Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, one character has ruffled more feathers than perhaps anyone else in the public health sphere. It's not Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who recently declared himself the symbol of scientific "integrity and truth." It's Leana Wen, the medical doctor, pundit, and COVID hawk-turned-COVID normalizer. Once the target of conservative outrage over COVID mandates, Wen is now being targeted by left-leaning public health advocates who oppose her insistence that COVID is endemic and we need to live with it.
In response to to Wen's advocacy, a petition is circulating online seeking to have her booted as a speaker from the 2022 American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting and likening her current public-health advice—she opposes mandates and emphasizes vaccines, personal risk reduction, and an attempt at cultivating normalcy—as one rooted in eugenics. "We are demanding our colleagues and fellow leaders in public health to reconsider and replace Dr. Wen with someone whose work is consistent with anti-racist, anti-eugenicist public health practices and community health," the letter reads.
