With the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines continuing apace, so are the efforts of antivaxxers to portray the vaccines as dangerous. This time around, they’ve resurrected the old antivaccine trick of deceptively misusing the VAERS database to imply causation from VAERS reports. That’s not how VAERS works, however.
I recently criticized Dr. Hooman Noorchashm’s warning about COVID-19 vaccines to #ScreenB4Vaccine. Amazingly, the kerfuffle is still going on a week later. Here I will explain why his hypothesis is, from a basic science standpoint, not very plausible and not supported by epidemiology.
Regular readers of this blog know that many forms of quackery and science denial have conspiracy theories associated with them, but a further examination suggests that all science denial a form of conspiracy theory. In the middle of a deadly pandemic, it is a form of conspiracy theory with potentially deadly consequences.
Dr. Hooman Noorchashm has raised a concern about vaccinating people who’ve had COVID-19 before. Unfortunately, he is allowing antivaxxers to co-opt his concern to spread fear of COVID-19 vaccines. [Note: There is an addendum to this post. Please read it.]
Del Bigtree’s antivaccine group ICAN has claimed a huge “victory” over the CDC over the bogus antivax claim that vaccines cause autism. It’s really a huge nothingburger, a grifting fundraising tactic.
