Category: Vaccines
Lipid nanoparticles in COVID-19 vaccines: The new mercury to antivaxxers
When it comes to antivaccine misinformation and the COVID-19 pandemic, everything old is new again, at least if you haven't been paying attention. This time around, it's the resurrection of an old favorite antivaccine trope, the "toxins" gambit. Truly, lipid nanoparticles are the new mercury.
A Race Against Vaccine Hesitancy
The vaccine program is in a race against the emergence of new strains of the virus. Vaccine hesitancy may be the margin of victory or failure.
The latest antivax false claim: mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 are not vaccines but “medical devices” or “gene therapy”
There's a new antivaccine talking point in town, and it's just as much disinformation as other antivaccine talking points. It's the claim that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are not really vaccines but "medical devices," "gene therapy," or "experimental biologics" and that they were falsely classified as vaccines in order to bypass safety testing. Here, we discuss why this claim is utter nonsense based...
Shameless self-promotion: Dr. Gorski on the Thinking Critically podcast
Dr. Gorski appeared on the Thinking Critically podcast to discuss the antivaccine movement, COVID-19, medical conspiracy theories, and his journey to skepticism.
The efforts of antivaxxers to portray COVID-19 vaccines as harmful or even deadly continue apace (VAERS edition)
With the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines continuing apace, so are the efforts of antivaxxers to portray the vaccines as dangerous. This time around, they've resurrected the old antivaccine trick of deceptively misusing the VAERS database to imply causation from VAERS reports. That's not how VAERS works, however.
The Anti-Vaxxer Playbook to Destroy Confidence in COVID-19 Vaccines
Major anti-vaccination voices and organizations have coalesced around three key messages to keep people from accepting the COVID-19 vaccine. Their playbook has now been exposed.
The efforts of antivaxxers to portray COVID-19 vaccines as harmful or even deadly continue apace…
As more and more COVID-19 vaccines find their way into more and more arms, there are reports of bad things happening to people after vaccination up to and including even death. As I've been predicting for a long time that they would, antivaxxers are now weaponizing these reports and anecdotes before they have even been investigated in order to spread fear, uncertainty,...
Did the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine cause a fatal case of ITP?
Last week, a post by Heidi Neckelmann, the wife of Miami obstetrician Dr. Gregory Michael describing his death from idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP) 16 days after being vaccinated with the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine went viral. Unsurprisingly, in her grief she blamed the vaccine for her husband's death from a rare autoimmune condition that destroys platelets and causes bleeding. Unfortunately, Dr. Michael's tragic...
Deliberately Spoiled Vaccines: Conspiracy thinking and health professionals
A Wisconsin pharmacist is facing charges after deliberately tampering with a batch of COVID-19 vaccines, demonstrating that a health professional's education is no vaccine against conspiracy beliefs.
The New SARS-CoV-2 Variants
Two new variants of the virus that causes COVID-19 have been detected that are more infectious. What are the implications?