Tag: COVID contrarian
How we got here with political and health misinformation: The case of “Hacker X” and Mike Adams
Ars Technica recently published a story about Hacker X, who helped Mike Adams expand his online empire of health fraud into an empire of fake news and political disinformation, thus intertwining health and political misinformation into the deadly combination we see now.
Ivermectin is the new hydroxychloroquine, take 6: Incompetence and fraud everywhere!
Ivermectin is the new hydroxychloroquine, a drug repurposed for COVID-19 that almost certainly doesn't work but is still being touted as a "miracle cure" by quacks, grifters, and political ideologues. Are the data supporting it all fraud?
“Natural immunity” versus the vaccine for COVID-19
Antivaxxers have long appealed to "natural immunity" as being somehow inherently superior to vaccine-induced immunity, which is apparently "artificial". This is a trope that comes from alternative medicine concepts about purity and contamination that is now endangering us in the age of the pandemic.
State medical boards vs. COVID-19 misinformation, an update
The disinformation epidemic about COVID-19 has pushed state medical boards to consider disciplining physicians who promote COVID-19 disinformation. How would that work? What are the obstacles? Is it even possible? It should be, but it will be messy and complicated.
Dr. Joseph Ladapo of “America’s Frontline Doctors” is now in charge of public health in Florida
Dr. Joseph Ladapo, a member of the fringe medical group "American's Frontline Doctors" and signer of the widely criticized Great Barrington Declaration, is Florida's new Surgeon General, appointed because he agrees with the dubious COVID-19 policies of Gov. DeSantis and, like the Governor, allows ideology to trump science.
The dumpster diving VAERS preprint debacle: How did we get here?
Last week, SBM devoted a lot of digital ink to a poorly done study analyzing the VAERS database for myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination that was widely publicized to imply that the vaccine is more dangerous than the disease. Three out of the four authors should have known better, leading me to ask: How did we get here?
Intubations and Accusations: Doctors were “just going crazy, and intubating people who did not have to be intubated”
It's problematic when a paragon of evidence-based medicine claims vaccines spread disease and amplifies internet rumors that doctors killed COVID-19 patients through premature intubations.
Dumpster diving in the VAERS database to find more COVID-19 vaccine-associated myocarditis in children
"Dumpster diving" is a term used to describe studies using data from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System database by authors, almost always antivaxxers, who don't understand its limitations. Last week, non-antivax doctors who should know better fell into this trap when they promoted their study suggesting that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are more dangerous to children than the disease.
Peer review of a VAERS dumpster dive
A new preprint study on COVID vaccine myocarditis dives into the VAERS dumpster with predictable and embarrassing results.
The Federation of State Medical Boards vs. COVID-19 misinformation: A losing battle so far
A few weeks ago, the Federation of State Medical Boards, which itself does not have any regulatory power but advocates for state medical boards, issued a statement that physicians who spread COVID-19 misinformation should be subject to disciplinary measures. Unfortunately, a recent report found that not a single US physician has had action taken against their medical license for doing this. Why?