The era of COVID has seen the mass proliferation of an entire class of online doom-criers—men and women who claim to be public health experts and who spend about 17 hours a day screaming at us to triple-mask, triple-vax, triple-distance, triple-cry. It's been hard to get away from these folks. They're everywhere!
Unfortunately for some of them, so are their employment histories:
Risa Hoshino had emerged as one of the preeminent physician influencers at the height of the pandemic, created a reputation for herself online as an expert in treating children with COVID-19 and long COVID symptoms, according to Substack blogger Sarah Beth Burwick.
But according to the report, Hoshino has been misrepresenting her job and exaggerating about working long hours in the hospital and saving coronavirus-stricken children.
Hoshino has a $170,000-a-year gig as a New York City public school pediatrician, with most of her work being done remotely, according to Burwick, who describes herself as a lawyer mom from Los Angeles.
Burwick's report really is a masterclass in top-shelf journalism. It's worth reading in its entirety. A sample:
Enter the Instagram Doctor, MD: Youthful, often conventionally attractive, always prepared to answer your questions. Their social media feeds burst with the concise messaging and advice laypeople craved throughout the pandemic, presented in simple terms with colorful infographics, catchy taglines, and viral hashtags.
Dr. Hoshino is a typical case. Hoshino had been building her brand since mid 2020, focusing primarily on Instagram until March 2022, when Twitter began aggressively promoting her tweets such as the one shown below. She describes herself in her Twitter bio as a board-certified pediatrician in Public Health and "vaccine expert." Her posts depict a stylish young physician, exhausted from heroic work treating covid patients on the front lines...
But Hoshino's tweets and Instagram posts failed to jibe with either empirical data or anecdotes from many other pediatricians. Her desperate complaints about exhaustion and misery juxtaposed unconvincingly with Instagram posts featuring her out for drinks with friends or posing for glam shots in what appeared to be an impeccably decorated home office.
Yeah maybe it hasn't been the wisest move to trust an entire industry of Internet hucksters who treat a respiratory virus with near-total survival rates as the equivalent of communicable atomic bombs.
A reckoning is on the horizon for the last 2+ years of insanity. Stay tuned.
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