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.
Every so few years, someone writes in a reputable journal that evidence-based medicine is corrupt or an “illusion.” Here we go again, this time in The BMJ, and antivaxxers are going wild.
On Monday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis convened a roundtable including “Urgency of Normal,” Great Barrington Declaration authors, and antivaxxers. This was no coincidence, given the common talking points and causes between the groups.
A month ago, Dr. Robert Malone announced the “Defeat the Mandates” rally on Joe Rogan’s podcast, to be held this Sunday. I sensed many echoes of Jenny McCarthy’s 2008 “Green Our Vaccines” rally, although what’s different is even more disturbing than the antivaccine misinformation that’s the same.
A couple of days ago, Joe Mercola tried to seem “reasonable” by contrasting himself to other quacks by “conceding” that SARS-CoV-2 actually exists. Last night Dr. Vinay Prasad tried to do the same thing by “analyzing” the appearances of conspiracy theorists on Joe Rogan’s show. The parallels are eerie.
