In early March of 2020, Tomas Pueyo wrote a post that argued in favor of school closures and strict lockdowns of the entire population. He was a nobody having no specialized experience or knowledge. But his post took the world by storm and was shared tens of millions of times – and became a major part of why we were told to Stay Home – Save lives, and wear cloth facial coverings made from pillowcases and old T-shirts.

He justified his newly discovered epidemiology skills by saying he’d created viral software applications and had two MS degrees (in engineering).

History has shown his thesis was not correct.

Today, we know there was more to his backstory – as an executive at an online course company, his firm made hundreds of millions in revenue from his desire to have schools closed. In fact, it was his job to promote school closures:

Pueyo Is Back in 2023

In 2023, he returns with a new post saying the Cochrane Review on masks is irrelevant. I’ve been reading Cochrane Reviews for over 20 years – I began reading them when I was taking graduate courses in medical informatics from a med school. Cochrane Reviews are generally viewed as the “Gold Standard” for medical evidence.

Actual experts say Pueyo is still wrong. But as before, his new post saying that Cochrane Reviews and RCTs are not relevant has spread widely.

His original post was promoted by mainstream media outlets and was presented as evidence by leading politicians around the world for why they need to lock us all up in our homes, deny us access to health care services, close schools indefinitely, and put millions of people out of work while permanently closing numerous businesses. The high inflation rate we are now suffering through, and the corresponding rapidly raising interest rates, are a direct consequence of and a direct cost of those original policies – which failed to stop the spread of Covid.

Which is why many of us can no longer believe anyone, organizations or institutions.

Coldstreams