Those of us who studied the anti-vaccine movement before the pandemic are very familiar with Dr. Sherri Tenpenny. She has long been one of America’s most outspoken anti-vaccine doctors and, when it came to COVID, she was one of the Disinformation Dozen, who claimed COVID vaccines made people magnetic.
In January 2023, during a presentation about the “Great Reawakening”, she made another startling claim. She predicted that “over “much more” than 50 million Americans would die from COVID vaccines. She spoke of a tsunami of deaths and said that people were already “dying like flies”. She said that her business partner already had 83 close relations die. She predicted that by the end of the year, every American would know a “minimum of 5, probably 10 or more close friends and family members that have died from these shots.”
3.5 years later, we can judge the success of her prediction. Have over 50 million Americans died from COVID vaccines? Fortunately, no. Dr. Tenpenny’s prediction of a tsunami of deaths did not come to pass. Conversely, COVID is still here, and research continues to confirm the vaccine’s safety and efficacy.
So, has Dr. Tenpenny revisited her 2023 prediction? Has she humbly admitted error and expressed remorse for tricking people about a beneficial vaccine? Has she taken a pledge not to comment further on vaccines given her atrocious track record? Has she wondered whether she’s responsible for any of the countless news stories of people who regretted not getting the COVID vaccine?
Of course not.
She moved on long ago, and her always-forward attitude illustrates several key features of pseudoscience. First, its practitioners routinely make confident, but absurd predictions, and when they fail to come true there is nary a moment of self-reflection. Often, the preposterous prognosticator will claim they are the victim, and that those of us who dare to remember their failed forecasts are acting unprofessionally.
Second, they never grapple with the harm they caused. They never pause to consider the people hurt by their anti-vaccine disinformation, and though Dr. Tenpenny doesn’t care about them, the rest of us should never forget that real people got hurt. We may laugh at her claim of magnetic vaccines, but the people in that video weren’t laughing. They were paying close attention.
I rarely write about people like Dr. Tenpenny. She is dangerous, but not interesting. The COVID vaccines did not make people magnetic. What else is there to say?
But fundamentally, the difference between her and the sensible, nuanced doctors I usually discuss is one of degree, not of kind. They’ve all made ridiculous pandemic predictions, over and over again, and never once looked back or even noticed the people they hurt in the process.