anti vaxx 3

721 on delta rates rising

youtube will deplat? 921 putin objects?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/here-s-why-anti-vaxxers-appear-more-likely-to-embrace-unproven-drugs-report/

Anti-vaxxers, often motivated by baseless conspiracy theories, have a long history of questioning the work of the scientific community while discrediting medical breakthroughs. However, there is also a bizarre phenomenon of these same people having no qualms about embracing unproven drugs.

In fact, reports began circulating in September when anti-vax residents in Mississippi began using the anti-parasital drug Ivermectin as an alternative treatment for COVID. Since the drug is typically used to treat animals, it is strongly opposed to human consumption. So why would people who are deeply critical of medicine and the scientific community be open to trying unproven drugs?

Vox reporter Dylan Scott explores the mind-boggling hypocrisy behind it. Speaking to the publication, a number of psychological experts offered their take on the situation. Jay Van Bavel, director of New York University's Social Identity and Morality Lab, explained the psychology behind how people convince themselves to believe things that are known to be false.

"When you really want to believe something — like 'you can't trust the vaccines' — you'll come up with any number of rationalizations," Van Bavel said. "It's like whack-a-mole. You falsify one premise and they just create a new one."

Van Bavel also highlighted the irony of anti-vaxxers' stance and how it doesn't add up.

"On the face of it, it doesn't make sense that you don't trust doctors and science, but then the next moment, you're sharing news about some other medical cure and taking that and putting it in your body," said Van Bavel. "These are not trivial beliefs. These are some of the most significant decisions you can make in a once-in-a-century pandemic."

Scott also explained how difficult it is for new information to be presented in areas where people are predominantly skeptical about vaccinations.

"New information isn't necessarily treated as an opportunity to reassess their beliefs," Scott wrote. "Instead, new facts are seen either as affirmation of what this community already believes or as a distraction that should be dismissed because it doesn't neatly sort into their anti-vaccine narrative."

David Dunning, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan also offered a similar opinion. "People listen to people 'from their group' and whom they think they can trust,"Dunning said. "People really don't know what science is, and so do you feel you can trust the person giving you advice, rather than appraising their expertise, becomes the thing."

https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/foxs-antivax-programming-moral-abomination-least-its-great-ratings

no lnx vid

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/murdochs-want-tucker-carlsons-blood-soaked-conspiracy-theories

The Murdochs want Tucker Carlson’s blood-soaked conspiracy theories

WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ

PUBLISHED 09/23/21

Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show is a toxic combination of Infowars-style conspiracy theories and Stormfront-esque xenophobia because that’s what network founder Rupert Murdoch, parent company CEO Lachlan Murdoch, and network CEO Suzanne Scott want in their 8 p.m. hour. Fox executives keep making excuses for Carlson’s malignant commentary, he correctly interprets their defenses as a green light to be ever more extreme, and all the other stakeholders in the network are willing to go along with it.

Amid a gleefully dishonest Wednesday night screed, Carlson accused Democrats of wanting “to change the racial mix of the country” through immigration, adding, “This policy is called ‘the great replacement,’ the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from far-away countries.” That is, in fact, what white supremacists call that conspiracy theory.

Video file

CitationFrom the September 22, 2021, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight

When Carlson similarly claimed in April that Democrats want to “replace the current electorate” with “more obedient voters from the Third World,” the Anti-Defamation League called for his firing, with ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt noting in a letter to Scott that Carlson was invoking a “classic white supremacist trope” that has “lit the fuse in explosive hate crimes.” But Lachlan Murdoch sent a letter in response claiming that Carlson had actually “decried and rejected replacement theory” and been simply talking about voting rights. Carlson responded by putting the “great replacement” theory at the center of his show, creeping closer and closer to the line until last night’s broadcast, which definitively destroyed Murdoch’s defense.

Fox’s response thus far has been to promote Carlson’s latest invocation of the bigoted conspiracy theory his boss had previously claimed he rejected.

Also on Wednesday, Carlson hosted a guest, Navy Cmdr J.H. Furman, who suggested that the vaccines for COVID-19 might be more dangerous than the virus that causes it. Furman has written a memo arguing that mandating the COVID-19 vaccines “may compromise U.S. national security due to the unknown extent of serious vaccine complications,” which was picked up by right-wing media outlets. During his appearance, he told Carlson’s audience that the coronavirus “has a harm rate, or a mortality rate of 0.001%. Compare that with the VAERS harm rate where COVID vaccination harm over the last 20 months has taken almost half of the total harm's totals in the VAERS database, the 20-years long VAERS database.”

Video file

CitationFrom the September 22, 2021, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight

In May, Carlson began promoting the lie that thousands of Americans have died in the “single deadliest mass vaccination event in modern history,” citing data from VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. When journalists debunked his claim, noting that VAERS data is publicly sourced without verification, Lachlan Murdoch stood by him, falsely claiming that Carlson was saying “nothing the CDC itself isn’t saying.” Carlson’s program has continued peddling the VAERS falsehood ever since as part of what seems like his single-minded devotion to limit vaccinations. His campaign, and that of his right-wing media colleagues, has had devastating consequences.

The Murdochs or Scott could have stepped in after Carlson started parroting blood-soaked white supremacist conspiracy theories or lying to his viewers about the safety and effectiveness of a safe, effective vaccine that Rupert Murdoch and more than 90% of Fox full-time employees have apparently taken. But this is the kind of network that they want to run, so they’ve made him its face.

There’s no signal from the Fox Corp. board, including former House Speaker Paul Ryan, that the network should change course. And chief political anchor Bret Baier and the rest of Fox’s “news” division seem content to look the other way and continue cashing their paychecks.

921 an

when a coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 4.7 million people worldwide and over 695,000 of them are in the United States — according to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore — a vaccine mandate for the U.S. Armed Forces makes perfect sense. But a lawsuit filed by a "MAGA medical group," consisting of far-right anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists, is aiming to stop the Pentagon's vaccine mandate, according to Daily Beast senior researcher Adam Rawnsley.

Gen. Lloyd J. Austin, Secretary of Defense in the Biden administration, ordered all active-duty members of the U.S. Armed Forces to get vaccinated for COVID-19 — and the far-right MAGA anti-vaxxers, in response, have filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon.

Rawnsley, in an article published on September 30, explains, "Lt. Col. Theresa M. Long, who serves as the brigade surgeon for the Army's 1st Aviation Brigade, filed an affidavit late last week in support of the suit's motion to block the vaccine mandate — arguing against the requirement based in part on her false belief that 'all persons who have received a COVID-19 vaccine are damaged in their cardiovascular system in an irreparable and irrevocable manner'…. The affidavit was filed as part of a suit brought by lawyers working with America's Frontline Doctors (AFLDS), according to the group, and requests a declaratory judgment blocking the vaccine requirement, on behalf of Staff Sergeants Dan Robert (USA), Hollie Mulvihill (USMC), and anti-vaxxers within the military."

Long, according to Rawnsley, "has joined a small but increasingly vocal group of field-grade officers encouraged by conservative activists and media as part of the right wing's crusade against COVID-19 vaccine mandates."

"The few officers and enlisted service members who have gone public with their opposition to the vaccine mandate are now finding increasing support among Republican members of Congress," Rawnsley notes. "Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), James Lankford (R-OK), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), for example, have recently drafted (a) proposed amendment to the annual National Defense Authorization Act that would gut the proposed vaccine mandate."

According to Rawnsley, roughly 70% of the U.S. military has been vaccinated for COVID-19. Austin and President Joe Biden would like to get that number even higher.

The good news about the AFLDS lawsuit, according to Rawnsley, is that it "faces long odds."

"Within the military," Rawnsley observes, "Long's own court filing suggests that ardent anti-vaccine attitudes may not be that widely shared. Long wrote that she's encountered 'mixed results in terms of acceptance, rejection and threats of punishment' over her opinions."

https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/vaccinated-2655082656/

mich budget ~ vax mandate

like pb poison in Rome but more widespread?

clark County officials pass resolution declaring the spread of COVID misinformation a 'public health crisis’

Meaghan Ellis

September 22, 2021

Officials in Clark County, Nevada have expressed deep concern about the rapid spread of COVID misinformation campaigns while declaring the issue a "public health crisis."

mask and vax meld?

921 NO LNX an

Seminole County, Florida school board has been holding a marathon meeting on masks, which started Thursday at 8:30 AM, and is still going on after nearly nine hours. While there were many anti-science extremists, one parent's speech stood out.

A man who identified himself as Jeff James declared "there are more variants planned," the vaccine is "not a vaccine it's an experimental drug," called mask mandates "charades," and falsely claimed that "masks don't work."

"Masks are pretty much a device to enslave children, make them obedient, so they just learn to obey and not think for themselves. We need critical thinking. We don't need children that are going to be little puppets that don't say anything to speak out for themselves. We need leaders not followers."

But James did not stop there.

"The deep state medical establishment wants all of us to be depopulated," he declared, before announcing his support for far right wing doctors whose anti-vaxx and science denialism have been repeatedly debunked. "I know you guys think that's a conspiracy theory but it's not. It's a conspiracy fact, they're all in cahoots with each other, to depopulate us, they want us divided. They want all of us to fight each other so they can win," he said, without actually explaining who "they" are....

twt pix plus analysis

https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/anti-vax-facebook/

...The government wants more people dead!

The government wants people to take a vaccine, that would mean less people dead!

The government is, uh, confused.

Much like Qanon, these people have created a world in which heads, they win, tails we lose. Cases up? It's the government and hospitals killing people. Cases down? It's because people are avoiding hospitals and taking Ivermectin.

Someone got sick, was hospitalized, and pulled through? God is great! She healed because god. Someone got sic, was hospitalized, and died? God is great! She got her angel wings and got called home because Jesus needed her more.

COVID is a scam! But also, COVID is a Chinese communist plot! And also, COVID is a media creation to make Donald Trump look bad!

Oh, and they all have immune systems! Because immune systems have never been circumvented by deadly pathogens. But wait, they got sick? Prayer warriors assemble!

Seriously, I might have more respect for these yokels if they could come up with a single cohesive and logical narrative, rather than this "throw everything against the wall and fuck it, let's go with all of it because why not?" bullshit.

And in the middle if it all, Facebook facilitates the spread of this misinformation, helping kill thousands every day. Conservative conspiracy mongering and Facebook are a marriage made in hell, and for once, conservatives aren't being protected from their own stupidity. They are actively participating in their own destruction, as they point and laugh at everyone—including us liberals!—trying to save their lives.

london rally

satan #

conspiracy theories promoted by anti-vaccine activists reached a fevered pitch during a Saturday rally.

Conspiracy theorist Kate Shemirani suggested there could be Nuremberg-like trials where doctors and nurses would be hanged for administering the coronavirus vaccines, which promoted one British doctor to alert London's Metropolitan Police Service.

hung docs nuremberg

https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/anti-vax/

vax

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/sean-hannity-warns-you-will-be-canceled-and-government-will-target-your-loved-ones-if-you

trump booed for suggesting vax 821

With one of the lowest COVID vaccination rates in the United States, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) has been fighting an uphill battle to get residents vaccinated in his state. The Republican governor has also dealt with his fair share of conspiracy theories which have also created more barriers getting residents to take the jab.

Unlike some members of his party, though, Justice — who ran for office as a Democrat before switching parties — is pushing back against Covid misinformation. On Wednesday, September 8, the governor appeared for his daily briefing where he addressed the conspiracy theories surrounding the COVID vaccine as he lambasted the bizarre ideologies.

"For God's sakes a livin', how difficult is this to understand?" Justice said during his daily briefing on Wednesday. "Why in the world do we have to come up with these crazy ideas — and they're crazy ideas — that the vaccine's got something in it and it's tracing people wherever they go?"

Justice's remarks stem from previous reports about the bizarre claim. Back in May, reports began circulating about the microchipping conspiracy which has been linked to Microsoft business magnate Bill Gates. According to BBC News, "a new YouGov poll of 1,640 people suggests that 28% of Americans believe that Bill Gates wants to use vaccines to implant microchips in people - with the figure rising to 44% among Republicans."

The publication also notes: "Rumours took hold in March when Mr. Gates said in an interview that eventually 'we will have some digital certificates' which would be used to show who'd recovered, been tested and ultimately who received a vaccine. He made no mention of microchips."

That one quote led to the rapid circulation of an article with a headline that read, "Bill Gates will use microchip implants to fight coronavirus." Conspiracy theorists claimed the so-called microchips are a way for the government to keep track of Americans.

However, according to HuffPost, Justice highlighted the one major flaw in the conspiracy theory: the government does not need microchips to know the whereabouts of Americans when the vast majority of Americans carry cell phones. "The same very people that are saying that are carrying their cellphones around," he said. "I mean, come on."

The spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories has greatly contributed to vaccine hesitancy among Americans, mostly members of the Republican party. However, the Biden administration is still working to get Americans vaccinated.

mult variants spreading b/c of vaxxers

south Dakota COVID cases explode after Sturgis motorcycle rally

Sarah K. Burris Raw Story

August 26, 2021

For the second year in a row, the Sturgis motorcycle rally has become a super-spreader event. In the 14 days since the rally, Meade County has had more than 1,500 percent increase in case

tested pos after superspreader fundraiser?!

. Abbott takes aggressive step to close a loophole in his vaccine mandate ban

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

August 26, 2021

**Texas' Republican Governor Greg Abbott**, still recovering from contracting COVID-19 and still in atight re-election campaign on Wednesday changed his executive order banning coronavirus vaccine mandate....

no lnx vid

Hilarious Jordan Klepper report exposes low-information anti-vaxxers: 'Those are diametrically opposed ideologies'

Alex Henderson August 24, 2021

In New York City, far-right anti-vaxxers and coronavirus deniers are furious with Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has ordered all public school employees in New York City to be vaccinated for COVID-19 and has mandated proof of vaccination for certain public indoor activities such as dining in restaurants. Comedian Jordan Klepper spoke to some of those anti-vaxxers for Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," showing just how ridiculous they can be.

At one of the anti-vaxxer protests against de Blasio, Klepper documented a heated disagreement between anti-vaxxers and proponents of vaccination. One of the pro-vaxxers noted that Florida Gov. Ron De Santis and Sen. Ted Cruz — two far-right MAGA Republicans who have fought against public health measures — "have both been vaccinated." And a badly uninformed anti-vaxxer replied, "Bullshit."

Jordan Klepper vs. anti-vax protesters in NYC https://t.co/PC2dCMZoDF

— The Daily Show (@The Daily Show) 1629763260.0

One of the anti-vaxxers Klepper interviewed was Vish Burra, vice president of the New York Young Republican Club and an ally of far-right Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida. When Burra argued that the United States' Founding Fathers would not support vaccine mandates, Klepper pointed out that the first U.S. president, George Washington, "had a vaccine mandate." And Burra responded, "I love the war, but at the end of the day, we are the ones who have to deal with what is going on in America today."

Another anti-vaxxer told Klepper, "I try not to argue facts" when he made an argument for vaccination.

Klepper noted some of the absurd contradictions in the anti-vaxxers' arguments, asking a woman in a "Fuck cancel culture" t-shirt, "Maybe you can help me out. I've seen signs that say vaccine mandates are fascism, and also, signs that say vaccine mandates are communism. Which one is it?" When she replied, "It's both," Klepper explained, "Those are diametrically opposed ideologies."

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san jose nyc and san fran req proof vax to go to bar, sports, rest, sj nazi BS 821

https://www.alternet.org/2021/08/south-carolina-school-board-covid/ nAZI CONC CAMPS

trump Jr. mocked for tweet claiming troops refusing vaccine will get 're-education'

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

August 26, 2021

**Donald Trump Jr.** is being mocked after retweeting a post from the far right wing website The Daily Caller that claims troops refusing the Military's mandatory coronavirus vaccination program will go through "re...

blinken US mil will require? EULA about to be superceded?

BAD TRINITY

https://www.alternet.org/2021/08/fox-news-media/

iam sorry to report I've had more than one conversation with progressives who, despite being savvy and well-read, are under the mistaken impression that Fox News has seen the light and has started to promote the COVID-19 vaccine. I've even witnessed speculation that Rupert Murdoch, who is himself vaccinated, had a come-to-Jesus meeting with the Fox News brass about the wisdom of encouraging their own audience to contract a dangerous disease. And while I always enjoy a cheeky opportunity to tell folks they should be reading my work more, overall, it's distressing to see that people are buying into the myth that Fox News has "pivoted" to being pro-vaccine.

But can you blame folks for believing this? Someone who prides themselves on a responsible, fact-based diet of mainstream media sources like CNN, NBC News and NPR likely got exposed in mid-to-late July to misleading stories hyping an out-of-context clip of Fox News host Sean Hannity saying, "I believe in the science of vaccination" and urging viewers to "take COVID seriously." The clip also got shared widely on social media.

Everyone likes a "scared straight" story, and it just felt goodto believe conservatives were on the verge of giving up this anti-vaccination nonsense. Unforutantely, the story was B.S.

As Iand reporters who cover right wing media for Media Matters and Vox pointed out at the time, Hannity's show that night was not only bookmarked by two other shows — Laura Ingraham's and Tucker Carlson's — that openly discouraged vaccination, but his supposedly "pro-vaccine" comments came in the middle of a segment that overall portrayed vaccines as dangerous and a threat to freedom. Even in the edited clip, Hannity instructed his viewers to "research like crazy," which is**a common anti-vaxx rhetorical trick**. As with creationists claiming they want to "teach the controversy," it's a way to seem reasonable while slyly directing people to engage conspiracy theories and suggesting those conspiracy theories are on equal footing, credibility-wise, as scientific fact. **As Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times** wrote, Hannity was basically "encouraging listeners to expose themselves to the wide variety of anti-vax conspiracy mongering accessible on social media via 'research.'"

But in case there was any doubt, a perusal of Hannity's programming in the weeks since his supposed conversion shows that, actually, Hannity is still largely focused on stoking confusion, spreading misinformation, and portraying vaccination efforts as a liberal conspiracy against his audience. As Media Matters documented on Tuesday, Hannity gave an entire hour of his radio show over to two anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists — men who use phrases like "the demon needle" and "poisonous jabs." Hannity presented them falsely as medical experts to people calling in looking for advice. He also sneered at Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden's chief medical advisor, calling him "flip-flop Fauci" and declaring that his anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists were better experts. The conspiracy theorists discouraged vaccines for young people, implied that dangerous and unproven drugs are superior prevention to the vaccine, and lied about the breakthrough infection rate, implying it's high when it is not.

This in in line with the general approach to the vaccine question on Hannity's show. From the moment that his misleading "pro-vaccine" clip went viral, Hannity has aggressively downplayedthe claim that he's promoting the vaccine, declaring two days after the initial clipthat, "I'm not urging people to get the COVID-19 vaccine" and "I have never told anyone to get a vaccine." In the past few weeks, he's attacked vaccine passport programs, portrayed vaccine advocacy as "threats coming from Democrats," exaggerated the risks of breakthrough infections, and even claimed that vaccine passport programs are racist against Black people. (In reality, Black people are at a higher risk of dying of COVID-19, which is one reason why aggressive public health measures are necessary.)

A visit to Hannity's Facebook page is more of the same. It features a post mocking New York City mayor Bill De Blasio for supposedly playing doctor by instituting a vaccine passport system, **Blames undocumented immigrants for the COVID-19 spread** when the medical establishment is quite clear that the problem is willfully unvaccinated people, and celebrates Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is selling merchandise mocking vaccine advocates and whose state is paying the price for his idiocy with some of the highest rates of COVID-19 in the country.

Overall, Hannity viewers get a strong message that vaccines are ineffective, dangerous, and getting one is just giving into those damn Democrats. And his firehose of anti-vaccination demagoguery is in line with the rest of Fox News, which continues to take the stance that vaccines are "a menace", ineffective, and that refusing vaccination is a good way to prove one's right wing bona fides.

And yet, this notion that the network has changed its tune has become received wisdom in much of the mainstream media.

Googling "Hannity vaccines" turns up a darkly funny mix of Fox News headlines demonizing vaccination and mainstream media headlines praising Fox News for being pro-vaccination. One of those more recent ones, from Morning Consult, even announces, "Fox News Personalities Started to Promote COVID-19 Vaccines. Viewers Have Taken Notice." The article declares that "some conservative media personalities have gone all in on vaccines," falsely citing Hannity as an example. It credits this supposed shift in messaging for the fact that vaccine "reluctance fell to an all-time low this week among adults who watch Fox News: 27 percent of viewers now say they probably or definitely won't get vaccinated, down from 30 percent the week before and a high of 37 percent in mid-March." That's certainly an improvement, but hard to say if Fox News is really the cause, since their much-ballyhooed "shift" is an illusion propped up to bamboozle the mainstream media and not actually representative of the vaccine-negative messaging their audience actually gets. The comments from his fans on Facebook make quite clear what message they're getting, and it's definitely not that vaccination is good and that unvaccinated people are the cause of the current surge. Instead, it's fear-mongering about the shots, blaming immigrants and not the unvaccinated, and comparing vaccine passports and mandates to Nazi Germany.

As the New York Times reports, fears of the delta variant are also driving a lot of red state Americans to get the shot, clearly deciding that sticking it to the liberals isn't worth getting sick over. The article also points out that "employers and universities have started requiring the shots to return to work and class." Even the phrase "pandemic of the unvaccinated," which is being heavily (and accurately) promoted by the White House and the Centers for Disease Control, likely deserves credit for underscoring to the unvaccinated that it's they, not hated liberals, who are paying the price for listening to Fox News.

So this is probably not a matter of one pro-vaccine Hannity clip in a sea of anti-vaccine messaging changing minds. It's just that even the most devout death cults eventually have some members who start to question the wisdom of sacrificing themselves for some dumb ideology. Let's hope that the number of Fox News fans deciding they have their limits only continues to rise.

someone says freeDUMB just assertion of white male xian priviledge

Rand Paul tells vaccinated Americans to 'mind your own business'

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

August 05, 2021

**U.S. Senator Rand Paul** blasted millions of Americans who are fully vaccinated, telling them to "mind your own business" after complaining about those who say they don't want to eat in restaurants where everyone...

robt reich? pts out that gop used to be anti- reg, let decisions be made local, free mkt but then pass laws against local mask and cruise ships petri dish req vax

internet slams 'homicidal sociopath' Desantis as Florida Gov. lashes out over questions about kids in COVID ICU

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

August 05, 2021

**Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis** is waging the opposite of a charm offensive, lashing out at reporters and even President Joe Biden any time questions are asked about the coronavirus pandemic...

robt reich? pts out that gop used to be anti- reg, let decisions be made local, free mkt but then pass laws against local mask and cruise ships petri dish req vax

internet slams 'homicidal sociopath' Desantis as Florida Gov. lashes out over questions about kids in COVID ICU

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

August 05, 2021

hang doc

https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/anti-vax/

https://252f2edd-1c8b-49f5-9bb2-cb57bb47e4ba.filesusr.com/ugd/f4d9b9_b7cedc0553604720b7137f8663366ee5.pdf

Disinformation Dozen are responsible for up to 65% of antivaccine content At the outset of this research, we identified a dozen individuals who appeared to be extremely influential creators of digital anti-vaccine content. These individuals were selected either because they run anti-vaccine social media accounts with large numbers of followers, because they produce high volumes of anti-vaccine content or because their growth was accelerating rapidly at the outset of our research in February. Full profiles of each are available at the end of this report.

Joseph Mercola 2. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. 3. Ty and Charlene Bollinger 4. Sherri Tenpenny 5. Rizza Islam 6. Rashid Buttar 7. Erin Elizabeth 8. Sayer Ji 9. Kelly Brogan 10. Christiane Northrup 11. Ben Tapper 12. Kevin Jenkins

TheDisinformation Dozen are responsible for up to 65% of anti-vaccine contentOur analysis of over 812,000 posts extracted from Facebook and Twitter between 1 February and 16 March 2021 shows that 65 percent of anti-vaccine content is attributable to the Disinformation Dozen...

...Our previous report, The Disinformation Dozen, found that up to 65% of anti-vaccine content on social media originates from just 12 individuals, was raised with social media company CEOs at a Congressional hearing on 25 March 2021. The findings of the report were also raised with Twitter, Facebook and Instagram by Senators Klobuchar and Luján, by Senator Warner and 12 state attorneys general. • Social media platforms have not taken action on the Disinformation Dozen: ten remain on Facebook and Twitter, and nine remain on Instagram. • In the month since publication of the Disinformation Dozen report, 105 posts from the accounts remaining on social media have breached the platforms’ stated policies for disinformation.

They include posts falsely linking Covid vaccines to thousands of deaths, conspiracies claiming COVID was lab-engineered, posts describing masks on youngsters as “child abuse”, and posts suggesting that the vaccine makes women infertile. •

The Disinformation Dozen – including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Joseph Mercola, and Ty and Charlene Bollinger – have repeatedly violated Facebook, Instagram and Twitter’s policies. While some have been removed from a single platform, most remain active on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. • We estimate that the anti-vaccine disinformation posted by these 12 individuals and their organisations in the past month has been seen up to 29 million times. • Facebook, Instagram and Twitter must do what they promised and remove the remaining accounts of the Disinformation Doz...

:{disinformation Dozen:

The Sequel}:

How Big Tech is failing to act on leading anti-vaxxers despite bipartisan calls from Congress

Appearing before Congress in March, tech CEOs promised to act on twelve anti-vaxxers who are responsible for almost two-thirds of anti-vaccine content circulating on social media. One month on, our report shows that Big Tech has failed to act, allowing the spread of vaccine disinformation that has been viewed up to 29 million times.

an 721

no lnx

The New York Times profiles 'most influential' purveyor of online COVID vaccine misinformation

Dartagnan and Daily Kos July 25, 2021

Many of us who maintain a social media presence have at least one acquaintance, "Facebook friend" or real-life, actual friend who has in the past year shared some type of official-sounding, medical jargon-laden post questioning the value of the COVID-19 vaccines — or worse, directly asserting or implying that such vaccines are ineffective, harmful, deadly, or will lead to untold health problems.

https://252f2edd-1c8b-49f5-9bb2-cb57bb47e4ba.filesusr.com/ugd/f4d9b9_750e5af82aea4920a270b1c5a8b094c2.pdf

According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a U.S./UK non-profit dedicated to fighting online disinformation and hate, nearly two-thirds of the anti-vaccine propaganda peddled in online forums and social media can be traced to exactly twelve individuals, colloquially labelled the "Disinformation Dozen." If you are someone who spends a significant time in social media forums, the chances are high that you have seen, scrolled through or otherwise had some awareness of their activity online, be it in your local school board's Facebook feed or other community sounding boards where supposedly informed individuals trade opinions and information.

According to the New York Times, and as confirmed in the CCDH's comprehensive report profiling these individuals, the number one purveyor of this vaccine misinformation is a gentleman named Joseph Mercola, described by the Times as an osteopathic physician. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he currently headquarters his company in the state of Florida, which, as USA Today's Nada Hassanein illustrates, is rapidly emerging as the nation's predominant "hotspot" for spiking COVID-19 infections, almost entirely among those who have refused to be vaccinated against the virus.

On Saturday the Times' Sheera Frankel profiled Dr. Mercola and cited multiple examples of his work, beginning with an article he published that appeared on Facebook in February. As Frankel reports, that article, clocking in at 3400 words, "declared coronavirus vaccines were "a medical fraud" and said the injections did not prevent infections, provide immunity or stop transmission of the disease." The article (now deleted by Facebook) purportedly claimed that COVID-19 vaccines "alter[ed] your genetic coding, turning you into a viral protein factory that has no off-switch." Spread by other anti-vaccine activists and translated into multiple languages, these assertions eventually reached 400,000 Facebook viewers.

Mercola, described as an "internet-savvy entrepreneur who employs dozens," has, according to Frankel's reporting, published approximately 600 articles on Facebook since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Mercola is the pioneer of the anti-vaccine movement," said Kolina Koltai, a researcher at the University of Washington who studies online conspiracy theories. "He's a master of capitalizing on periods of uncertainty, like the pandemic, to grow his movement."

As the vaccination effort in this country approaches what can charitably be described as peak acceptance, the focus of many in the media has justifiably been on such political propaganda outlets such as Fox News, whose motivation for disseminating such lies can be attributed to political ends. It has become increasingly obvious, however, that many of those who refuse to be vaccinated (and thus contribute to the spread of COVID-19 through mutations such as the current delta variant) are having their political preconceptions against vaccinations reinforced through pseudo-medical misinformation they read online.

Several of the individuals profiled in the USA Today article (linked above via Yahoo News) illustrate the huge role social media has taken in fueling and perpetuating the COVID-19 pandemic in this country. As one physician in Florida's Calhoun county -- one of the epicenters of the recent surge in the state's COVID cases, with a current vaccination rate of only 23% -- observes, it is virtually impossible to dissuade people from believing something they read on social media about these vaccines, particularly when it carries the imprimatur of medical expertise.

"We're a small community. We all know people who passed away from COVID. When someone passes away, it's people we know," Davis said. "But I still don't feel like that overrides what people have seen on social media."

Davis has heard it all – from the myths that the vaccine will turn people magnetic to the virus being a hoax. She tries to quell fears, countering the false claims with research and data but patients often shut the conversation down.

The responses she and other medical providers in Florida hear from people who refuse the vaccine typically include assertions that the vaccines are untested, "experimental", and that there is too much contradictory information about them online. Significantly, some of these opinions are being influenced by medical providers themselves; one gentleman quoted in the USA Today article was told by his wife, a registered nurse, that "the vaccines hadn't been studied enough."

As Frankel's article points out, the general scientific and medical illiteracy most of the US population provides the perfect breeding ground for purveyors and profiteers of unreliable information. Mercola is a case in point:

[R]ather than directly stating online that vaccines don't work, Dr. Mercola's posts often ask pointed questions about their safety and discuss studies that other doctors have refuted. Facebook and Twitter have allowed some of his posts to remain up with caution labels, and the companies have struggled to create rules to pull down posts that have nuance.

According to Frankel's article, Mercola, who originally practiced in Illinois, began in the 1990's to shift his practice towards alternative medicine and promoting natural health cures and treatments. A prolific author, he has even had a book on the New York Times' bestseller list. As his fame (and wealth) have increased, he has developed a multinational presence through various consulting companies and offices. His selling tactics, bolstered by a Facebook following of over 1.7 million (he has a Spanish language page with one million followers as well), resort to a routine pattern, according to Frankel:

It starts with making unproven and sometimes far-fetched health claims, such as that spring mattresses amplify harmful radiation, and then selling products online — from vitamin supplements to organic yogurt — that he promotes as alternative treatments.

As Frankel reports, both Twitter and Facebook have taken down and issued cautions about several of Mercola's postings, He has been sued by the Federal Trade Commission for purveying disinformation regarding the cancer-reducing qualities of tanning beds, and he has received a warning from the FDA regarding his claims of about the efficacy of vitamin treatments in treating COVID-19 infection, and for selling unapproved health products. None of these actions appear to have dissuaded him from continuing to post misinformation. Frankel cites a recent example of Mercola continuing to raise questions about the efficacy of the vaccines through his social media feed.

As noted above, Mercola is hardly the only one responsible for vaccine denialism; he is simply has the biggest audience. It's clear though, from what is happening on the ground in Florida, for example, with the widespread refusal among a susceptible, medically ignorant population to accept these vaccines (even in the face of increased infections and deaths), that this country faces an almost perfect storm of disinformation.

Fear is indeed the "mind-killer." By cynically downplaying the seriousness of the pandemic over the past year and a half, Republicans like Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and their allies in the US. Congress and state legislatures have fostered an environment where people's fears and doubts take precedence over science. Those fears and doubts are then exponentially amplified and reinforced by what they read on social media. The anti-vaccine movement has taken full advantage of this unprecedented opportunity to sow doubt and regurgitate false or misleading information.

What we are witnessing right now in this country is the predictable outcome of these two insidious, destructive, and wholly complementary narratives, almost in real time.

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/watch-republicans-exposed-for-flip-flopping-on-vaccines-as-soon-as-trump-left-office/

https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/the-right-wing/

1 in 3 microchip

721 badash ncrm

for weeks **Fox News** has been ramping up its anti-vaxx attacks on the U.S. public, even using medical doctors and its own hosts to spread false claims, disinformation, and doubt about the COVID-19 vaccines.

On Monday morning in a surprise move one Fox News host actually urged Americans to get vaccinated – to the anger of another, **Brian Kilmeade**.

"If you didn't get a vaccination, that's your choice," Kilmeade told "Fox & Friends" viewers Monday morning. "And if you did, like I did, and they did," he added, revealing the vaccination status of his two co-hosts, "and maybe you did, then you should not wear a mask."

"And if you didn't" get the coronavirus vaccine, "and you want to go cliff diving this weekend, you don't have to check with me. It's a little dangerous, but I'm not going to judge you."

"And if you go and put yourself in danger, if you feel that this is not something for you," Kilmeade said of getting vaccinated, "don't do it, but don't affect my life."

Kilmeade revealed to Fox News viewers that he has yet to understand that anyone who is not vaccinated poises a potential threat to not only those who have yet to get vaccinated, but to those who have – as breakthrough cases are being seen given that the vaccine is close to but not 100% effective. They also create a greater likelihood of new and potentially even more deadly coronavirus variants will develop.

"99% of the people who are dying from COVID are unvaccinated," co-host Steve Doocy interjected, as Kilmeade appeared to roll his eyes.

"That's their choice," Kilmeade, a 57-year old father of three insisted.

"They don't want to die," retorted Doocy, in a rare smack-down of his colleague. "So they are, the administration and the government are saying, we need the mask mandate to protect the unvaccinated."

Kilmeade, who has written five books on the Founders and American history, almost prayerfully clasped his hands together and declared falsely, "That's not their job, it's not their job to protect anybody!"

--==

//? any russian involvement?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/gop-2653812354/

Since the onset of the pandemic, Republicans have viewed the coronavirus through a relatively different lens than the rest of the country. As the months progressed, not only did their political views shape their belief systems about many aspects of science and the virus but also their opposition to the vaccine.

Although former President Donald Trump has adamantly demanded credit for the COVID vaccine, ironically Republicans have been the most apprehensive to get vaccinated despite blindly following the former president on many other key issues.

According to The New York Times, the Republican "wave of opposition to COVID vaccines" has accelerated in recent months due to the onslaught of **misinformation**perpetuated by conservative, right-wing news outlets. In fact, some Republican lawmakers have even embraced conspiracy theories that have influenced their push-back against initiatives pitched in order to improve vaccination rates across various states.

"A wave of opposition to Covid vaccines has risen within the Republican Party, as conservative news outlets produce a steady diet of misinformation about vaccines and some G.O.P. lawmakers invite anti-vaccination conspiracy theorists to testify in statehouses and Congress. ["expert" woman magney key on skin]With very little resistance from party leaders, these Republican efforts have elevated falsehoods and doubts about vaccinations from the fringes of American life to the center of our political conversation."

For example, in the state of Tennessee, Republican lawmakers have managed to deter public health officials' efforts to get children vaccinated across the board. From the COVID vaccine to routine inoculations, the lawmakers' guidance prohibits health officials from sending reminders to students. Instead, lawmakers are wanting those reminders rerouted to parents.

On July 13, Tennessee's Public Health Department [head fired?!] spokesperson Sarah Tanksley explained how the department is making changes to incorporate lawmakers' new guidance, according to The Tennessean. She said, "the agency's online vaccine scheduling system also sends out automated reminder emails, but the agency is working to alter the system so reminders never go to minors and are instead rerouted to their parents."

Currently, Republican lawmakers are pushing back against the Biden administration's push to implement a door-to-door vaccination strategy in order to get low-income Americans vaccinated.

"Think about what those mechanisms could be used for," Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) said condemning the Biden administration's proposed initiative as he baselessly added, "They could then go door-to-door to take your guns. They could go door-to-door to take your Bibles."

However, a small number of Republican lawmakers have pushed back against the widespread opposition to vaccines. "We don't control conservative media figures so far as I know — at least I don't," Sen. Mitt Romney(R-Utah) told the publication. "That being said, I think it's an enormous error for anyone to suggest that we shouldn't be taking vaccines."

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/gop-2653811907/

"Death Wish" was a hit movie in 1974, starring Charles Bronson as a violent vigilante. Now it's the primary motivation for the Republican Party. As of this week, in 13 states you have a legal right not merely to have a death wish but to inflict it on others by refusing to get vaccinated against COVID. In 21 more states, bills have been introduced that would limit any requirements that individuals produce evidence that they have been vaccinated. In six of those states, the laws specify that schools, including public primary and secondary schools and public colleges, cannot require coronavirus vaccines, even while the same schools continue to require vaccinations against whooping cough, polio, measles and chicken pox.

"It seems to be kind of a mixed bag of all the things going on here — there's the limiting of requiring proof of vaccine, there's the limiting of requiring the vaccination itself, the prohibition of the mandates. So, there's a lot," Lori Tremmel Freeman, chief executive officer of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, told CNN.

These bills are being called "vaccine freedom laws," as in, you have a right to be free of the vaccines against COVID. What's not a mixed bag is the political leaning of the states. All the states where such laws are in effect are controlled by Republican governors and legislatures: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.

You could call them the death wish states, or the Kevorkian states, after the infamous Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who was jailed for eight years after assisting a man to commit suicide who suffered from ALS, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig's disease. So if you want to enjoy your freedom to catch COVID and possibly die, those 13 states are the states for you. In six of them, you are guaranteed the freedom to subject your unvaccinated children to the virus as well.

At the same time the Republican Party is moving to protect your right to refuse the COVID vaccine, rates of infection are on the rise across the country. According to Johns Hopkins University, the new case rate is 10 percent higher in 46 states than it was last week. According to CNN, "In 31 states, _{new cases this past week are at least 50% higher }_than new cases the previous week."

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told CNN that more than 99 percent of deaths from Covid in June were unvaccinated patients. CNN reports that "the vast majority of new Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths … are among unvaccinated people, doctors say."

The Delta variant of the virus is causing more infections among children and young adults than before. In Missouri, where just 39 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated, the situation is so bad that the CDC and FEMA have sent teams of specialists to the state to help stop the spread of the disease."We've been seeing a much younger population," Dr. Harold Jarvis, an emergency physician in Springfield, Missouri, told CNN. "We're seeing a lot of people in their 30s, 40s, early 50s. We're seeing some teenagers and some pediatric patients as well."

Missouri is one of the states that has passed a law forbidding the requirement of a COVID vaccine or evidence of vaccination such as a so-called vaccine passport.

In Mississippi, where the vaccination rate is only 33 percent, seven children are in intensive care with COVID disease and two are on ventilators, according to the state health officer, Thomas Dobbs. On Monday, Dobbs tweeted "Pretty much ALL cases in MS are Delta variant right now. Vast majority of cases/hospitalizations/deaths UNVACCINATED." By Wednesday, Dobbs was tweeting that the state had suffered a "Big jump," and reported 641 new cases and five deaths in one day, along with 36 new outbreaks of the virus in long-term care facilities such as nursing homes and rehabilitation centers.

Mississippi has three bills pending before the state legislature that would prohibit issuing a "vaccine passport" and prohibit businesses and state facilities from requiring proof of vaccination.. One bill has passed both houses of the legislature and is awaiting the governor's signature.

But it's in Tennessee that promotion of the Republican death wish has reached its nadir. On Monday, the state fired its top immunization official for her efforts to get teenagers vaccinated against the COVID virus. "This is about a partisan issue around covid vaccines and around people in power in Tennessee not believing in the importance in vaccinating the people, and so they terminated the person in charge of getting it done," Michelle Fiscus told the Washington Post. She was director of all immunization programs at the Tennessee Department of Health. "The government is sacrificing public health to be in the good graces of our legislators; it's a horrid dereliction of duty," she said on Monday. The Tennessean, the state's largest daily newspaper, reported on Tuesday that the state would stop promoting vaccinations for all teenagers, and would cease sending out reminders for teenagers who had received one vaccination to get their second dose.

That's more than a death wish. With 99 percent of all deaths from Covid among the unvaccinated, that is more like the organized and state-sanctioned killing of children.

I've been reading these stories all week and trying to figure out what's driving this madness. The evidence is out there for everyone to see. There can't be a state legislator or governor in this country who isn't aware that virtually all people who come down with COVID today, and 98 or 99 percent of those who die from the disease, are unvaccinated. They have to be aware of the fact, and it is a fact, that if you want to avoid being hospitalized with this disease and dying from it, a vaccination will not only help, it will absolutely prevent both outcomes.

They're not just standing up and speaking out against the COVID vaccines, they are passing laws with the express purpose of making it easier for people to refuse vaccinations. In some cases, these laws are specifically aimed at school-age children. It's one thing to put your adult neighbors and employees and fellow workers at risk. It's quite another to put not only your children, but allchildren at greater risk of getting sick with a virus that, with the spread of the Delta Variant, is showing signs of being deadly to children as well as adults.

The only answer I've been able to come up with is the obvious one. It's about politics, and not just any politics. These Republican death wish laws have one purpose: they are designed to make President Biden's push to get all Americans vaccinated fail. Republicans at the CPAC gathering last week in Dallas were laughing at references to Biden's goal of vaccinating 70 percent of the population by the Fourth of July. One speaker received an ovation when he told the crowd, "The government was hoping they could sucker 90% of the population into getting vaccinated. And it isn't happening."

"The government," of course, is no longer being run by the man the whole CPAC conference was designed to celebrate, former president Donald Trump. It's run by the man who beat him, Joe Biden, and the Republican Party seems determined to do as much damage to his vaccination program as they can, even if that means enacting laws that will surely cause more people to get sick from the virus and die.

Republicans have become the death wish party. Unsatisfied with passing laws to take away people's right to vote, they have moved on to passing laws that will, without a doubt, take away people's right to life.

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/gop/

After months of sliding downwards, COVID-19 transmission rates are now beginning to creep back up.The reasons for the backslide given in the media are often biological — lots of talk about how the delta variant is more contagious, for instance — but this surge was much more political. From the moment that President Joe Biden stepped into the White House, Republican leaders have understood that he will be blamed if the pandemic isn't brought under control. And so they've set out to sabotage his efforts by encouraging their followers to risk their own health and reject getting vaccines in an effort to get the COVID-19 numbers up.

The GOP's pro-virus campaign has been wildly successful.

While 86% of Democrats have been vaccinated, only 45% of Republicans have gotten a shot. Nearly all of the currently unvaccinated Republicans flat-out refuse to do it ever. So COVID-19 is quickly becoming a regional disease, with hotspots concentrated in deeply Republican areas of the country. And while the delta variant is more contagious, the main reason it's spreading is because of low vaccination rates, as 99.7% of new cases have been among the unvaccinated.

I've been writing about this Republican scheming to use the bodies of their own people as disease vectors for months, but only in recent days has the mainstream media started to wake up to this grim reality.

, Erin Burnett played a supercut featuring Republican leaders like Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado screeching "don't come knocking on my door with your Fauci ouchie" and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin falsely suggeting the shot kills people. On the same day, another CNN anchor, Chris Cuomo, got angry with Republican Rep. Michael Burgess of Texas for being "OK with this kind of jackassery that has absolutely led to a deficiency among Republican people in this country taking the vaccine." There's been a lot of attention paid to Republicans shutting down vaccine outreach to young people in Tennessee. The Washington Post released a video showing that Republicans who supported the vaccine while Donald Trump was in office immediately switched to dissing the shot the second the president was a Democrat: [vid]

why did it take so long for the mainstream media to admit that Republican leaders are intentionally encouraging infection? As has happened repeatedly in the past, it comes back to a reluctance to accept that Republicans really are as bad as they seem. It was just plain easier to imagine that those who said that Republicans were pro-virus are merely #resistance hysterics until the numbers made the truth undeniable.

But that Republicans really are terrible enough to spread disease for political gain is unsurprising to those who have been paying attention to the sexual health wars. For decades, Republicans have done everything they can to discourage preventive sexual health care, including cutting off access to birth control and condoms and lying about the usefulness of various methods. The claim was that this was all justified to promote "abstinence," but the result, time and again, was just more disease and unwanted child-bearing.

Megan Carpentier at Dame Magazine took a deep dive on Wednesday on the Republican war on a vaccine for HPV, a sexually transmitted virus that causes many kinds of cancer, most notably cervical cancer. Pressuring parents to forgo this vaccine for their kids has been wildly successful at keeping preventable cancer rates high, Carpentier writes, as "the American Cancer Society predicts that 14,480 people will be diagnosed with invasive cervical cancer in 2021" and "more than 4,000 people will die from cervical cancer this year."

Republicans happily promote policies to kill these people because they think it serves their political interests. Spinning their followers up about the supposed evils of women's sexual freedom has been the bread and butter of right-wing politics for decades: These women's lives are being sacrificed for conservative propaganda.

It's the same story with all other sexually transmitted infections, especially HIV, which conservatives have long exploited to stigmatize LGBTQ people. And the same story with unwanted pregnancy and childbirth, which is useful to conservatives who want to demagogue about how girls today are a bunch of sluts and feminism is the reason. They need people to get sick and get pregnant against their will, so, with great deliberation, Republicans embraced policies and rhetoric designed to get people to forgo simple prevention measures. They slash funding for sexual health care every chance they get, often redirecting it to groups that will lie to people about the efficacy of contraception. In public schools, health classes across the country have long been forced to distribute anti-contraception propaganda. When the Affordable Care Act included copay-free coverage for contraception — a measure that, as predicted, reduced unintended pregnancy and abortion rates — Republicans lost their minds with rage. And they will lie and lie and lie about the supposed dangers of contraception and other preventive care.

Trump's vice president, Mike Pence, was deeply invested in the spread-disease-and-despair agenda, back when the targets were mostly women and LGBTQ people. In 2002, as a congressman from Indiana, Pence gave an interview where he falsely claimed that "condoms are a very, very poor protection against sexually transmitted diseases." Later, when Pence was governor of Indiana, he gutted the HIV prevention systems in the state. When this predictably led to a surge in HIV transmissions, Pence fought against every effort to curb the infection rate, ensuring that the virus spread for months before he reluctantly did anything about it.

Republicans justify this anti-prevention stance by claiming they promote sexual abstinence. The goal itself is unworthy — the government should not be in the business of pushing anti-sex religious dogma on the public — but, as Pence's experience in Indiana shows, it doesn't even work. All anti-prevention policies do is lead people to have unprotected sex. Abstinence-only programs in high schools are linked with higher teen pregnancy rates. Cutting contraception funding doesn't lead to women forgoing sex, but it does lead to a surge in unintended childbirth. And, as Carpentier's piece shows, replacing life-saving prevention tools like condoms and HPV vaccines with a "just say no" lecture leads to people dying.

Republicans know this. They have seen the studies. They, like Pence, watched over and over as undermining prevention measures just leads to more disease and unwanted pregnancy. They just keep doing it anyway. After a certain point, it becomes hard to deny that they simply don't care if people are suffering. On the contrary, sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies serve the GOP agenda, because all that misery can be exploited for propaganda about the supposed evils of modernity, feminism, and gay rights. Republicans have a long history of hurting people's health to serve a larger political agenda. So of course they were well-prepared to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic and encourage disease transmission for political gain. Anyone who watched Republican responses to sexually transmitted infections and unplanned pregnancy knows this playbook well. The only thing that's changed now is that they're doing it to their own people.

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/gop-vaccines/

thom h

Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a CNN Medical Analyst, said last week, "A surprising amount of death will occur soon..." But why, when the deadly Delta variant is sweeping the world, are Republicans and their media warning people not to get vaccinated?

There's always a reason. People don't do things — particularly things involving a lot of effort and a need for consistency — without a reason. It just doesn't happen. No matter how bizarre, twisted or dysfunctional the reason may be, there's always a reason.

Dr. Anthony Fauci told Jake Tapper on CNN last Sunday, "I don't have a really good reason why this [unwillingness to get vaccinated] is happening."

But even if he can't think of a reason why Republicans would trash talk vaccination and people would believe them, it's definitely there.

Which is why it's important to ask a couple of simple questions that all point to the actual reason why Republicans and their media are discouraging people from getting vaccinated:

Why did Trump get vaccinated in secret after Joe Biden won the election and his January 6th coup attempt failed?

Why are Fox "News" personalities discouraging people from getting vaccinated while refusing to say if they and the people they work with have been protected by vaccination?

Why was one of the biggest applause lines at CPAC: "They were hoping — the government was hoping — that they could sort of sucker 90% of the population into getting vaccinated and it isn't happening!"

4. Why are Republican legislators in states around the country pushing laws that would "ban" private businesses from asking to see proof of vaccination status (they call it "banning vaccine passports")?

Why, when President Biden suggested sending volunteers door-to-door into low-vaccination communities to let people know how and where they could get vaccinated, did rightwing media go nuts about "government thugs" coming to your door to "force" vaccines on you?

Why are about half of all the Republicans in Congress refusing to say if they've gotten a vaccine or not? For that matter, why do the CPAC speakers who are trashing vaccines refuse to say if they're vaccinated or not?

7. Why would a Newsmax hosttrash-talk vaccines saying, "I feel like a vaccination in a weird way is just generally kind of going against nature"?

Why did Republican Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota downplay the dangers of Covid last week by bragging that she never shut her state down(and Ron DeSantis did) when SD has 230 Covid deaths per 100,000 people while similar low-population states like Vermont and Oregon are at 41 and 66 deaths per 100,000 respectively?

I hope I'm proven wrong on this, but the only possible explanation I can see for all this activity that seems so well-coordinated and largely consistent is that they all think there's something in it for them. And what might that be?

Political power. And, of course, the eventual wealth that often comes with political power, particularly corrupt power. Retired Republicans make a *lot*of money.

Put simply, I believe these Republicans are trying to promote outbreaks of Covid in America to soften or damage Joe Biden's red-hot economy on the assumption that if the economy tanks then people will vote out Democrats and vote in Republicans in 2022 and 2024.

As Pat Buchanan wrote today: "Are the Democrats headed for their Little Bighorn, with President Joe Biden as Col. Custer? The wish, you suggest, is father to the thought."

They're not just willing to let tens or hundreds of thousands of Americans die just to win the next two elections, they're actively encouraging that outcome.

Deathis their electoral strategy.

Is there any other possible explanation?

They're not stupid (although they're banking on their audience being, at least, poorly informed) and most have college degrees (and Lauren Boebert finally got her GED). Even if a few of them fell down the Facebook or YouTube rabbit hole into anti-vaxxer territories, they still have no shortage of actual medical experts and staffers who know how to use Google available to them.

It's remotely possible they just hate and want to damage the US, and a few who are pushing vaccine "hesitancy" like Ron Johnson and John Kennedy recently celebrated the 4th of July in Moscow, but it's unlikely that they'd take the chance of coordinating with a foreign power to kill Americans (even if much of the foreign troll activity on social media is also trashing vaccines to American social media users).

A bizarre faux masculinity could be behind it, the way Trump tried to promote the idea that only wimps wear masks, but, seriously, do you really think these folks are taking fashion/appearance tips from an obese geriatric guy with a huge comb-over who wears absurd amounts of makeup, contacts, men's diapers and false teeth? And what's "masculine" about slowly dying by drowning in your own snot? Or becoming unable to get an erection, as happens to a significant number of men who get Covid?

It's certainly not fear of, or concern about, the vaccine itself; whether they'll admit it or not, virtually all of these Republicans and media stars telling people to be afraid of getting a shot have been secretly vaccinated themselves, just like Trump and his family were in January. As CNN Medical Analyst, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, said, "Over 100 members of Congress, all of them GOP members, refuse to tell their constituents whether they have been vaccinated. They've all been vaccinated, every single one of those characters have been vaccinated."

This also has nothing to do with "conservative" ideology. Vaccination has been a part of the American landscape since George Washington ordered his troops inoculated against smallpox during the Revolutionary war, and Republican President Dwight Eisenhower (and his VP, Richard Nixon) had schoolchildren across the nation get the polio vaccine in the 1950s (I was one of them who lined up in school to get it and remember it well).

As California governor, Ronald Reagan oversaw a public school system that required vaccination for admission and conservatives like Bill Kristol and George W. Bush are proudly vaccinated against Covid. Mitch McConnell, who had polio as a child, said, "As a victim of polio myself, I'm a big fan of vaccinations, and if I were a parent who had a child … being subject to getting any particular disease, I would come down on the side of vaccinations." This is not about fearing or not understanding vaccines.

They're certainly not being paid by "big Pharma" to trash vaccines, and you can bet your last dollar that the billionaires who pay for big Republican events are not only themselves vaccinated but have made sure the entire staff of their multiple mansions, from the cooks to the pool boys to the masseuses and the live-in chefs are all vaccinated.

So, what's left?

Politics, and the power and money that derive from it.

The reason why Donald Trump spent much of 2020 desperately encouraging people to keep shopping and working was because he knew that when an economy collapses in the 18 months before an election, the party in power always loses.

In his desperation to get the economy back in shape, Trump even issued an executive order**forcing** mostly Black and Hispanic meat-packing and slaughterhouse employees back to work under threat of imprisonment.

But, sure enough, the economy tanked anyway and Democrats now control the White House, Senate and House of Representatives.

Thus, it appears that today's entire GOP strategy of encouraging "vaccine hesitancy" is to try to replicate that dynamic, to tank the economy, only this time in a way that works in favor of Republicans.

Encouraging Americans to die so they can win elections. That's how low today's GOP has sunk.

721 noem brag on covid fail

https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/19-republicans/

https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/fox-news-vaccines/

Fox News is moving even further toward being fully anti-vaxx.

Tuesday night on the conservative channel's "Ingraham Angle" host **Laura Ingraham** booked **Dr. Peter McCullough**, who falsely told America, "There's no reason right now, no clinical reason to go get vaccinated."

That's just plain false, according to the CDC and credible medical professionals.

"Virtually all Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths in United States are now occurring among unvaccinated individuals," White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said last week. Almost no fully vaccinated patients have been admitted to hospitals.

Ingraham herself wrongly claimed – or creatively framed – her response.

"Deaths and hospitalizations in almost everywhere is down. Way down."

That too is just plain false – hospitalizations are up.

Just look at these headlines over the past 24 hours:

Spike in hospitalizations due to Delta variant underscores need for COVID-19 vaccination, experts say

Young, unvaccinated people are being hospitalized with Covid-19 as delta variant spreads, officials warn

Covid-19 cases are surging in 46 states. In one hot spot, hospitalized patients are younger than ever, doctor says

Notice she left out the rise in coronavirus cases. The daily average of coronavirus cases has more than doubled over the past two weeks, and hospitalizations are also on the rise.

Dr. McCullough on Wednesday wrongly claimed, "the Delta variant really is not responsive at all, or protected by the vaccines."

That is a curious construction. Vaccines protect people, not viruses. And vaccine manufacturers have said the current slate of US vaccines do protect against the Delta variant.

McCullough is a cardiologist and an affiliate professor at Texas A&M College of Medicine.

He also claims "42% of 90,000 Delta cases in the UK have been vaccinated."

NCRM could find nothing that accurately substantiates that claim.

The vaccine is well over 90% effective in preventing infection, but for those who are infected after being fully inoculated, symptoms are almost always mild and do not require hospitalization. The number of fully vaccinated Americans who have died from coronavirus is infinitesimally small.

The Associated Press late last month reported "only about 150 of the more than 18,000 COVID-19 deaths in May were in fully vaccinated people. That translates to about 0.8%, or five deaths per day on average."

Dr. McCullough acknowledges to Fox News viewers there will be a "mild rise" in coronavirus Delta variant cases for vaccinated people, says those cases are "easily treatable in high risk patients," but then says, falsely: "There's no reason right now, no clinical reason to go get vaccinated."

NCRM has reached out to Dr. McCullough but did not immediately receive a response.

Watch: [TWT VID]

atch: Republicans exposed for flip-flopping on vaccines as soon ... ›

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Newsmax host dangerously declares vaccines go ‘against nature’: Diseases are ‘supposed to’ wipe out people

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement July 12, 2021

Newsmax host Rob Schmitt on Monday dangerously declared he believes vaccines go "against nature" and diseases are "supposed to wipe out a certain amount of people, and that's just kind of the way evolution goes."

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