It’s funny how certain sorts of news about the antivaccine movement seem to come in waves. For instance, just the other day, I wrote about news stories describing how antivaxers use social media to swarm and harass anyone whom they perceive as a threat. That includes doctors, scientists, and, most despicable of all, even mothers grieving over the deaths of their children from vaccine-preventable disease. I put this into the context of what I’ve observed over the years, particularly the violent, apocalyptic rhetoric I often observed antivaxers invoke. So, even though a really interesting story on what’s become of Generation Rescue and how it is enriching its board members by selling rank quackery was published the other day, this story, basically a continuation of the stories about how antivaxers are harassing their perceived enemies, in this case doctors, starting with Chad Hermann of Kids Plus Pediatrics of Pittsburgh.
It’s a story I mentioned a bit last time, expanded upon in The Washington Post:
Just before school started in the summer of 2017, Kids Plus Pediatrics of Pittsburgh posted a video on its Facebook page urging parents to vaccinate their children against human papillomavirus, or HPV, which can cause a variety of cancers. Three weeks later, communications director Chad Hermann noticed “something new happening” online.
First, someone posted the claim that “the vaccine kills.” Within minutes, more anti-vaccine comments came pouring in. The next day, someone inside a closed Facebook group started sending private messages with “screen shots so we could see them coordinating the attacks,” Hermann recalled.
Hermann would later discover that a woman in Australia was particularly active, directing people to give the practice negative reviews on various social media platforms. “She would say, ‘Let’s move on to Yelp reviews,’ then change tactics and say, ‘Let’s go after the Facebook reviews,’ ” Hermann recalled.
Of course, on the surface, this is nothing new. Antivaxers have been using email, closed discussion forums, and even comments in blog posts to coordinate attacks on whoever opposes them. I’ve been on the receiving end more than once, the most memorable example being in 2010 when, egged on by Jake Crosby, the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism was the nexus of a campaign to try to get me fired from my job. My university’s board of governors was inundated with emails and phone calls from antivaxers accusing me of an undisclosed conflict of interest. It got to the point where the dean of my medical school called me and asked me if I felt threatened. Hell yes, I felt threatened, but not physically. Maybe I should have felt physically threatened.
Of course, back then Facebook was nowhere near as ubiquitous and powerful as it is now, and cranks had not yet figured out how powerful a tool it is to serve their purposes. Closed and secret discussion forums are the perfect tool to link antivaxers from all over the world for purposes of discussion, organizing, and coordinating, and discuss, organize, and coordinate they do. Here’s what Hermann and his crew found:
Instead of enduring the abuse, Kids Plus fought back, tracking comments and turning its Facebook page data to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh.
What they found, in a study released Thursday in the journal Vaccine, is that most commenters weren’t from Pittsburgh at all but were from across the United States and around the world. Only five were from Pennsylvania. Within eight days, the page was flooded with 10,000 negative comments from about 800 commenters. Some messages were threatening, such as “You’ll burn in hell for killing babies.” Others were conspiratorial, such as “You have been brainwashed,” the doctors said.
Having seen this part of the story, I was intrigued. So, as is my wont, I wondered over to Vaccine to get it straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, by reading the study itself. Basically, Chad Hermann and Todd Wolynn, , chief executive officer of Kids Plus Pediatrics, teamed up with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh to analyze the Facebook profiles and postings of the various people who left derogatory antivaccine comments on the Kids Plus Pediatrics video. The dataset consisted of 197 individuals who posted anti-vaccination comments in response to a the Kids Plus message promoting vaccination against HPV. Authors systematically analyzed publicly-available content using quantitative coding, descriptive analysis, social network analysis, and an in-depth qualitative assessment. Because the comments weren’t just restricted to HPV vaccines, the authors decided to examine all antivaccine comments, rather than restrit themselve to anti-Gardasil comments.
Their codebook divided looked at various variables: e.g., activism (as in complaints about SB 277, the California law that eliminated personal belief exemptions), Media, censorship, and “cover up,” vaccination as genocide, vaccines as a cause of autism, fetal “tissue” in vaccines, and several others that are familiar to regular readers here. A descriptive analysis of all sociodemographic and anti-vaccination variables was carried out using this codebook. Also:
Second, we conducted social network analysis to determine if people discussing different anti-vaccination topics led to certain sub-groups organically clustering together. While traditional social networks tend to only assess relationships between people, we used a 2-mode network (also called an “affiliation network”) to describe relationships between not only people but also non-person artefacts (e.g. anti-vaccination topics) [31]. In other words, we studied the connections between people as mediated by discussion topics. We then used modularity to identify potential clusters that could demonstrate how discussion topics were inter-connected [32]. Clusters were compared to the five topics of vaccine denial (threat of disease, trust, alternatives, effectiveness, and safety) proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO) regional office for Europe [33]. Visualizations and network descriptive metrics were generated using the Gephi software package [34].
The authors’ findings were interesting, although they were not particularly novel. For instance, the majority of individuals (89%) identified as female and/or as parents (78%). This is very similar to a study from a little over a year ago that I discussed when it came out that also found that the vast majority of antivaxers on Facebook are women. One difference between the current study and the study from 2018 is that the older study, instead of examining individuals, examined six of the largest antivaccine Facebook groups and asked two questions: 1.) What are the networked properties of anti-vaccination communities on Facebook, including their size, shape, and connectedness? and 2.) What types of anti-vaccination discourses are present within these communities?
In any event, the authors of the current study made a rather unsurprising observation as well:
The majority of individuals for whom political affiliation could be determined (28%, n = 55) identified as supporters of Donald Trump (56%, n = 31), a conservative and the 2016 Republican nominee for President. This was followed by supporters of Bernie Sanders (11%, n = 6), a contender in the 2016 Democratic primary and a self-described democratic socialist.
Given that Donald Trump has a long, sordid history of spewing antivaccine conspiracy theories dating back at least to 2007. Also, although the prevalence of antivaccine beliefs is roughly the same on the left and the right, of late the Republican Party of late has become the favored home of antivaxers, which is why this finding did not surprise me in the least. At its core, antivaccine beliefs are based on conspiracy theories; so it’s almost a “well, duh” finding that Donald Trump supporters would be overrepresented in Facebook antivaxers.
Of more interest to me was the network analysis:
A 2-mode network was constructed with 133 nodes, representing 115 people and 18 topics (Fig. 1). There were 1068 edges, or connections, between people and topics. The network had a density of 0.122 and average degree of 8.03. Modularity analysis found 4 distinct sub-groups. Based on the overarching themes represented in these sub-groups and the topics of vaccine denial provided by the WHO [33], we named these sub-groups (1) trust, (2) alternatives, (3) safety, and (4) conspiracy.
Of course, none of this is unexpected either. Anyone who’s very familiar with the antivaccine movement could have predicted at least some of these, as one could fairly easily predict this:
We also assessed betweenness [37], a measure that identifies all of the shortest paths found between any 2 nodes in the network. In this network, “vaccination policy is a violation of civil liberties” had the highest betweenness centrality (b = 0.135); it was the topic most discussed by people who discussed only one topic.
Indeed, this is likely the reason why the antivaccine movement has become so cozy with right wingers. Antivaxers routinely portray their opposition to vaccine mandates as manifestations of their belief in freedom and parental rights and opposition to government mandates.
Amusingly, to me, the authors appear to have rediscovered the principle of crank magnetism, as well:
In addition to the similarities surrounding anti-vaccination sentiment, qualitative analysis revealed other commonalities in public posts by these individuals. For example, many individuals consistently posted content related to “naturalness,” including attitudes against genetically modified food (anti-GMO), circumcision, and water fluoridation. Some of these individuals also expressed vegan activism.
Other individuals expressed views against water fluoridation and GMO in a way that focused on liberty and potential government interference. Many of these individuals posted about government conspiracy related to “chemtrails,” which is a theory that long-lasting condensation trails left by high-flying aircrafts contain chemical/biological agents. They also tended to express anti-abortion and pro-gun sentiments.
Recall that Mark Hoofnagle and I were blogging about crank magnetism over a decade ago. I do, however, have to give credit is due. It was Mark who coined the term “crank magnetism” almost 12 years ago. Basically, crank magnetism is the tendency of cranks to subscribe to more than one form of crank beliefs. It is rare for a person to believe in just one form of pseudoscience, conspiracy theory, or quackery. Usually they believe in more than one, ane frequently in many. Watching antivaxers, I’ve seen that they often believe in alternative medicine and even more frequently in anti-GMO pseudoscience. Those, however, are only the most frequent other ludicrous beliefs to which they subscribe other than antivaccine views. Often the subscribe to many more, including the ones listed above. Still, it’s useful to have a degree of empirical support that the phenomenon of crank magnetism is real. As I’ve been saying about the antivaccine movement for years, it truly isn’t just about autism. It is, however, always about the vaccines, whatever other pseudoscience and conspiracy theories antivaxers layer on top of their antivax views.
The authors also note:
Qualitative analysis found that posts related to safety concerns often distorted reputable epidemiological data, consistent with known characteristics of science denialism [40]. For example, many posts included data showing parallels between rates of vaccination and cancer mortality rates to support the claim that vaccines cause cancer. However, the scientifically-established consensus is that immunization against vaccine-preventable diseases, which led to a 29-year increase in life-expectancy, shifted leading causes of death from infectious causes to chronic diseases such as cancer [41]. Therefore, dialogue from health professionals about vaccination may need to be updated to reflect the ways in which those against vaccination use science denialism.
Actually, health professionals need to continually update their dialogue based on what the antivaccine conspiracy theories du jour are if they expect to be effective in this sphere.
One thing very much disappointed me about this study, and it relates to Tweets I saw by one of the authors, Chad Hermann, two and a half weeks ago:
Anti-vaxx harassment isn’t new, but this tactic — real-time coordination of a global attack from a virtual war room inside a closed Facebook group — is. It first appeared about 18 months ago, and has continued apace on providers, practices, hospitals, and whole health systems.
— Chad Hermann (@ChadTRM) March 3, 2019
And, in response to a criticism that this was nothing new:
A letter-writing campaign is nothing like what’s happening now. We’re talking real-time, minute-by-minute, war-room-style attacks, moving from Facebook page to Yelp reviews to Google reviews to DOS attacks, in response to whatever defense the provider or practice mounts.
— Chad Hermann (@ChadTRM) March 3, 2019
And:
Absolutely. The outlines, and elements, were all there. And sadly time-tested. But again: these attacks are occurring faster, and more nimbly, than ever before. They’re now unleashed in breadth, and speed, and volume unseen until the past year and a half.
— Chad Hermann (@ChadTRM) March 3, 2019
And finally, from Todd Wolynn:
Yep. And the international access and coordination make the attacks Global 24/7 with the ability in real-time to redirect effort(s).
Weaponized Social Media provides:
– access to 100,000’s+ allies
– amplification by foreign entities
– multi-platform avenues
… and more— Dr. Todd Wolynn (@DrToddWo) March 4, 2019
So why was I disappointed? I was hoping that there would be evidence in this paper to back up these claims that what we’re seeing is not just qualitatively, but quantitatively different from what antivaxers have been doing online at least a decade to coordinate their attacks on science advocates. Maybe it’ll be in another article. Or maybe Hermann and Wolynn don’t want to let antivaxers know what they know. Still, I haven’t been convinced that this is some sort of new technique that only emerged 18 months ago. Although I don’t do it, I’m in contact with a fair number of people who lurk in these closed antivaccine Facebook groups—and have been doing so for a long time. I don’t mean to be too hard on them, as they’re new to a fight that I’ve been involved with for nearly 20 years and intensely for 14 of those years. This is all relatively new to them. I’ve seen this phenomenon before, and, damn, does it make me feel old and cynical—but not cynical enough not to enthusiastically welcome Hermann and Wolynn and anyone else who wants to join in the effort to counter the spread of misinformation about vaccines online.
My doubts aside about their characterization of the novel methods of online harassment by antivaxers, I definitely do like what Hermann and Wolynn are working on to help anyone who is targeted by the antivaccine horde, because it is definitely needed, particularly for those who haven’t been targeted before. I, for instance, have been targeted so many times that antivaxers rarely bother any more because they’ve learned that their attacks no longer faze me and that I consider them a badge of honor:
“The idea that we can have counter-speech when [Facebook] groups become brigade mobs is ludicrous,” said Renee DiResta, an expert in online misinformation and co-founder of Vaccinate California. “It makes just participating as an everyday citizen a high-stakes ordeal.”
“We are at the point where doctors are creating their own anti-vaxx social media attack response teams to help other doctors,” DiResta added.
One such rapid response team is being organized by Dr Todd Wolynn and Chad Hermann, the CEO and communications director of Kids Plus Pediatrics (KPP) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
“If you’re being attacked, we’ll light the signal fires of Gondor, and you’ll have pro-science, pro-vaccine cavalry come to your aid,” Hermann said of the nascent project, called “Shots Heard Round the World”.
I, of course, immediately volunteered. Those of you among my readers who routinely combat antivaccine misinformation should join too. This is something that should have been done a long time ago, and I kick myself for not having done it. (I guess I’m a bit too much of a loan wolf.) Whether or not what antivaxers are doing on Facebook is qualitatively different than what they did 18 months ago is more or less a quibble. What they’re doing to silence science advocates is intimidation, and there needs to be a resource—multiple resources—to which targeted physicians and lay people can turn to call in the cavalry.
87 replies on “Chad Hermann and Todd Wolynn: On the nature of the antivaccine movement and lighting the signal fires of Gondor”
I’ve been thinking about the novelty issue. I agree that mobilization to attack is not new – I’m thinking, for example, about the mobilization on Katie Couric’s page years ago, and on politicians’ pages – but I think the existence of Stop Mandatory Vaccines – a large closed group of very extreme people – may have made a difference, and that is pretty new. We did have open large pages that could call attack, but I suspect people are more inflammatory in the closed group.
It’s good to see them work on a response. And even if the themes are not new to those of us in the trenches, this would reach a larger audience and can help others who want to join in know what’s what.
I know. I’m just a bit cantankerous, having been at this for so long and seeing newbies reporting things as new that we in the trenches have known for at least a decade. It’s actually not a bad thing to have empirical support for what we think we’ve “known” for all these years, but just recognize that this is nothing new.
Orac, I understand your ambivalence, especially in view of how long you’ve been fighting the good fight, but in terms of evidence, having a properly conducted study makes a world of difference compared to having a bunch of anecdotes. The real question is how to use the study to make a difference in how social media etc is regulated in order to minimise the damage that the trolls can do.
Keep up the good fight, for what it’s worth, you all have my deepest admiration.
Talk to the Crash Override folks.
http://www.crashoverridenetwork.com/
Everything old is new again….(to quote a BNL song I like)
You’ve quite a while you’ve written about how the NVIC sends their flying monkeys (via their advocacy page) to harass any pro-vax legislation in any state for many years now, and what they’re doing on Facebook/Yelp/etc to Kids Plus Peds is the same (with the sad part being state legislature foolishly thinking the tons of anti-vax emails are from local citizens and not these scattered AVers. I do like what Dr. Wolynn and Mr. Hermann are doing and at does mean more of us are “AWAK3” to the AVers–it’s just taken years for others to catch on. I do think AVers are in the state of “anaphylaxis” of late where they overreact to anything even the slightest bit provax now
Also I I finally see someone in Portland (and I’ve been pleading with reporters there for over 2 months to cover this) exposed Paul Thomas for the anti-vax quack disease-spreading pediatrician he truly is–with good quotes from certain SBMers too! Media and medical boards have been failing us on this, but again, maybe there’s finally some waking up to what’s happening (from the media at least).
Can’t the medical board discipline Thomas?
I read the article and understand that it’s going to be unlikely, but I’d really like to understand why the medical board over there is such a public failure.
Here is why Oregon doctors think Thomas can’t be held accountable:
So all Thomas has to do is find another anti-vaxx quack MD (he’s got at least one other MD in his practice) to say they support his BS and he’s off the hook. Completely stinks.
Wow.
“A treatment that the treating physician, based on the physician’s professional experience, has an objective basis to believe…”
That’s plainly and explicitly confusing objectivity with subjectivity.
It’s not only a problem of delusional moms. It’s also very much a problem within the medical establishment. Doctors should get their shit together.
Standard disclaimer: IANAL.
The quoted statute definitely gives woo-prone physicians an out: all they have to do is find another physician in the state who agrees with their woo, and they’re in the clear. (Assuming, of course, that their license is not under review for other reasons.)
In the case of anti-vax advocacy, however, the alternative to vaccinating (arguably a treatment) is doing nothing (which is not a treatment). That might make a difference in how the statute applies.
“In the case of anti-vax advocacy, however, the alternative to vaccinating (arguably a treatment) is doing nothing (which is not a treatment)”
That’s nitpicking. There are situations where it is advisable to do nothing.
Age of Autism also has a history of regularly sending its flying monkeys to infest the comment sections of vaccine- or autism-related news stories and blog posts. That seems to be the primary part of the job description of the “media director” there (Anne Dachel). Then there are the email blasts of the various antivax groups.
Your anaphylaxis analogy is interesting. From my perspective of at least 14 years, it does look to me as though the antivaxers are more sensitive and quicker to attack than they’ve been for a while.
I’ve noticed they are appear to be ramping up their sense of ‘victim-hood’ as well. Perhaps its all part of their appealing now more to the libertarian wing of the right, being ‘done down by the man’ when Facebook and Amazon take just a small bit of action against their propaganda, is a big theme I’ve seen recently.
I see two possibilities why they are acting like this, and both bode well for vaccination.
1) Antivaxxers sense the net is tightening, and they’re frantically lashing out.
2) The outbreaks have caused fence sitters to realise that vaccines are necessary, and now mostly hard core antivaxxers, the type most likely to attack, are left.
Either way, their position has been weakening for years.
I am on a BBS over at Boingboing (an interesting community if you are not familiar with it) which has had a number of discussion threads dedicated to vaccines recently. As you would predict, eventually we came to the attention of somebody in the antivaxx world. Might have been when a poster linked to a NVIC article, but who knows. The flying monkeys descended and the fecal material flinging commenced. It is worth noting, however, that this is a very highly moderated board and the offending posters were summarily removed and banned in the matter of a few hours. Wish this could happed in the wider world, but it was kinda nice to see them dealt with.
Xeni Jardin has about 0.001 fvcks left to give for the feelings of antivaxxers and other alt-med types.
Eventually the “Wild West” attitude of online media is going to need some quality and reliability standards imposed, at least on certain sites. And we already know that media corporations can’t be trusted to self-regulate. Government will need to step in and impose fairness and honesty standards. Internet libertarians will scream bloody murder, but there’s no alternative to establishing some trustworthiness rules for at least the largest information distributors.
Don’t I know it
The anti-vaxxers and woo-meisters I survey have been shrieking about any new limitations imposed on them by private companies like Facebook, You tube, twitter, google, apple and Wikipedia. In reality, they were using these services as free advertising or messaging. Mike Adams has had to start his own video service, Brighteon. Gary Null is currently writing invective against Wikipedia and planning lawsuits against them** because their bio misrepresents his activities.
I’m been very happy to hear their distress over the past year: it’s about time.
** and others who criticise him. Uh oh.
That’s an excellent point. Antivaxers could use YouTube and Facebook not only as free video hosting services but as a platform that could monetize their videos for them. Without YouTube and FB, the antivaxers have to pay to host their own content, and, given the amount of bandwidth video hosting chews through, that’s a very expensive proposition. Also, the amount of money to be made on advertising on a private server is Adams can do it because he has his massive online quackery empire, but a lot of antivaxers can’t afford it.
@ Bruno Schultz:
“Who knew there was a large group of libertarians.”
I’ve watched the transformation from primarily left-ish leaning natural health to either mixed messages
( “progressive libertarianism”, Null calls it) or Mikey’s far right themes ( guns, anti-abortion, anti-coasts, etc).
The change started about the time of the Financial Crisis with constant yelping about the government.
It could be possible that these con artists have discovered that conservatives buy more than liberals. It is hilarious considering that Null is boosted by liberal Pacifica in NYC, hardly a fortress of conservative thought: yet he broadcasts diatribes against the left, college students and feminists who aren’t “spiritual”. He claims that his average audience member is a 30-something female college grad but I doubt that: the call in people seem much older and to be long time listeners.
Lately, I’ve become encouraged because SO much of their material is complaining about how social media and Wikipedia are censoring them or lying about them. Null is campaigning against Wikipedia because of the bio that basically calls him a quack and which HE CAN’T CHANGE. He lost speaking engagements, book deals and sales, he says. Adams has had to create his own You Tube variant.
Unfortunately, these prevaricators also brag that their businesses are growing as they hire more people and expand warehouses and offices.
To expand upon this:
( I will ask for expert input)
Over the years I’ve watched these websites/ woo empires grow. Adams’ Natural News started out on the web ( New Target etc) but Null began as a radio altie, broadcasting his infomercials over via liberal radio group ( Pacifica) where he had personal connections and on commercial stations. Later on, he lost his radio jobs and was tossed from Pacifica because of his hiv/aids denialism ( which he denies emphatically) and had to create his own internet radio station, PRN, which mimics Pacifica ( where.he was eventually reinstated). He hosts shows and has others present their own brands of ( mostly) woo and conspiracy mongering. He links to his product list and diverse ways of making money off of listeners.
Woo-meisters and anti-vaxxers invite their followers to share on social media and view videos that advance their claims.TMR started as a facebook group amongst RL friends. All of the sites I watch have “charities”.
My question:
AoA and TMR have modest websites that I imagine are run by their members at no great cost.
Sites like NN and PRN must cost a fortune to run. Similarly, Mercola, whose presence is nearly purely net, constantly seeks out employees to run things, SO…..
what does it cost to do business this way?
How much will cuts by social media access cost these charlatans?
I can tell you this. I doubt that AoA and TMR get more traffic than I do (probably way less), and, since being forced to leave ScienceBlogs, it’s cost me around $80/month to run this blog with me doing all the work, and that includes Cloudflare. If I didn’t use Cloudflare, I could conceivably pay around $30 or $40 a month, depending on the hosting service, but with less traffic capacity. When I first started this website, I didn’t use Cloudflare, and as soon as my traffic started to approach ScienceBlog version levels the website became unacceptably slow and went down a lot on the hosting plan I had. Getting Cloudflare largely solved that problem.
My point is that I doubt that hosting costs for TMR or AoA are more than $100/month, even if they bought a gold-plated hosting plan.
Right. I figured as much or else they’d be crying for donations.
I wonder how much it costs to run NN, PRN or Mercola. I know that they hire IT people and the first two have ways for followers to donate to them – “Support my important work” and “Buy in my store”. ( Legal charities too)
Less access to YouTube and Facebook can cut into profits because all of their projects link back into their product list- either directly to the store or indirectly via their “educational” value: the video tells you that you need more GMO-free greens. Which they sell at the store.
What does Brighteon cost Mikey?
To be fair, I use a shared hosting service. If were to upgrade to a dedicated server, the cost could be two or three times higher. Fortunately, unless my traffic goes way higher, Cloudflare obviates the need for me to pay a hosting company extra for a dedicated server, although if my traffic went up that much.y Cloudflare charges would increase too. If, for instance, my traffic increased ten-fold, I’d be looking at several hundred dollars a month.
Mercola is getting well over half their website visitors from Facebook. Are the Facebook readers also buying customers or just freeloaders who take advantage of a website funded by the vitamin sales to the legacy codgers who get the daily email and don’t come in through social channels? That is the million dollar question.
Facebooks Created a walled garden where everyone chips in to create content that drives Facebook traffic and Facebook doesn’t want you to ever leave to visit outside websites.
Natural News and these other knew this was the deal going in. An online business can’t afford to ignore Facebook but it is foolish to forget that you are playing in facebokks arena, by facebooks rules and for facebooks benefit. The squawking AVers are no more than scattered data points to FB and if Facebook though they would benefit from booting the lot of them they would.
To further elaborate on my earlier Facebook post. Natural News and Mercola to don’t profit from millions of likes on their pages. It is a vanity metric, somehow provides credibility and is a point of honor. But unless they get click throughs to their website they aren’t making a cent.
Unfortunately, they may not profit directly from viral articles but it does give them a chance to amplify their message. Which matters to the egos of stakeholders.
Facebook never should have allowed health food and supplement companies to be able to pay for advertising on social media platforms. Full stop.
You don’t see cigarettes or alcohol companies manipulating public sentiment on FB because they are not allowed to pay for advertising. SigSauer isn’t allowed to boost daily 2nd amendment propaganda (with no product placement so it looks like real news) to manipulate fence sitters.
But the damage has been done. Mercola and Adams have bought huge followings and they no longer need to boost posts in order to get their commentary in front of thousands. It is heartening to see these sources mocked when they are shared But these voices of derision can’t infilitarte every echo chamber.
That said, it would be interesting to see how their Facebook following translates into actual revenue. I’m guessing that the massive natural health news websites are mostly damaging the collective health of the world but are not getting a huge ROI for the amount they spend to create a tsunami content daily.
My extremely educated guess is that their sales are driven by a hard core of wealthy and older customers. These probably aren’t the same people commenting.
And the new influx from social channels at most covers customers lost to death and the many thousands who spoke a bold game when they were in the ranks of “worried well” but were forced to embrace real medicine by the hard reality of aging.
Those who went all in died because they failed to seek actual treatment simply disappear without a ripple. Their cookie cutter comments Unmissed and unmourned within the framework of an anonymous and doctrinaire setting.
Check out the cesspool of comments on NN or Mercola. There is a small cadre of imbeciles driving the conversation. Despite their enormous Facebook reach, the comment sections on their actual websites have no more participation and often less than this one. Facebook is great for people who hate breakfast to share “I told you honeycomb shrinks your genitals” and “Your womb is defective because of aspartame” articles but less likely to drag devoted followers into the camp.
Unrelated note- living in a bright blue bastion, I was stunned to discover that there was an enormous right wing health movement! The stereotype is rich yoga moms and aging hippies drinking smoothies and complaining about social justice from the safety of their tony suburbs. Not fair but that is the perception.
Who knew there was a large group of libertarians who fear that the world is now overpopulated with a generation of sullen youth who have been rendered impotent by Diet Coke. The obsession with virility among these nutters is sad but demonstrates how easily manipulated they are.
Somewhere, there was a professional writer who came up with a handful of pressure point headlines to appeal to antivaxxers and natural health followers. These bullet points are repeated over and over again with little modification. They have changed little over the years.
There is so much redundancy of these clearly preapproved talking points that I question if even half the video and graphic deliverables for a Mercola, Infowars and NN originate in the US.
A big media outlet here in NZ, “Stuff”, has quite tight processes around commenting on its own webpages – but allows a total free-for-all on the FB versions of its articles. Consequently the local equivalent of flying monkeys (& a few imports) turn up on Every Single Post about vaccines & VPDs (we have active measles outbreaks here atm).
Sadly, it’s taken some nasty comments on posts about the mass shooting in Christchurch to start calls for Stuff to moderate its social media content a lot more heavily. And of course that has the ‘but my free speech rights’ numpties having the vapours. Sigh.
Just in the name of my usual pedantry, the Wild West was not all that wild. Take Dodge City, which was actually very safe. At one time visitors were politely asked to hand over their firearms for safekeeping by Constable Bat Masterson. In case politeness failed, Constable Wyatt Earp stood nearby with a loaded shotgun.
I think you’re making the same error that climate denialists make when they say “the climate is always changing.” Velocity matters. There’s a difference between tossing a softball and firing a bullet, even though they’re both objects in motion.
When things happen with great rapidity (e.g., as our climate is changing), human systems (and in the case of climate change, biological systems) are less and less able to cope with them. So they have a much greater impact.
The link to Shots Heard Round the World just leads to a dead homepage for me. It’s a good project to counter the organised anti-vaxx activities although I fear it will attract the “Darwin Award” types.
It’s not going to go live until next week, as I understand and, I believe, is mentioned in at least one of the stories.
“A treatment that the treating physician, based on the physician’s professional experience, has an objective basis to believe…”
F68.10: “That’s plainly and explicitly confusing objectivity with subjectivity.”
Not really. From the Arbiter of All Things, the Dictionary of Dr. Google:
ob·jec·tive
/əbˈjektiv/
adjective
adjective: objective
1.
(of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.
Recommending a treatment based on facts/evidence without having your presentation warped by personal feelings (though you may well have them) plainly reflects an objective basis.
The way it’s worded seems to suggest that it was OK that Thomas, based on his “professional experience” of having “observed” 4 cases of autism triggered by vaccination, would explicitly push to do away with vaccination.
I do believe that the formulation could be interpreted as an endorsement of confusing subjectivity with objectivity. I also believe that it could be interpreted the other way round. But it seems to me to be purposefully confusing.
This may or may not be slightly off topic, but I actually saw an anti-vaccine demonstration the other night. The context was a protest against congressman Adam Schiff, who was speaking in the Los Angeles area. The group had a flat bed truck which they used as their podium. They had various signs promoting gambits that I recognized (based on reading RI) such as the argument about aborted human fetal cells. The interesting thing was the relatively small number of people, which I would estimate at no more than two or three dozen. The protests didn’t seem to have too much effect on the people waiting in line to get in to hear Schiff. The people I chatted with seemed fairly knowledgable about how stupid the anti-vaccine position is.
What Schiff had to say was a lot more interesting.
PS: The protest was supposedly about Schiff asking Facebook to cut back on the anti-vaccine stuff, or something like that. Maybe somebody here can help me to understand what the gripe was about, because they didn’t explain it very well. Speakers used the term “vaccine injured” quite a lot, but I didn’t hear much about Wakefield.
see AoA March 12: the Action Alert explains their protests
Anti-vaxxers are displeased that Mr Schiff advised Facebook to monitor/ control vaccine dis-information posted on social media . They believe that their “vaccine injured” children ( i.e. to their minds, kids with ASDs and other conditions) are being denied a voice and that mothers are being silenced . In the era of #MeToo yet.
I would guess that the “movement” is limited to hard liners and activists who frequent sites like AoA, TMR, etc.
Orac’s post shows how a determined small group (800) can appear much larger than it actually is. Looking over anti-vax Facebook pages, I’ve yet to find any with more than 50K members ( and that probably includes all family member, dogs, cats)
As we’ve all heard, Facebook, etc., are reducing anti-vax content. As we all know, not nearly fast enough. RFK Jr is still up and fund-raising. Got helplessly caught up in responding to some of the idiocy, but I think I’ll take a break, after one woman, speaking of the MMR vaccine, heatedly said she would never subject her children to a vaccine based on “diploid” cells, because, as she quoted from somewhere, they have “twice the number of chromosomes of a mature germ cell.” :facepalm:
Holy hell. ?♂️
Yet another indication that so many of the simians slinging shit are as likely as not people happy to recite sciency words without knowing what those words mean.
It’s a real shame that so many people forget their basic schooling — although I suppose we all fall victim to this in one realm or another — but more so when someone loses any sense of enquiry and any willingness or ability to use the fantastic range of research tools at their fingertips.
“If you’re being attacked, we’ll light the signal fires of Gondor, and you’ll have pro-science, pro-vaccine cavalry come to your aid,” Hermann said.
MJD says,
Ironically, J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy was based on magic and pseudoscience (i.e., Kingsfoil – a sweet-smelling herb with healing powers, such as curing wounds, poison and counteracting evil influence such as the Black Breath.). I’d suggest the pro-science, pro-vaccine contingency continue to come to the aid with scientific reasoning and respectful insolence.
Q. How is an Orc and Orac dissimilar.
A. An Orc attacks with brawn, and Orac attacks with brain.
@ Orac,
Show some wisdom, release MJD from auto-moderation.
Putting you in auto-moderation illustrates both his wisdom and tolerance.
@ Denice Walter (minion #1).
It’s easier to shine light on the shadow of Mordor than getting out of RI auto-moderation when Orac has something to conceal. Sometimes I just want to scream Elbereth Gilthoniel !!!!
Yes, your sales pitch. Your sales pitch need to be concealed as this blog ain’t ebay or amazon. You are free to use ebay or amazon to sell your books but not here.
Here, this is not a sales platform. It is a science based platform.
Alain
Tolkien wasn’t worried about science. He was creating a grand mythology, an epic tale in the tradition of the epics he researched and wrote about as a scholar of ancient languages (philology).
Michael, you are a bore.
There was one paragraph in the Washington Post article that I noticed: “About three weeks later, Hermann started seeing the anti-vaccine comments flood in. Hermann said he banned 838 commenters in the first six days. Comments were not specific to the HPV vaccine. Commenters in the random sample were spread across 36 states and eight countries, including California, Texas, Oregon and Australia, where anti-vaccination sentiment is strong. Many of the attacks came from a small number of commenters, including some who were posting more than 100 times, Hermann said.”
Who has the time or inclination to flood a comment stream that much? I worry about people like that.
It might be possible to automate that kind of thing, and honestly if you’re just copy-past-ing I can hit ctrl-v and enter 50 times in a minute, so it’s not hard.
Weird, yes, hard, no. As long as you’re not actually engaging in conversation or writing new material.
Yeah, I see a lot of copy paste comments on WaPo’s forums when I see an AV article.
Chris: Who has the time or inclination to flood a comment stream that much?
Russians?
Not the one that I was interacting with yesterday and today. Then there is the Sadistic Child Hater that has been infesting this blog with his loony ideas that kids should get tetanus immunity naturally.
Maybe their all-natural immunity can fight off rabies, too. Or maybe when their child is bitten by a rabid raccoon, they will go on vacation from their antivax views.
I would be willing to bet that some followers of AoA, TMR or Jake spend lots of their free time doing this. A few names come to mind. Woo followers ( like Mikey’s or Null’s most fervent) might also – they hate vaccines. A few\ anti-vaxxers are even raising their kids to write school essays in this vein ( see AoA recently).
No. No. No. Just No. the many I know don’t care about flooding even if they get paid 150$ per hour to do it.
Alain
Forgot a crucial detail: the Russian I know will stretch their intellectual muscle to bring home better results as compared to what can be achieved by flooding.
Al
Clever misdirection. Anything but civil, public debate about the science, or the principle of fully informed consent, or the ethics of coercing or forcing vaccination by government, or even deceptive advertising or conflicts of interest.
Those poor noble vaccine manufacturers and their stakeholders in government and media, concerned only with the elevation of humanity. Sure, they’ve tripled the vaccine schedule in the last 30 years, have passed a law shielding themselves from liability, and have passed laws both requiring and eliminating exemptions–but how hollow are those victories when independent minds still have the audacity to challenge them? The solution is obvious: more vaccines.
Thanks for the laughs, in the midst of one of the darkest agendas in the history of humanity.
Do you support the type of behavior described in the article?
I’m not sure which behaviors you are referring to… Re the ‘attack response teams’ the medical industry is using to defend the vaccine paradigm, and the anti-vaccine equivalent, transparency matters, starting with the participants.
Are the team members volunteers acting solely on conscience, paid advocates or with another conflict of interest, or even marketing bots? Is each member using a single profile, or masquerading as many? Are particularly influential members actually teams using a common profile? Unfortunately, there is no way to know when perceptions are being manipulated through opportunistic use of online anonymity, although there are clues. It’s much more standard fare in the vaccine industry, which has the huge budgets and connections to cover large-scale coordinated operations like that.
Instead of perfecting its online marketing, if the vaccine industry would simply invite open public debate in a controlled setting at every opportunity, recorded and televised for the public, this issue could probably be settled in the next 10 years. But that would be the death knell for the vaccine industry. Instead, it must insist until it’s blue in the face that “the science is settled’ when it clearly is not, and use sleazy marketing tactics and coercion to survive.
“if the vaccine industry would simply invite open public debate in a controlled setting at every opportunity, recorded and televised for the public, this issue could probably be settled in the next 10 years.”
It would be settled according to what is true? Or according to what is most mediatically convincing? Because these may not be the same thing. Does the potential discrepancy worry you or not?
Debates of this sort don’t settle anything except who has the loudest voices and most persuasive speakers. There are scientific studies out there that provide overwhelming evidence of the safety and effectiveness of vaccines. If you don’t have the time to learn everything you need to understand these studies fully, and don’t trust the vast majority of experts who have spent their lives studying the issue and have reached consensus that vaccines are safe and effective, since you believe (without any real evidence to support this belief) that they are all tainted by the hand of Big Pharma, well, then I guess there is no convincing you of anything. I’d probably have better odds trying to convince the Pope to stop believing in God.
(The Pope likely knows that God is a fraud…)
Orac has covered the kinds of public debate you cranks seem to love in an old article. https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2013/04/26/all-truth-comes-from-public-debate-a-corollary-to-crank-magnetism/
NWO
“what do you call an industry…”
Well at the moment I’d call it any one of the “experemental health” movements like those clinics in Mexico and elsewhere who sell false hope and just as false cures to the desperate parents of sick children, or so called health experts who sell “alternate” cures for real illnesses, which they must know don’t work. Finally I call them the “advocates” who want to weaken the regulatory and oversight powers of the governments’, which you and I elected, therebye allowing shonky and dangerous beliefs to multiply like rabbits on viagra.
For a moment I thought you misspelled ‘experimental’ as ‘excremental’, which would have been particularly apt given how full of bullshit they actually are.
“I’m not sure which behaviors you are referring to”
I take back my previous comment. You are being stupid. The only reply to that one is to ask you whether you’re a lying hypocrite or an ignoramus. I vote for the former. There is a limit to how far acting disingenuous can take you, and from where I stand you’ve blown past that limit at escape velocity.
Independent minds should be able to reach conclusions based upon evidence, not ideology or conspiracist thinking. Present your evidence.
“Anything but civil, public debate about the science, or the principle of fully informed consent, or the ethics of coercing or forcing vaccination by government, or even deceptive advertising or conflicts of interest.”
OK. Which specific point do you want to address?
Suggestion for you: make your case about the lack of ethics of “coercing” vaccination. Interested in the best argument you can make.
“Darkest agendas in human history” ? To paraphrase a friend – this is why I can’t take you anywhere. Take a good look at what you wrote, the overwrought conspiracy laden beliefs, the doomsaying, the misplaced, tone deaf response. Do you ever wonder why you aren’t taken seriously?
I don’t doubt you actually believe that. But theoretically speaking, what would you call an industry that deceptively promotes the safety and efficacy of its products, and even enlists the help of government to coerce their consumption, resulting in unnecessary injury and death to many, including children?
If that were true, I’d call them something far worse than assholes.
How do you know it’s true? I believe you believe it’s true. But how do you know?
what would you call an industry that deceptively promotes the safety and efficacy of its products, and even enlists the help of government to coerce their consumption, resulting in unnecessary injury and death to many, including children?
Assumes facts not in evidence.
In fact, multiple studies not produced by the pharmaceutical industry have proven vaccines safe and effective.
The government does not coerce “consumption” but does encourage it with laws such as those keeping unvaccinated children out of school.
Billions of doses administered. A few hundred verified cases of serious side effects.
Your claims don’t meet the laugh test.
Total worldwide net profit for vaccines is approximately 2% of profits of pharmaceutical industry. Without vaccines approximately 90,000 kids per year would be hospitalized for measles alone. The meds sold for these hospitalizations and the several million kids at home for measles would far exceed profits on the MMR vaccine. In fact, they would make far more money if all the vaccine-preventable diseases were allowed to happen. So, why would FDA, CDC, researchers around the world form one gigantic conspiracy to help Big Pharma make 2% of profits? If you are against pharmaceutical companies making a profit, then I suggest the next time you or a loved one gets a serious infection that you forgo any antibiotics, if any of your loved ones develop diabetes, forgo insulin, if any of your loved loved develop cancer, forgo any chemotherapy, etc.
And they are NOT shielded from liability. Imagine, if you are capable, that the government has its engineers create a plan to build a bridge, complete with details on materials, etc. Then the government puts it out for bids. A company wins the bid, builds the bridge and it collapses. If it is found they used substandard materials, or didn’t follow the government blueprint, they get sued; but if they did, to the letter, should they be at fault? Though not a perfect analogy, if a pharmaceutical company produces a vaccine that meets FDA standards then they shouldn’t be liable. However, there is a tax on every single dose of vaccine sold and this goes to the Vaccine Court. Anyone who believes their child has been injured by a vaccine can hire a lawyer, get witnesses, and go to the Court. The Court pays for their attorney and witnesses. And the Court has the mandate to, if not sure, rule in favor of the plaintiff, done so that people will have confidence in vaccines. The awards are substantial and much faster than if one went through a regular trial. Sue a pharmaceutical company and they will fight, it will take years, you have a greater chance of losing and if you win, you have gone a lot longer without any payment and if you do get a big payout, your lawyers often get as much as 50%, where with the Vaccine Court, your lawyers are paid by the Court and you get the entire amount. You can still sue after failing in Vaccine Court; but the odds are great you will lose. However, if you have evidence the Pharmaceutical company did not manufacture the vaccine according to agreed upon standards with FDA, then you can sue them directly.
But do believe your paranoid conspiracy theories. CDC, FDA, NIH, UK, Swedish, Australian, Canadian, etc, almost all governments of world don’t care about their children, only want Big Pharma to make their 2% of profits. Researchers at medical schools, universities, etc. also want the same. And they are so part of this conspiracy that they even sacrifice their own children by vaccinating them, all so Big Pharma can make 2%.
And if you don’t believe that safety studies have been conducted, I suggested you go to National Library of Medicine’s online database, PubMed, and simply type: Vaccine Safety. Result will be huge. Some will be editorials, some reviews; but a heck of a lot of original safety studies.
Yep, I and people like me spend our lives encouraging friends and family to get vaccines, knowing we are dooming them. You and your fellow antivaccinationists are morons on steroids.
You can sure blow pretty hard when you want to, can’t you? Tossing and spinning the usual talking point salad into an authoritative-sounding screed of trite generalizations and questionable claims, with the inevitable deterioration into condescension and insults for the finale.
With all due respect, doc, it’s clear your understanding of vaccine opposition was run through a pro-vaccine filter before it ever got to you. Always go directly to the source. That is, if you want accurate information and true understanding of the evidence and arguments.
“Always go directly to the source. ”
And that is?
Please specify on which points Joel is wrong. Provide evidence to support your claims.
You can’t, which is why you sputter ad hominems.
Government decides vaccine schedule, and pharmaceutical companies deliver. Government want to prevent diseases, and perhaps even save money. Government does not manufacture much anything in US. And informing people about science is done for, and sometimes it costs money, if you run your own website, for instance.
“one of the darkest agendas in the history of humanity”! Oh, come on, are you always this melodramatic? What “dark agendas” are you measuring this against? The vast criminal gang of the Axis powers, bent on world domination and mass murder? The forced starvation of millions of Ukrainians by Stalin? The Communist agenda of world domination with its concomitant dictatorship and immense and brutal labor camp system? Da’esh? Anarchist bombings in aid of changing the world to one without leaders? The Inquisition? The Crusades?
Get a grip, man. Get a little knowledge of history and grow a sense of proportion. Maybe then people will give you a hearing instead of laughing at you.
Funny that all the examples you gave are all illustrations of misguided moral values. Makes me wonder whether or not such evil enterprises are byproducts of the human aspirations to morality or byproducts of misguided beliefs about morality? Both are required, perhaps.
Replace “morality” by “health”, and the same paragraph could or does apply to quacks.
Seems like an age-old problem.
NWOR,
Have you ever read a financial statement. Here’s one on GSK’s vaccine division:
https://www.gsk.com/en-gb/investors/corporate-reporting/annual-report-2018/#tab-1-3
Want to know how much they make from vaccines? You have the result right here in this comment and they also publishes their previous year. All this stuff is public and yet, I never ever saw any antivaxxer refer to them. Even JB Handley never referred to a financial statement about vaccine and yet, he has an MBA and run an investment company…
I’ll let the commenters here derives their conclusions.
Al
“how hollow are those victories when independent minds still have the audacity to challenge them?”
There will always be foolish people doing idiotic things, egged on by sleazes who see an opportunity to profit from stupidity. It takes constant effort to minimize the harm done by such people. How “hollow” are victories over criminals, when crime never stops?
The solution is obvious: Education, regulatory efforts (including those focused on doctors who try to game exemptions), pointing and laughing at hardcore antivax dodos.
As long as they have their filter silos to flee back to and stoke the fires of their zealotry, even that won’t work. The internet has taken the model of a church retreat and turned it into a true weapon. That is, if it wasn’t already by the time of the crusades.
Unfortunately, they use phenomena studied in cognitive/ social psychology to advance their un-science. That may be the only science based reliance they depend upon:
— they create internet havens where discussions and “research” ** are repeated ad infinitum thus solidifying their “teaching”- it is programmed “learning”: little encapsulated shitpods of mal-science.
–they assiduously avoid research conducted by SB sources and governmental agencies
— they use their “knowledge” to gain stature within their relatively isolated community
— emotional tales (of “injury” and “malfeasance’) cement memory and learning
— like religious revivalists, they report their conversions from vaccine supporters to their current state: there was a turnabout situation, a “come to Jesus” moment – usually when the “light goes out” of their child’s eyes or they saw regression occur “soon after” vaccines. These flash bulb events are repeated and compared to others’ experiences-perhaps eventually transforming to conform with the stereotype they heard or read about.
IN other words, these are great ways to learn material well- too bad that the material itself is worthless.
** sorry for the surplus of scare quotes but it’s the easiest way to express it
I have also volunteer for Shots Heard and am waiting for information which I will forward to at least a few other people.
And the AV seem a bit twitchier of late.
I few times a year I will make a comment over at RFK jr’s shit hole CHD and mostly get ignored. The other day I made a post and it was like hitting a hornets nest.
Yikes. Kudos to you for going into that snake pit!
That’s terrific, Daniel.
Could you please link or cite the blog/ whatever so we can read and enjoy your work? If they didn’t erase it yet.
@ NWO
Besides an absurd meaningless first paragraph (I guess you must be impressed with your own dribble), you wrote: “Always go directly to the source. That is, if you want accurate information and true understanding of the evidence and arguments.”
Well, below are the sources I go to. And I have a PhD, and four Masters degrees where I learned research methodology, epidemiology, public health, biostatistics, social psychology, and philosophy of science (3 graduate courses, basically, how one draws causal conclusions). Please tell us what sources you go to and what “skills” you have for evaluating their validity. Oh, I forget, antivaccinationists, as opposed to those trained in science who look at actual data and probabilities, NEVER claiming absolute certainty, just that the data strongly support . . . antivaccinationists like you believe you have G-d-like absolute knowledge. Must be nice. However, until you show up in my hometown and walk across a lake, I’ll go with science. So, as opposed to you, I actually do go to the “source” and, yet, will NEVER claim that I am absolutely right, just that based on current science, my conclusion about vaccines is with a high degree of probability correct. I also have loved and continue to love reading about the history of various infectious diseases. Just smallpox I own a dozen books and have over 1,000 articles/documents on my computer.
And, just in case, like other antivaccinationists, you go with more ad hominem attacks: I have NEVER worked for the FDA, NIH, CDC, or any pharmaceutical company. I am long retired and my income is mainly Social Security and some minor savings. Though ad hominem attacks against anyone supporting vaccines is absurd. I don’t know about you; but many in my generation chose to study and eventually work in professions, not based on money (stockbroker, etc); but what they were interested in and wanting to make a difference. Though I didn’t do it, many friends/acquaintances were in the Peace Corps or Job Corps. Working for NIH, FDA, CDC, pays far less than working in industry. And if it bothers you that some people have developed vaccines and made money from it, are you also against people like Judah Folkman who, despite most oncologists rejecting his idea, finally proved that angiogenesis is a major factor in cancer and developed angiogenesis inhibitor drugs that are now part of our arsenal in the war on cancer. He owned over 60 patents and became quite rich. He believed in what he was doing and so do those developing vaccines. In fact, the rotavirus vaccine not only save the lives of 100s of thousands of kids world wide; but has been found to prevent many cases of Type 1 diabetes. Look up molecular mimicry as explanation. And the measles vaccine, since measles causes suppression of immune system for several months with risk of serious infections, also save around 450 lives per year and 45,000 hospitalizations, plus a couple of million kids suffering for a week, back in 1950s when our population was half what it is today.
U.S. National Library of Medicine database, PuBMed.gov
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=vaccine+safety
Just to make sure, by simply typing in “Vaccine Safety” I got 18,813 articles. As I mentioned before, some are editorials, some reviews; but many are studies on specific vaccines or ingredients and adverse reactions.
Best matches for vaccine safety:
Safety of vaccines used for routine immunization of U.S. children: a systematic review.
Maglione MA et al. Pediatrics. (2014)
DNA Vaccines: Regulatory Considerations and Safety Aspects.
Myhr AI et al. Curr Issues Mol Biol. (2017)
Nonclinical Safety Testing of RNA Vaccines.
Hager G et al. Methods Mol Biol. (2017)
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Centers for Disease Control – Vaccine Safety Homepage
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/index.html
Centers for Disease Control – Vaccine Safety Publications
scroll down and you will find by year all the studies conducted by the CDC
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/research/publications/index.html
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Vaccine Education Center Home page
https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-safety-references
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Vaccine Education Center Vaccine Safety References
https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-safety-references
I’m not sure NWO is reading your posts at all. Maybe there is some app that replaces what you type with pages from Winnie the Poo. The responses would make more sense if that were the case. Getting a straight answer out of them is like wrestling a greasy snake.
Do you think his level of understanding would allow his to understand Winnie the Poo? And, not sure I want someone like him reading Winnie the Poo. Though it’s going back almost 70 years, I really liked Winnie the Poo. ?
It’s actually Winnie the Pooh – Poo is.. something else entirely 😀
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