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65% of Online Anti-Vaccine Content Is from 12 Individuals
An analysis of over 812,000 posts extracted from Facebook and Twitter between February 1 and March 16, 2021, shows that 65% of anti-vaccine content is attributable to 12 individuals. A number of these individuals benefit financially from their anti-vax work. None of them are the type of source I would depend on.
- Joseph Mercola – an anti-vaccine entrepreneur who sells dietary supplements and false cures as alternatives to vaccines.
- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – a long-standing anti-vaxxer; his group released a film in mid-March targeting members of the Black and Latino communities with tailored anti-vaccine messages.
- Ty and Charlene Bollinger – anti-vax entrepreneurs who market books and DVDs about vaccines, cancer, and COVID-19; promoted the conspiracy theory that Bill Gates plans to inject everyone with microchips as part of the vaccination program.
- Sherri Tenpenny – promotes Andrew Wakefield’s anti-COVID vaccine writings (Wakefield lost his medical license due to involvement in the Lancet MMR autism fraud.)
- Rizza Islam – targets African Americans and promotes the theories that Bill Gates planned the pandemic and that COVID vaccines make women infertile.
- Rashid Buttar – claims that COVID-19 tests contain living microorganisms and that the vaccine makes women infertile.
- Erin Elizabeth – partner to Joseph Mercola, claims vaccines are part of a medical industry plan to create “a chronically ill population” and promotes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
- Sayer Ji – runs an alternative health website promoting anti-vax positions and claims that the Pfizer vaccine has killed more people than COVID.
- Kelly Brogan – partner of Sayer Ji, claims “there is no such thing as the coronavirus because it’s not possible to prove that any given pathogen has induced death” and claims the pandemic was planned.
- Christiane Northrup – OBGYN who has promoted anti-vaccine conspiracies and claims that vaccines cause an 800% increase in chronic illness.
- Ben Tapper – chiropractor who claims that there is a “total lack of evidence that viruses can live outside the body.”
- Kevin Jenkins – anti-vaccine activist who claims that the black community is being targeted for experimentation with the vaccine.
–I dont know anything about the other people. But I have seen Robert F Kennedy interviewed on multiple occasions. He is not Anti-vax. Before you slander him with a broad brush, I suggest you do some basic research.
She is nominally Catholic. Maybe a late-life development of a conscience?
Or she’s the same but he became more megalomaniacal and now she’s had enough?
He said three things just as clearly and cogently as anything else he said. All three were given as medical improvements to humanity. So the question remains how could he have said three such things in the context of lowering the population, and simply made a slip of the tongue?
Unless of course, “health care” means or includes reducing the population.
By being stupid. I do that sometimes myself.
Maybe they mean “health of the planet” when they say that.
Thanks. I searched for covid on his health page and only got a book about covid. That’s quick, and even then the pages would likely have been sanitized.
But even the article states that he advocated vitamins and herbals supplements as general treatments for health, and not cures. And his claims are fairly common. What I was asking EB for was an actual statement of what his claims were, and what he was selling. I see what he was selling, but they’re not drugs.
“The agency told Mercola that three products he markets with COVID-19 claims — “Liposomal Vitamin C, Liposomal Vitamin D3, and Quercetin and Pterostilbene Advanced” — are “unapproved new drugs” and “misbranded drugs” being sold in violation of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.”
These are not drugs.
If I trusted the FDA more I, too, would be in favor of legally acting upon a man who advocated vitamins and herbals remedies for improved health, and accuse him of selling unapprovred “drugs”. (Not really sarcasm, more like irony. It appears that they rename a supplement a “drug”, and then prosecute the seller for selling unapproved drugs.)
No, he was making a point. And it’s not like he couldn’t have had the video edited. He meant exactly what he said. To him, the meaning of “health care” includes “population reduction”.
I think he deleted his major claims when the FDA came calling.
They are if you say they have efficiency in treating a disease. You might not agree with that, but that’s the standard.
Today on his site I found a really interesting way to treat diabetes:
Maybe. But how do I know that?
Yes, he probably sanitized his catalog, but still, it’s a fine line between saying that something improves, or treats, or cures. And frankly I question whether saying that for example “eating healthy foods” will treat a given condition makes health foods a drug. And supplements are still basically only foods, in concentrated form.
For example, there is a difference between saying that Lysine can help fight herpetic cold sores, and saying that it is a treatment, and saying that it can cure the “disease”. I know from decades of personal experience that Lysine does both control and treat cold sores. But I doubt if any controlled, double-blind studies have been done on this. And even Vit-C helps maintain one’s health, but who is doing the research on this? I doubt anyone is really trying, because Vit-C and Lysine are cheap, not-patentable and effective for improving health and preventing and treating certain diseases. I use them in place of statins.
Statins do seem to have a lot of side-effects.
On a personal note, I have siblings who suffer terribly from cold sores. My children largely dodged that bullet because they have aunts and uncles recommending Lysine. (I have no idea why I am not effected). We’ve got lysine in our earth quake kit and our go bag. Magic
Canker sores or cold sores? I actually spent a bit of time investigating the difference because one is associated with an std and the other is the result of gum injury and/or lysine deficiency.
Yeah, it’s like magic. I wonder why this is not advertised. (Of course, you can see a doctor and get a prescription for acyclovir, or other anti-virals.)
By the way, back when I used to get sunburned badly, with big blisters shoulders and back and all that, mega-doses of Vit-C worked within hours, and fixed me up overnight, instead of taking three or four days to recover. Like you say, magic.
IANAD — I am not a doctor. :)
I’m not sure what a canker sores is. If I recall, canker sores inside the mouth don’t blister. Neither one is necessarily an STD. Though I think that herpes type-2 (which is an STD) was the name given to the new appearance of herpes in the genitalia when it first appeared, in order to differentiate it from oral herpes (type-1); though I guess that they were originally the same strain and later mutated into two separate strains.
I’m not sure about lysine “deficiency” either.
Lysine is an amino acid occurring in foods. Regarding cold sores, herpes viruses reproduce using an amino acid (if I recall it’s arginine). Lysine competes with arginine for the herpes virus to replicate, when herpes uses lysine to reproduce it creates sterile new herpes viruses that can’t reproduce. So essentially elevating the amount of lysine over arginine in your tissues reduces herpes replication. This is what I’ve read. And it has worked well for people I’ve mentioned it to.
I don’t know what causes canker sores but they are not caused by herpes, and I would imagine that they don’t respond to lysine. My absolute guess is that they either are or are similar to scurvy and might respond to large-ish doses of Vit-C. By large-ish, I mean 3 -6 grams of Vit-C three times a day (you’ll probably have to work up to this over a few days to avoid gassy bloating and diarrhea). But any efficacy of Vit-C is just a guess.
Well, that’s one data point. I would want a lot more such data points to believe that mega doses of vitamin C will cure sunburn.
The good part of people who suggest mega-doses of Vitamin C for X or Y or Z is that you just pee out any excess, so there is no overdose.
Telling somebody to take mega doses of things like Vitamin D can be actively harmful.
Well, I don’t really ever use the word cure, I don’t think. But I also think it’s more than one data point. I have gotten bad sunburn a lot over the years and when I travel, I always carry a lot of Vit-C. And since I’d started taking it for my occasional bad sunburn, I haven’t suffered once. By suffering I mean can’t sleep due to the pain, and can’t lie on in any position but my stomach. That kind of sunburn. It’s not like I go out and disregard the sun, but there are days when you don’t realize how exposed you are or how burned you get.
Oh, and Linus Pauling did an experiment on himself in which he took his vitamin C level in his urine and then took I think 18,000mg, and then did serial urine tests for I think 24 hours, for Vit-C. And it turned out that iirc less than half the C came out in his urine. He said that it would have changed into various congeners or active metabolites in his body (I don’t recall whether he was speaking about just his blood stream or if this included tissue saturation as well — I think it included tissue saturation).
Well, we are in unknown territory when it comes to long term health effects of either the vaccine or the disease. I know you are familiar with untreated strep throat leading to rheumatic fever later. We just don’t know.
I am surprised you focus on the mRNA vaccines. The Johnson and Johnson vaccine is a viral vector. It actually administers DNA to cells using a virus as a container, which is likely to produce the spike protein for a much longer period of time. While I don’t consider it hazardous, it seems much more like gene therapy to me.
”Shock value of the term”- ie dishonest use of language to willfully mislead the public or his patients. That is unethical behavior for a physician. The left loves to misuse language we should fight it.
If he isn’t anti-vax then the term has no meaning…