute at Angelo State University, Kulldorff's presentation will take place in the EFA Building's Eldon Black Recital Hall and is free and open to the public.

In his presentation titled "Five Years Since 'Two Weeks to Flatten the Curve': Reflections on the COVID-19 Pandemic," Kulldorff will discuss how due to school closures, lockdowns, masking and vaccine mandates, evidence-based medicine and basic principles of public health were thrown out the window during the pandemic, while alternative views were censored.

Kulldorff will also present his views on how this caused both short- and long-term collateral public health damage that we must now live with, and die with, as well as how it has also generated distrust in the areas of medicine and academia, as it should, with less public support for scientific research. While he says the mess was created by a small group of scientists in medical leadership positions, Kulldorff will argue that it falls on all of us, including rank-and-file academics in every field, to restore academic freedom and the integrity of the scientific enterprise.

Also a biostatistician and a founding fellow at Hillsdale College's Academy for Science and Freedom, Kulldorff is a member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee. He is also a former member of the Vaccine Safety Subgroup of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Previously a professor of medicine at Harvard University for 13 years, he has also worked at Uppsala University in Sweden and the National Institutes for Health. He is a co-author of the "Great Barrington Declaration," advocating for a pandemic strategy of focused protection rather than lockdowns. He earned his doctorate in operations research at Cornell University.

The TTU Free Market Institute at ASU aims to advance research and teaching related to the free enterprise system and the institutional environment necessary for it to function well, and to support the missions of the ASU Norris-Vincent College of Business. The institute also develops and operates student and public programming for the benefit of ASU students and the San Angelo community.