Tag: COVID-19
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,...
One More Time – Masks Work
The evidence supports the conclusion that mask-wearing policies are effective and justified.
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?
Germ theory denial in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic
As hard as it is to believe, in the middle of a global pandemic that's claimed so many lives and so thoroughly disrupted society, there are people who still deny germ theory. How can this be?
2020 and the pandemic: A year of (some) physicians behaving badly
Looking back on 2020, if there's one thing that the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us, it's that crises reveal character. Unfortunately, the character of too many physicians has been found wanting, as they spent 2020 denying the pandemic, peddling quack cures, or spreading misinformation in the service of defying public health interventions. What can be done?
Syncope and Bell’s palsy: Distinguishing correlation from causation for adverse events observed after COVID-19 vaccination
The FDA has approved emergency use authorizations (EUAs) for two COVID-19 vaccines, and the largest mass vaccination program in history has begun. Look for antivaxxers to attribute reactions to the vaccine that the vaccine very likely didn't cause. We'll examine the example stories of vasovagal syncope and Bell's palsy that were reported by the press last week.
It was inevitable that antivaxxers would claim that COVID-19 vaccines make females infertile
Antivaxxers have been claiming that vaccines cause female infertility for as long as I can remember. So it's not surprising that they are now claiming that COVID-19 vaccines will make women infertile. Their assertion is based on a highly speculative and incredibly unlikely immunologic mechanism. Same as it ever was.
2020 – The Good and the Bad
What 2020 has taught us about the power of science and the harm of pseudoscience.