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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Quackery

AB 2098 is not “censorship”

One of the oldest tropes favored by quacks of all stripes, including antivaxxers, is to portray any attempt at regulating their quackery as an assault on freedom of speech. It’s therefore not surprising that after its passage by the California legislature prominent spreaders of COVID-19 misinformation are labeling AB 2098, which seeks clarify and codify the power of the Medical Board of California to discipline physicians for spreading COVID-19 misinformation, as creating “thoughtcrimes.”

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Clinical trials Medicine

Peter Doshi vs. COVID-19 vaccines, the latest round

BMJ Senior Editor Peter Doshi published a preprint misleadingly “reanalyzing” phase 3 clinical trials to falsely conclude that mRNA vaccines to cause more harm than good. I sense…p-hacking. That, and comparing apples to oranges.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Popular culture Pseudoscience

The Guardian: “Explaining” vaccine hesitancy by amplifying antivax disinformation

Writing in The Guardian, Musa al-Gharbi tries to explain vaccine hesitancy to “the left.” Unfortunately, he parrots antivax conspiracy theories to do it.

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Antivaccine nonsense History Holocaust Holocaust denial Politics World War II

COVID-19 vaccines and the Nuremberg Code, revisited

Antivaxxers love to claim that vaccine mandates (especially COVID-19 vaccine mandates) violate the Nuremberg Code and call for Nuremberg-style tribunals to hold public health and vaccine advocates “accountable”. As usual, they have no idea what they are talking about. This is also not a new antivax narrative, although what is unprecedented is that what was once fringe even among antivaxxers is now mainstream.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine

Dr. Asseem Malhotra engages in massive projection about COVID-19 “misinformation”

Projection is a common defense mechanism used by those spreading health misinformation and disinformation. Last week Dr. Asseem Malhotra published part 2 of a plan to cure “the pandemic of misinformation on COVID-19 mRNA vaccines through real evidence-based medicine”. Unsurprisingly, it was chock full of antivaccine misinformation. It’s a real “I know you are, but what am I?” exercise in disinformation.