IB-Salut, the public health service of the Balearic Islands, has refused to reinstate Dr. Nadiya Popel, who worked in the Emergency Department of the Mateu Orfila Hospital in Mahón until she was expelled in September 2023. She will now serve two years. The news was announced on Menorca Diary.
Dr. Popel was removed from the profession by the Official College of Physicians of the Balearic Islands for repeated non-compliance with the code of ethics. She denied the usefulness of vaccination during the worst moments of the COVID pandemic, and last April the court upheld her suspension for having used products such as bleach, hydrogen peroxide, and industrial solvents on her patients. Interestingly, at the end of last year, Nadiya Popel participated in a denialist vindication event in Palma, where the protagonists were Miguel Bosé and Josep Pàmies, the quack who sells potions. The event was fined €300,000 by the Balearic Government, confirming that fortunately, there are people doing their job in the island administration, despite the PP and Vox governments. Nadiya Popel, of course, declares herself the victim of a witch hunt against freethinkers, and has a large group of admirers who follow her, applaud her, and support her wherever she goes.
The news about Popel rhymes remotely with another: Trumpism has struck down Susan Monarez, director of one of the main US public health agencies, for her disagreement with the anti-vaccine stance of the administration's Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It also serves to make us reconsider one of the most worrying episodes of our altered lives in recent years. The denial not only of the efficacy of vaccination but even of the very existence of the pandemic, and the denunciation of a supposed totalitarianism, dictatorship, or dogma of science, was a particularly painful side effect of that episode that, for now, no one wants to remember. I write "painful" because denialism caused deaths, especially due to infections from people who refused to be vaccinated and who facilitated the spread of the virus. Those harmed (the deceased) were vulnerable patients, such as the elderly or people suffering from other pre-existing illnesses.
Deniers aren't always uneducated people; on the contrary. They are often well-educated and educated people, like Secretary Kennedy. At one time, they boasted about refusing vaccination in the midst of a pandemic as an exercise in critical thinking and freedom of judgment. Some act the same way with their children's health. Nadiya Popel herself is a doctor, with duly accredited degrees. No one is immune from being a cynic or fanatic, not even those with higher education. Individual freedom, in any case, has its limits when it begins to harm the common good and the freedom of others. Denying science when it's most needed is not an act of freedom, but an attack on public health. Nadiya Popel's treatment is appropriate and sets a good example.
