I do want to talk a bit about connections, conflicts and information during a pandemic. Since @fordnation insinuated I have COI which I don't, let's take a look at a single instance where @fordnation and Hospital for Sick Children are both making interesting decisions.

Both share a powerful supporter in Peter Gilgan, who has been a great supporter of Sickkids

https://t.co/oL3pGiBny2
But his company, Mattamy Homes, has also substantially bankrolled Ontario Proud, which I have reason to believe pushed the Postmedia hit on my reputation.
Sickkids and Mattamy have very close ties. Here is Mary Federau, a longtime Sickkids exec who has moved to Mattamy but remains involved with the Sickkids foundation:
Mary's bio is too modest. It looks as though it has been scrubbed a bit over the last 72 hours. Here's the google cache from Jan 25:

https://t.co/DUk89IfHPU
Here's her more fulsome bio from a few days ago:
Mary Federau is the Executive Vice President of Mattamy Asset Management, the parent company of Mattamy Homes. Mary plays an integral role in setting direction and execution of the organization's overall strategies for long-term...
...growth, investment and operations across North America. She was appointed to this position in September 2018, after having served eight years as Chief Human Resources Officer for Mattamy Homes.
Mary is also Chair of the Peter Gilgan Foundation, which has contributed more than $300 million to a variety of worthy causes. [I guess 1/3 of that to her former employer]. Previous to joining Mattamy in 2010, Mary was the EVP Global Human Resources of MDS Inc...
an international life sciences company headquartered in Toronto. Prior to MDS, she held several executive roles at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, including SVP of Child Health Services (Operations), SVP of Corporate and Professional Services...
and Director of Strategic and Financial Planning. Mary holds an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business and was named one of Canada's Top 40-Under-40 in 1997. Mary has obtained the Chartered Director designation and currently serves on the board of the SickKids Foundation
and Good Shepherd Ministries in Toronto and is a member of the International Women's Forum.

She sounds like an impressive and good person. I am absolutely NOT suggesting any misdeeds on her part.
But given the oddness of Sickkids school guidance, the degree to which their reports seem very coordinated in both timing and message with government messaging, while simultaneously being at odds with some of the good guidance now being put out south of the border...
...I have wondered whether politics and the flow of donor money have politicized their messages.

Even more so having learned that Sickkids is pushing public messaging that lockdowns are harming child mental health, while sitting on data showing kids' mental health, according...
...to a number of different measures. They have the details...they can share them. That's a good news story. Why would you sit on that?

Again, I'm not accusing anyone of wrongdoing here. But if we're going to talk about transparency and who funds who, let's all do it, k?
Parenthetically, we can do this all day. At some point, thanks to friends who have helped me so much, I might. But I think this is a job for journalists, not epidemiologists.

Some very important conflict situations that exist are well known to journalists, and I realize...
...most outlets don't want to be perceived as doing smear jobs (leave that to Postmedia). But some of these relationships, whether monetary or romantic, probably are damaging our public discourse in a pandemic, and that literally kills people.
But as I say, that's your job, not mine.

More from Health

🚨Important changes to lockdown/self-isolation regulations from 5pm

The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers and Self-Isolation) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

£800 'house party' FPN & police can now access track & trace data

https://t.co/k9XCpVsXhC


“Large gathering offence”

As trailed by Home Secretary last week there is now a fixed penalty notice of £800 (or £400 if you pay within 14 days) for participating in an gathering of over 15 people in a private residence


Fixed Penalty Notices double for each subsequent “large gathering offence” up to £6,400

Compare:
- Ordinary fixed penalty notice is £200 or £100 if paid in 14 days
- Holding or being involved in the holding of a gathering of over 30 people is £10,000


Second big change:

Since September has been a legal requirement to sell-isolate if you test positive/notified by Track & Trace of exposure to someone else who tested positive

Police can now be given access to NHS Track & Trace data if for the purpose of enforcement/prosecution


This will make it easier for police to enforce people breaking self-isolation rules. Currently there has been practically no enforcement.

Data says only a small proportion of people meant to be self-isolating are fully doing so.
Some thoughts on this: Firstly, it might be personal preference, but I am not keen on this kind of campaign as I feel like it trivialises cancer. Sometimes the serious message gets lost because people are sharing pics of cats or whatever and the important context is gone.


More importantly, the statistic being used in the campaign is misleading. It says 57% of women put off cervical screening if they can't get waxed. But on further investigation, that's not accurate.

The page here goes on to say "57% of women who regularly have their pubic hair professionally removed would put off attending their cervical screening appointment if they hadn’t been able to visit a beauty salon."

So the 57% represents a concern not across the whole population of women, but only those who regularly get waxed. So how big of an issue is this across the whole population? And what else is stopping people getting smears?

I think campaigns for cancer screening are really tricky because there is so much nuance that often doesn't fit into a catchy headline or hashtag. It's certainly not easy and is part of a bigger conversation.

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"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."


We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.

Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)

It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.

Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".