Dr. Daniel “Dan” Stock is a physician who has gone viral after speaking about COVID-19 during a Mt. Vernon school board meeting in Indiana on August 6, 2021. His viewpoints on the pandemic have divided people on social media, causing debate and discussion.
Here’s what you need to know:
1. He Disagreed with COVID-19 Measures During a School Board Meeting
During a Mt. Vernon school board meeting, Stock spoke about why he disagreed with measures to combat COVID-19, including mask mandates and vaccinations, WTHR reported. A six-minute clip of his speech is circulating on YouTube.
He identified himself as a functional family medicine physician who is “specially trained in immunology and inflammation regulation” and is from north McCordsville, Indiana. (See the third section below in this article for an epidemiologist’s response to Stock’s claims in his speech.)
Stock claimed that everything being recommended by the CDC and the state board of health were “contrary to all the rules of science.” He said the virus is “spread by aerosol particles which are small enough to go through every mask,” which he said was supported by three studies sponsored by the NIH.
“Because they (respiratory viruses) cannot be filtered out and they have animal reservoirs…no one can make this virus go away,” he said. Stock added in his speech that he believed this was different from smallpox, which does not have animal reservoirs.
He also questioned the vaccines, saying: “Why is a vaccine that is supposedly so effective having a breakout in the middle of the summer when respiratory viral syndromes don’t do that? … The condition … is called antibody-mediated viral enhancement. That is a condition done when vaccines work wrong as they did in every coronavirus study done in animals, on coronaviruses after the SARS outbreak and done in the respiratory syncytial virus.”
He claimed the respiratory virus vaccine “causes the immune system to actually fight the virus wrong and let the virus become worse than it would with native infection…”
He later added: “No vaccine prevents you from getting infection. You get infected, you shed pathogen. This is especially true of viral respiratory pathogens. You just don’t get symptomatic from it. So you cannot stop the spread…”
At the end of his speech, he said that he treated 15 COVID-19 patients and “between active loading with Vitamin D, Ivermectin, and zinc, that there is not a single person who has come anywhere near the hospital…”
Stock said he would testify as an expert witness if school board members sued, WTHR reported.
2. The Indiana State Department of Health Responded to Stock’s Statements
The Indiana State Department of Health responded to Stock’s statements, WTHR reported. A spokesperson said:
Throughout the pandemic, we have relied on data and science to make recommendations. The COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective at preventing hospitalizations and deaths, as evidenced by the fact that more than 98% of Hoosiers who have been hospitalized with COVID-19 since mid-January are unvaccinated. Even with the current surge in cases driven by the Delta variant, more than 97% of Hoosiers who have been hospitalized with COVID-19 since June 1 have not been vaccinated.
We have the ability to turn the tide of this pandemic, but only if we use all of the tools at our disposal. The CDC continues to recommend layered mitigation measures, including vaccination, masks and handwashing, and we will continue to urge Hoosiers to employ every strategy available to protect themselves and the people they love.
Shannon Walls, Mt. Vernon Community Schools board member, told WTHR in response to Stock’s speech: “What I would encourage everyone who has heard his testimony at the meeting is to do their own research, their own homework… I am very pleased with their guidance [ISDH and local health officials]. We coordinated our plan in conjunction with all legal responsibilities and recommendations from them and they have been a great partner.”
The IDH also made a post on Facebook about the controversy:
3. An Epidemiologist Disagreed with Stock’s Assertions
Edward Nirenberg, who describes himself as an “aspiring physician” who runs Deplatform Disease, wrote a response to Stock’s claims. Katelyn Jetelina, as assistant professor of epidemiology known online as “Your Local Epidemiologist,” cited Nirenberg’s post when writing her own article disagreeing with Stock’s assertions.
Jetelina quoted Nirenberg in her article, who said that masks do work because viruses don’t travel as individual particles but inside aerosols and droplets.
Nirenberg wrote: “The IDSA has graciously compiled the multitudinous, surfeit evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of masking here which anyone is free to peruse at their leisure.”
They noted that the idea that respiratory viruses don’t go away due to animal reservoirs isn’t the whole truth.
“SARS-CoV-2 is not a viable candidate for eradication because it has animal reservoirs that can keep introducing it into the population,” Nirenberg wrote. “This does not mean that vaccination cannot alleviate the public health burden of COVID-19. It does it every year for flu.”
Nirenberg also disagreed with Stock’s “antibody-mediated viral enhancement” claim, writing that it was “irredeemable and unequivocally disinformation.” (A statement which Jetelina quoted in her own article.) He wrote: “We also have data on hundreds of thousands of people at this point who got convalescent plasma and it didn’t make them worse. On top of that animal studies of the vaccines demonstrated protectiveness. If the vaccines actually caused ADE it would represent a negative vaccine efficacy/effectiveness. Stop trying to make ADE happen. It’s not happening.”
Nirenberg added that despite Stock saying that vaccines don’t stop infections, HPV vaccines do prevent transmission, as do some groups of pneumococcal and meningococcal vaccines. And, he added: “no vaccine needs to stop infection for it to have massive public health benefits or stop transmission.”
4. Stock Is a Licensed Primary Care Physician
Stock is a licensed primary care physician, WTHR reported. According to his LinkedIn bio, he’s a physician at PureHealth Functional Family Medicine in Noblesville and is also the Center Medical Director for Grifols Plasma. Prior to this, he was a physician at Activate Healthcare in Anderson and a lecture bureau speaker for 24 years at Liposcience.
His bio on LinkedIn reads:
Experienced Family Physician with functional/integrative medicine training and interest. 30+ years of family medicine practice, no longer affiliated with 3rd party payment systems, so that I can provide the highest degree of advice driven by in-depth biochemical and anatomic analysis, not protocols. My interest is in the biochemical difference between the patient when healthy and when sick, and the fastest/least expensive path from illness to health as the patient defines it.
I am also the Center Medical Director for plasma products collection clinics.
Stock wrote on LinkedIn after his video went viral that he would be posting the studies from his speech to his website, PureHealthMed.com, soon. “In the meantime you can get an un-annotated list at the website of the Hancock County IN Patriots,” he wrote.
In his video, Stock said that he graduated from the Indiana University School of Medicine and received his undergraduate degree from Notre Dame. His LinkedIn bio indicated that he graduated from Indiana University School of Medicine in 1988.
According to WebMD, he did his residency at St. Vincent Hospital Health Center.
5. Most of His Online Reviews Are Positive
Online reviews for Stock on Vitals.com are mixed, but the majority are positive. As of the time of this article’s publication, there were 15 positive ratings to three negative ones, with a negative reviewer from 2019 writing: “beware he has had a prior malpractice case against him…”
Justia.com has a PDF of the lawsuit online, which dates back to 2006. The court document shows Stock and Community Hospitals of Indiana appealing a judgment entered in a medical malpractice action. The plaintiff had suffered numbness and tingling in her arm, and said that she ultimately suffered “permanent incomplete quadriparesis” from a ruptured disc because a referral to a specialist was not given when she visited Stock for treatment. According to court records, Stock argued that the verdict shouldn’t stand, but a judge ultimately affirmed the trial court’s ruling.
Despite this written review citing the malpractice case from 2006, the majority of Stock’s online ratings are positive, with most ranging from “excellent” to “great.”
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