Tag: vaccine

Bacterial pneumonia

The COVID-as-bacterial-pneumonia conspiracy theory rises again

In yet another example of everything hold being new again, antivaxxers have resurrected the claim that deaths due to COVID-19 are actually due to bacterial pneumonia, just as antivaxxers used to say the same thing about influenza deaths. It is, of course, another case of confusing cause and effect in order to obfuscate.

/ September 4, 2023

“Subscription science”: Physician-influencers, social media, and conflicts of interest

Antivaccine activists and quacks often weaponize legitimate concerns about industry conflicts of interest in medicine into the "shill gambit," in which they accuse critics and defenders of science-based medicine of being in the pay of big pharma. However, the rise of physician-influencers and, in particular, Substack show that not all conflicts of interest are from industry or even financial.

/ May 15, 2023
Pfizer COVID vaccine

The Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine doesn’t prevent transmission: Antivax disinformation goes viral again

Last week, antivaxxers were all over social media after Tucker Carlson touted a "revelation" that the phase 3 clinical trial used to support licensure of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine didn't examine its ability to block transmission as meaning that its inability to block transmission had been "covered up". It wasn't, and antivaxxers are ignoring everything we've learned over the last two years...

/ October 17, 2022
Yogi Berra

Conspiracy theories about monkeypox: Déjà vu all over again or same as it ever was?

Last Thursday, the Biden administration officially declared monkeypox to be a national public health emergency. Unsurprisingly, conspiracy theories abound, many of them recycled from COVID-19 and older antivax conspiracy theories.

/ August 8, 2022
SARS CoV2 virus

“Coronaphobia”: How antivaxxers and pandemic minimizers pathologize fear of disease

Over the weekend, Dr. Lucy McBride, a concierge medicine doctor who has become famous as a pandemic minimizer and one of the drivers of "Urgency of Normal", Tweeted an article that she had written over a year ago about "coronaphobia". Whether she understands it or not, this is a very old antivax trope: To pathologize fear of infectious disease as mental illness.

/ May 16, 2022

Nasal Spray Vaccine for SARS-CoV-2

A nasal spray boost may enhance the effectiveness of vaccine defense against COVID.

/ February 9, 2022

A Malaria Vaccine for Children: A Historic Achievement that will Save Countless Lives

WHO has officially recommended the first ever vaccine against a parasite, in this case malaria, and it will save thousands of kids' lives every year.

/ October 15, 2021

The CDC Should Do Better

The CDC's failure to report clear and accurate data about how COVID-19 is affecting children has opened the door to those who wish to minimize its impact by spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt. The CDC needs to do better.

/ August 5, 2021

Cognitive Illusions and How Not to Write About COVID-19 and Children

Many people minimize the deaths and damage COVID-19 has wrought on children because it is "worse in adults". While it is true that more adults suffer due to the disease, that does not make the harms done to children vanish in a puff of smoke.

/ July 30, 2021

COVID-19 and balancing the risks:  The vaccine or the virus

Given recent reports of myocarditis after vaccination with mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines in young people, we think it's a good time to reexamine the risk/benefit ratio of these vaccines in this population.

/ June 30, 2021