Tag: vaccines

Debate

RFK Jr. and Joe Rogan: Putting the old denialist technique of bad faith “Debate me, bro!” challenges on steroids

Joe Rogan conveyed a challenge by antivax crank turned Presidential candidate RFK Jr. to vaccine scientist Dr. Peter Hotez to "debate me, bro!" In the week since, wealthy right wingers have added money to the inducement, and through an awful op-ed by Ross Douthat this weekend, even the New York Times has amped up the pressure for a "debate" about vaccines with...

/ June 26, 2023

Courage

If I were King of the Vaccines. Some thoughts on influenza vaccine, hospitalization, death and courage.

/ June 20, 2023
Dr. Rashid Buttar

When an antivax physician “dies suddenly”: The case of Dr. Rashid Buttar

Last month, Dr. Rashid Buttar, a prominent antivax "integrative medicine" practitioner, died suddenly. Because he hadn't been vaccinated, antivaxxers struggled mightily to reconcile his death with their conspiracy theory about COVID-19 vaccines killing thousands "suddenly." It turns out, however, that that Dr. Buttar had not been a well man since 2016 and was as much a victim of quackery as his patients...

/ June 19, 2023
RFK Jr. no saline placebo

Is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. antivaccine? Judge him by his own words!

Last week, an antivaxxer on Substack—where else?—tried to argue that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is not antivaccine by encouraging you to judge him by his own words. I agree. You should judge RFK Jr. by his own words, as they show definitively that he has been antivaccine since at least 2005.

/ June 12, 2023

Steve Kirsch: How “anti-COVID-19 vaccine” antivax often becomes radicalized and just plain antivaccine

Tech bro turned COVID-19 misinformation superspreader and antivaxxer Steve Kirsch has now fully embraced "old school" vaccine-autism conspiracy theories, demonstrating how anti-COVID-19 vaccine antivaxxers frequently become just antivaxxers.

/ June 5, 2023
Aseem Malhotra

Unsafe and Ineffective: Aseem Malhotra

British consulting cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra has become the latest darling of the COVID-19 minimization and antivaccine movement in the UK. Previously known for anti-statin views and advocacy of the Pioppi diet who pivoted to more dangerous misinformation during the pandemic.

/ May 21, 2023
ProtocolKills.com: Misinformed refusal

ProtocolKills.com: Misinformed refusal on steroids

Back in the day, I used to refer to something I dubbed "misinformed refusal," a term that refers to how antivaxxers had weaponized "informed consent" by inverting it to frighten parents against vaccinated. In the age of the pandemic, ProtocolKills.com generalizes misinformed refusal to all COVID-19 treatments with the help of "hospital hostage negotiator" Laura Bartlett, who views COVID-19 treatments in hospitals...

/ May 8, 2023
Study flow

Retracted papers about COVID-19 are more highly cited than they should be

Earlier this month a study showed that papers about COVID-19 that are retracted tend to be cited far more than average and continue to be heavily cited after retraction. Clearly, scientific publishing and the scientific community need to do better.

/ May 1, 2023
ProtocolKills.com

ProtocolKills.com: Repackaging an old narrative about conventional medicine versus alternative medicine for COVID-19

Quacks claim that medicine, not the disease, kills, with their nostrums as the cure. ProtocolKills.com shows that victims and their families are often their best spokespeople because they are so sympathetic and questioning their testimonials is easily portrayed as attacking very sympathetic victims. Cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski used to do this, weaponizing his patients against any critics and using them as foot...

/ April 24, 2023
Consensus

Why antivaxxers reject the concept of scientific consensus as a “manufactured construct”

Neil deGrasse Tyson invoked the concept of a scientific consensus while supporting vaccines in his debate with Del Bigtree. Why was his statement about how "individual scientists don't matter" compared to scientific consensus so triggering to antivaxxers? Why do antivaxxers reject the very concept of a scientific consensus and promote a hyper-individualistic view of how science should be conducted?

/ April 17, 2023