Antivaxxers are falsely claiming that COVID-19 vaccines have been causing an epidemic of Sudden Adult Death Syndrome (SADS, also a misnomer for Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome), because of course they are, and of course to them it’s all a “coverup.”
An old school “vaccines cause autism” antivaxxer hosted new COVID-19 antivaxxers at an antivax conference last month. Although one new antivaxxer, Geert Vanden Bossche, was discomfited and pushed back against old antivax tropes, the rest joined Del Bigtree in spewing longstanding antivax tropes.
COVID-19 has radicalized the antivaccine movement. Unfortunately, that radicalization is metastasizing to encompass all vaccines.
Recently, a claim that Pfizer’s own documents demonstrate that the efficacy of its COVID-19 vaccine was only 12% went viral. This is a slasher stat, so-named because like the killers in slasher movie series, even when it appears to be dead it always reappears to kill again. This particular myth originated in The BMJ in 2021.
A new paper provides yet more evidence that the “let COVID-19 rip” strategy behind the Great Barrington Declaration would have made the pandemic even more disastrous than it has already been.
