Tag: vaccines

SARS-CoV-2 delta variant

Are vaccines driving the emergence of “escape mutant” variants of COVID-19?

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...

/ August 16, 2021

Is RSV Being Misdiagnosed as COVID-19?

Doctors who claimed that COVID-19 was essentially harmless to children are now being confronted with the sad fact that it is sometimes quite dangerous to them. How they respond reveals much about them and little about the virus.

/ August 13, 2021
Mercola versus flu vaccines and COVID-19

Joe Mercola: An antivaccine quack tycoon pivots effortlessly to profit from spreading COVID-19 misinformation

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.

/ July 26, 2021
Joel Kahn, MD

“Holistic cardiologist” Dr. Joel Kahn is amplifying misinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines and VAERS

Dr. Joel Kahn is a "holistic cardiologist." There was a time when he seemed to me at least semi-reasonable, but recently he has been peddling COVID-19 conspiracy theories and antivaccine misinformation, particularly misrepresentation of reports to the VAERS database, which makes this a good time for an update about how antivaxxers are weaponizing VAERS for propaganda purposes.

/ July 12, 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
Depopulation agenda

“Depopulation” by COVID-19 vaccines?

COVID-19 and antivaccine conspiracy theorists like Joe Mercola, Michael Yeadon, and Peter McCullough are spreading the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 vaccines are intended as a tool for "global depopulation". This is nothing more than an old antivaccine conspiracy theory repurposed for the pandemic. As ridiculous as it might seem, it is nonetheless very appealing to antivaxxers.

/ June 14, 2021

“COVID-19 vaccines are going to sterilize our womenfolk,” Take 2

Antivaxxers have long claimed that vaccines, particularly HPV vaccines, can damage the ovaries and cause female infertility. That claim has been resurrected for COVID-19 vaccines. The first example relied on a dubious "similarity" between the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and a placental protein. This time, it's the lipid nanoparticles attacking the ovaries, echoing very old claims about polysorbate-80. Truly, everything old is new...

/ June 7, 2021

The “deadly” coronavirus spike protein (according to antivaxxers)

Antivaxxers are citing three papers to support their claim that spike protein produced by COVID-19 vaccines is dangerous. Unsurprisingly and as usual, they're misinterpreting the studies and misrepresenting their significance. COVID-19 vaccines are, in fact, very safe.

/ May 24, 2021
Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine

To unblind or not to unblind? That is the question about clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines

Antivaccine alternative health tycoon Joe Mercola claims that the unblinding of participants in the clinical trials of Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines was intended to "blow up the trials" and undermine the science, making it impossible ever to identify long term adverse events. What he's really doing is deceptively oversimplifying complex ethical and scientific issues surrounding these trials in the middle of...

/ April 26, 2021
Christian Elliot and viral disinformation

Christian Elliot’s “18 Reasons I Won’t Be Getting a Covid Vaccine”: Viral antivaccine misinformation

Christian Elliot is a self-proclaimed "natural health nerd" and entrepreneur who recently published 18 reasons why he wouldn't take the COVID-19 vaccine. Unfortunately, it's viral disinformation based on conspiracy theories, bad science, pseudoscience, and nonsense.

/ April 19, 2021