Practitioners are the bulwark between people, weak or corrupt leaders, captured authorities, and powerful vested interests. This bulwark is being slowly dismantled through severe censure, and punishment, posing a serious threat to public health and safety. Practitioners who dutifully use their intellectual freedom and right to political communication to speak what they believe in defence of patients and the public find it costs them their entire career.

Censoring the medical frontline during this pandemic as a means to create confidence in government public health messaging and combat vaccine hesitancy is proving to be a very grave error indeed.