Category: Internet & social media

Ivermectin repurposing

Ivermectin: The acupuncture of COVID-19 treatments

As high-quality evidence increasingly and resoundingly shows that ivermectin does not work against COVID-19, advocates are doing what acupuncture advocates do: Turning to lower quality "positive" studies to claim incorrectly that their favorite ineffective treatment actually does "work".

/ March 21, 2022

They Have Names

Reality is not "fear-based messaging", and fewer children will die moving forward if their parents know a bit more about what the virus can do and how the vaccine can keep children safe.

/ March 5, 2022

FTC targets physicians’ COVID claims with cease-and-desist letters

The FTC recently announced it had issued 20 more cease-and-desist demands to physicians and others claiming their products and services prevent or treat COVID-19 without sufficient scientific backing. Unfortunately, this has not stopped many of the targets from making other bogus health claims.

/ February 24, 2022
Amazon Prime

Mercola and Kennedy sue Sen. Elizabeth Warren for combating their COVID misinformation

Quack tycoon Joseph Mercola and anti-vaccine crank Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren claiming she violated their First Amendment rights when she complained that Amazon was peddling COVID misinformation, citing Mercola’s recent misinformation-filled book on COVID as an example.

/ January 27, 2022
Carl Sagan

John Ioannidis and the Carl Sagan effect in science communication about COVID-19

We have been critical about John Ioannidis over a number of his statements about the COVID-19 pandemic. Now he's done it again, producing a poor-quality paper whose unwritten assumptions suggest that the Carl Sagan effect, in which scientists are penalized professionally by their peers for becoming popular science communicators, still holds considerable sway in science and medicine.

/ December 13, 2021
Hasidic Jews in Borough Park

Echoes of measles outbreaks in 2019: Antivaxxers are targeting Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn with COVID-19 misinformation

About a year before the COVID-19 pandemic, large measles outbreaks among Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn and Rockland County were linked to misinformation targeted to their communities by antivaxxers. History is repeating itself with COVID-19.

/ November 1, 2021

About those “19 Errors,” Part Two

A critical and evidence-based response to the alleged errors journalist Jesse Singal found in my guest post reviewing Abigail Shrier's book on trans youth. The second of two parts.

/ September 5, 2021
Ivermectin repurposing

Ivermectin is the new hydroxychloroquine, take 5: The Nobel Prize gambit

Ivermectin continues to be the new hydroxychloroquine, an unproven repurposed drug promoted to treat COVID-19. Now the advocates are pointing to the history of the drug's developers being awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine, as though that has anything to do with its effectiveness against COVID-19.

/ August 9, 2021

A New Covid-19 Myth?

A correspondent suggested I should have known that the pandemic was over months ago. That's obviously a myth. But where did that idea come from?

/ June 29, 2021
Ivermectin repurposing

Ivermectin is the new hydroxychloroquine, take 2

A few months ago, Scott Gavura wrote about how the veterinary deworming drug ivermectin has become the new hydroxychloroquine in that it is being promoted as a highly effective treatment against COVID-19—and by many of the same people who previously promoted HCQ—despite evidence that is, at best very weak and at worst completely negative. Unfortunately, with the publication of two new and...

/ June 21, 2021