Tag: COVID

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine

Geert Vanden Bossche is back and still blaming vaccines for COVID-19 variants

Geert Vanden Bossche
Geert Vanden Bossche: Repurposing old lies by Andrew Wakefield for COVID-19 vaccines.

Geert Vanden Bossche is back, and this time he’s blaming COVID-19 vaccines for driving the evolution of more dangerous “escape variants” of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the disease, that are capable of evading vaccine-induced immunity. As antivaxxers making this argument always do, unfortunately, he ignores the much larger problem in which free circulation of the virus is a far more powerful driver of evolution than the relatively small proportion of the world population that has as yet been vaccinated.

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Bad science Computers and social media Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Ivermectin is the new hydroxychloroquine, take 5: But it won the Nobel Prize!

Ivermectin and fraud?

Ivermectin continues to be the new hydroxychloroquine, an unproven repurposed drug promoted to treat COVID-19. Now the advocates are pointing to the history of the drug’s developers being awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine, as though that has anything to do with its effectiveness against COVID-19.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

Physicians who promote COVID-19 and antivaccine misinformation should lose their medical license

Medical license

The Federation of State Medical Boards warned physicians that spreading COVID-19 misinformation might jeopardize their license to practice. It’s about time the FSMB said that, but I have serious doubts that anything will happen.

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Antivaccine nonsense Politics

Antivaxxers invoke segregation and Jim Crow to attack COVID-19 vaccination requirements

Vaccine passports are not segregation like this
Contrary to what antivaxxers claim, COVID-19 vaccine requirements are not the equivalent of this.

Before the pandemic, antivaxxers tried to don the mantle of the “new civil rights movement.” Now they’re invoking segregation and Jim Crow over COVID-19 vaccination requirements.

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Antivaccine nonsense Computers and social media Medicine

Antivax quack tycoon Joe Mercola profits selling COVID-19 disinformation

Dr. Joseph Mercola
"Trust me."

Joe Mercola is a physician whose nearly quarter-century of promoting quackery and antivaccine misinformation has garnered him a net worth north of $100 million. It is therefore not surprising that in the age of the pandemic, he has pivoted to fatten his bottom line promoting misinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and the COVID vaccines.