Anti-Vaxxers and Vaccine Misinformation / Lies

[goldenvalley]

Dec 23, 2021 19:03:58 GMT LFC said:

They're getting violent. In today's wingnut world I guess it was only a matter of time.

Christopher Key, the leader of the anti-COVID-19 vaccine group “Vaccine Police,” said Wednesday he’s going to take the law into his own hands, pledging to conduct a citizen’s arrest of Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards. “I am the vaccine police,” Key said on Clay Clark’s daily show. “We have shut down pharmacists. We have shut down boards of education. And we will be arresting the governor of Louisiana on February the 7th if he does not stand down and not vaccinate the children of Louisiana.” He continued that he would conduct the arrest “out of love” because “they are trying to start a civil war, Clay, and they are coming for our children.”

On his website, Key wrote: “I was recently fired from my job of six years for being a patriot.” In August, The Washington Post reported Key threatened pharmacists with the possibility of being “executed” if they kept administering the COVID-19 vaccine. The anti-vaxxer was one of the attendees who showed up at Clark’s early December event, who also initially believed there was an anthrax outbreak released through fog machines during the gathering. (Key didn’t return The Daily Beast’s request for comment on Thursday morning.)

It's hardly his first threat of violence. He needs to be imprisoned.

Christopher Key, an Alabama-based anti-vaccine influencer, traveled to Missouri this week to "put the fear of God in these pharmacists," often with several disciples in tow, The Washington Post reported Aug. 19.

Mr. King, who has dubbed himself the "Vaccine Police," travels to cities across the country to protest COVID-19 vaccines, and he has garnered a large audience by posting daily Facebook live streams of his efforts.

He came to Missouri after being invited to an Aug. 14 rally protesting Springfield-based Mercy Hospital's COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

On Aug. 16, Mr. King and his half-dozen followers harassed pharmacists in a Springfield Walmart, repeatedly telling them they would be "executed" for their "crimes against humanity." Among his barrage of false rhetoric were repeated warnings that pharmacists were violating the Nuremberg Code by administering COVID-19 vaccines.

He captured the Walmart incident via a 33-minute Facebook live stream. Later that day, his Facebook shows he went to a nearby CVS and Walgreens.

The next day, Mr. King filmed himself confronting Steve Edwards, president and CEO of Springfield-based CoxHealth, in a parking structure. Mr. King served Mr. Edwards papers, which he said showed that Mr. Edwards had committed "crimes against humanity" by imposing a vaccine mandate at his health system.

There are plenty of unbalanced people around us who just need the right excuse to do what they want to do anyway.  Many times they do nothing, but if they are given a mission...anti-vax mandates, Trump wants me to take back America, etc...they will act.  And they are armed.

[pnwguy]

Karma would soon put him on sorryantivaxxer.com. Perhaps we should send a message to Beezlebuddy to nudge his boss.

[LFC]

Sometimes I wish stupidity had a much higher fatality rate. This is one of those times.

Anti-vaccine activists have spent the past few days spreading lies about Betty White, the beloved actress who passed away at 99 years old on Dec. 31. But contrary to internet rumors, Betty White didn’t die after getting a covid-19 booster shot.

“Betty died peacefully in her sleep at her home. People are saying her death was related to getting a booster shot three days earlier but that is not true,” White’s agent, Jeff Witjas, told Yahoo Entertainment.

“She died of natural causes. Her death should not be politicized—that is not the life she lived,” Witjas continued.

And while Witjas confirmed White died of natural causes, he did not comment to the Associated Press on whether White had ever gotten a booster shot. Either way, the covid-19 vaccines have been shown to be both safe and effective.

Anti-vaccine scumbags started the conspiracy theories almost immediately after she died, claiming White got a covid-19 booster shot on Dec. 28, just a few days before her death. Screenshots circulating on Facebook include a link to something called “Crow River Media,” where the claim appears, but there’s no evidence the original article included the claim about a booster.

The Facebook claim included a fake quote from White that reads, “Eat healthy and get all your vaccines. I just got boosted today.”

[LFC]

Darwin strikes again. Bold mine.

The CDC told the Associated Press late Thursday night that five cases of rabies had been reported in 2021. Three of the cases were detailed in a new report by CDC scientists and local health officials released Friday. Those three deaths involved people who contracted rabies in August, all from close contact with bats.

In one case, previously covered by Gizmodo, a man in his 80s in Illinois captured the bat that bit him and submitted it for testing, which confirmed the presence of rabies. But he refused the preventive treatment of a rabies vaccine along with donated antibodies. At the time, the man’s reason for refusal was unclear, but the new CDC report says he cited a fear of vaccines. Around a month later, he developed common rabies symptoms like neck pain, paralysis, an altered mental state, and difficulty swallowing, and died soon after. He was the first rabies death reported in the state in almost 70 years.

[LFC]

The anti-vaxxers and other crazed conspiracy theorists keep infiltrating parents' groups with their dangerous nonsense. These people are nuts, motivated, combative, and they'll insert their brand of insanity anywhere they think they can get an audience. Unfortunately social media has allowed them to do this much more effectively than holding up a sign in a public gathering place. The people running these groups end up tasked with having to deal with their brand of insanity.

The growing ties between Facebook’s parenting groups and the alternative health world led to what GWU researchers described as a two-sided misinfo attack. A network of under-the-radar anti-vaccine groups supplied parents with a steady stream of fake COVID facts, while pre-COVID conspiracy pages hammered their new parental audience with bogus information about chemtrails and climate change.

Zichermann said some vaccine opponents have found her on Instagram, where she makes popular parenting content. In general, she said, she opts not to engage with anti-vaccine comments. But on Facebook, she and her moderating team try to keep a balance between free expression and flame wars.

“Our rules are really clear: if you’re gonna start drama, we’re gonna end the drama,” she said. “Of course it’s going to get hyped up if anti-vaxxers come out saying this and that. We try to downplay it. We try to keep an even keel, yet strike while the iron is hot” when it comes to removing incendiary posts.

Not even parents-to-be are necessarily spared from COVID-19 misinformation. A Washington Post report last month found widespread vaccine hoaxes in the discussion sections of pregnancy apps.

“Somebody who was pregnant but had other children was asking other moms for advice on how to forge vaccine documents for their kid’s school,” one pregnancy app user told the Post.

“Most antivax and microchip conspiracy comments ive ever seen,” another pregnancy app-user tweeted.

[LFC]

NOT The Onion.

Anti-COVID-19 “Vaccine Police” leader Christopher Key has a new quarter-baked conspiracy theory for his anti-vax followers to use to cure themselves of COVID-19: Drink their own urine. “The antidote that we have seen now, and we have tons and tons of research, is urine therapy. OK, and I know to a lot of you this sounds crazy, but guys, God’s given us everything we need,” Key said in a video posted over the weekend on his Telegram account after being released from jail over a trespassing charge. “This has been around for centuries,” he added. “When I tell you this, please take it with a grain of salt,” the anti-vaccine advocate warned while saying people might now think he is “cray cray.” “Now drink urine!” he continued. “This vaccine is the worst bioweapon I have ever seen,” he concluded. “I drink my own urine!” Reached for comment by The Daily Beast on Sunday night, Key doubled down on what he calls “urine therapy” and railed against “foolish” people who took the COVID-19 vaccine, which is safe and effective.

[Bact PhD]

Jan 11, 2022 14:44:50 GMT LFC said:

NOT The Onion.

Anti-COVID-19 “Vaccine Police” leader Christopher Key has a new quarter-baked conspiracy theory for his anti-vax followers to use to cure themselves of COVID-19: Drink their own urine. “The antidote that we have seen now, and we have tons and tons of research, is urine therapy. OK, and I know to a lot of you this sounds crazy, but guys, God’s given us everything we need,” Key said in a video posted over the weekend on his Telegram account after being released from jail over a trespassing charge. “This has been around for centuries,” he added. “When I tell you this, please take it with a grain of salt,” the anti-vaccine advocate warned while saying people might now think he is “cray cray.” “Now drink urine!” he continued. “This vaccine is the worst bioweapon I have ever seen,” he concluded. “I drink my own urine!” Reached for comment by The Daily Beast on Sunday night, Key doubled down on what he calls “urine therapy” and railed against “foolish” people who took the COVID-19 vaccine, which is safe and effective.

I think a few of my brain cells died while reading this.
I couldn’t have poisoned them with good (or even bad) wine, nooo…

[goldenvalley]

Jan 11, 2022 14:44:50 GMT LFC said:

NOT The Onion.

Anti-COVID-19 “Vaccine Police” leader Christopher Key has a new quarter-baked conspiracy theory for his anti-vax followers to use to cure themselves of COVID-19: Drink their own urine. “The antidote that we have seen now, and we have tons and tons of research, is urine therapy. OK, and I know to a lot of you this sounds crazy, but guys, God’s given us everything we need,” Key said in a video posted over the weekend on his Telegram account after being released from jail over a trespassing charge. “This has been around for centuries,” he added. “When I tell you this, please take it with a grain of salt,” the anti-vaccine advocate warned while saying people might now think he is “cray cray.” “Now drink urine!” he continued. “This vaccine is the worst bioweapon I have ever seen,” he concluded. “I drink my own urine!” Reached for comment by The Daily Beast on Sunday night, Key doubled down on what he calls “urine therapy” and railed against “foolish” people who took the COVID-19 vaccine, which is safe and effective.

So do you take Ivermectin first and let it get processed before you pee?  

[pnwguy]

Jan 11, 2022 15:48:32 GMT goldenvalley said:

Jan 11, 2022 14:44:50 GMT LFC said:

NOT The Onion.

So do you take Ivermectin first and let it get processed before you pee?  

It depends on if you are cray-cray...

So is it 5 parts urine, 1 part Lysol, then expose the glass to strong light?  Spray the glass with a thin film of Clorox first?

[AnBr]

No, you use the Clorox as a chaser.

[pnwguy]

I'll have my Urinetini with extra olives, to improve the taste. Shaken not stirred.

[LFC]

Jan 11, 2022 22:54:01 GMT pnwguy said:

I'll have my Urinetini with extra olives, to improve the taste. Shaken not stirred.

Could be both if it's big enough to use as a stirrer.

[LFC]

Yeah, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr's wife knows he's nuts.

Over the weekend, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the world’s leading (translation: most dangerous) anti-vax conspiracy theorist, was one of many kooky speakers railing against COVID vaccines and mandates at a “Defeat the Mandates” rally in Washington, D.C.

“Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you can hide in the attic like Anne Frank did,” said Kennedy. “Today the mechanisms are being put in place that will make it so none of us can run, none of us can hide.”

The outrageous comparison was immediately condemned by a Twitter account belonging to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Place and Museum, which was established in 1947 to preserve the memories of those lost—and what happened to them—in the concentration camps during the Holocaust.

Their statement prompted a Twitter user to tag in Kennedy’s wife, actress Cheryl Hines, saying, “You need to make a statement! Do you stand with your husband?”

A day later, on Monday evening, Hines finally broke her loud silence on the matter, replying, “My husband’s opinions are not a reflection of my own. While we love each other, we differ on many current issues.”

[LFC]

The "Vaccine Police" utter nutter just went even more utterly nutty. Sounds like he's gone full blown sovereign citizen.

Anti-COVID-19 “Vaccine Police” leader Christopher Key, who has set out on a cross-country road trip with the end goal of conducting citizen arrests of Democratic governors, says he doesn’t need a driver’s license, despite operating a motor vehicle. “I travel,” Key told The Daily Beast late on Monday evening, making the pointless distinction between “traveling” and “driving.” “My car is not a car. My car is my wagon, with wagon wheels,” he continued, insisting he doesn’t need a driver’s license to operate his car, which is currently wrapped with graphics claiming the COVID-19 vaccine a “bio-weapon.” “You only drive if you are committing commerce,” Key added. “The only people that need a driver’s license are truck drivers, Uber drivers, FedEx drivers, but if you understand your constitutional rights, you have the ‘life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.’” The anti-vax leader, who swears by drinking copious amounts of his own urine, added: “I am a free man living on the land.” “There is no crime,” he said when asked about the possibility of police pulling him over and asking for a driver’s license. In the United States, where Key is “traveling,” one must have a valid driver’s license to operate a motor vehicle.

Neil Young wants his music pulled from Spotify over their streaming vaccine disinformation through programs like Joe Rogan's.

He’s seen the needle, and the damage done. Decidedly not a friend of the pod, legendary music star Neil Young has asked his team to pull his music off Spotify in response to the “fake information about vaccines” being spread on the streaming platform.

In an open letter to his team published Monday, Young singled out podcast The Joe Rogan Experience as a linchpin of misinformation about vaccines. “I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform,” he wrote, according to Rolling Stone. “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”

[goldenvalley]

Jan 25, 2022 15:55:29 GMT LFC said:

The "Vaccine Police" utter nutter just went even more utterly nutty. Sounds like he's gone full blown sovereign citizen.

Anti-COVID-19 “Vaccine Police” leader Christopher Key, who has set out on a cross-country road trip with the end goal of conducting citizen arrests of Democratic governors, says he doesn’t need a driver’s license, despite operating a motor vehicle. “I travel,” Key told The Daily Beast late on Monday evening, making the pointless distinction between “traveling” and “driving.” “My car is not a car. My car is my wagon, with wagon wheels,” he continued, insisting he doesn’t need a driver’s license to operate his car, which is currently wrapped with graphics claiming the COVID-19 vaccine a “bio-weapon.” “You only drive if you are committing commerce,” Key added. “The only people that need a driver’s license are truck drivers, Uber drivers, FedEx drivers, but if you understand your constitutional rights, you have the ‘life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.’” The anti-vax leader, who swears by drinking copious amounts of his own urine, added: “I am a free man living on the land.” “There is no crime,” he said when asked about the possibility of police pulling him over and asking for a driver’s license. In the United States, where Key is “traveling,” one must have a valid driver’s license to operate a motor vehicle.

Neil Young wants his music pulled from Spotify over their streaming vaccine disinformation through programs like Joe Rogan's.

He’s seen the needle, and the damage done. Decidedly not a friend of the pod, legendary music star Neil Young has asked his team to pull his music off Spotify in response to the “fake information about vaccines” being spread on the streaming platform.

In an open letter to his team published Monday, Young singled out podcast The Joe Rogan Experience as a linchpin of misinformation about vaccines. “I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform,” he wrote, according to Rolling Stone. “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”

This vaccine dude reminds me of the sovereign citizen dudes.  Maybe he's one of them.  Or one of those that believes that we are controlled by alien lizards in human skins.

[LFC]

The political weaponization of vaccines is here at a whole new level.  It has progressed from unknown to lies by big pharma to lies by big government to what is now a supposed clear assault on the very lives of conservatives. As if the vaccine stupidity wasn't harmful enough this is meant to ratchet up the violent crazies to the point of actual violence. Welcome to "the bad batch theory."

Last month, a British man launched a site allowing visitors to type in COVID-19 vaccine lot numbers, the codes that identify batches of the safe and effective shots, and call up the number of alleged deaths and injuries associated with them.

These figures are drawn from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). The safety monitoring database, operated jointly by the CDC and FDA, encourages people to submit reports of anything negative that happened after they or someone they know received a vaccine, so experts can scrutinize their accounts and potentially identify rare or unexpected risks. Many of these reports are unverified, but of the cases that do get investigated, the vast majority turn out to be unrelated to vaccines; those that are related are usually minor reactions.

However, you’d never know that reading this batch search site.

The man behind the site, Craig Paardekooper, lays out a number of misleading claims based on his interpretations of these figures. Chief among them is that, while most vaccine batches are connected to few (if any) reports, a handful are tied to hundreds—even thousands. In the United States specifically, he writes on the site, “5% of the batches appear to have produced 90% of the adverse reactions.”

At times, Paardekooper adopts a cautious scientific voice, stressing that there are many possible explanations for these observations. But instead of exercising actual scientific caution himself, Paardekooper runs through what Paul V. Williams, an immunologist who reviewed his claims, characterized as “likely faulty data analysis” supplemented by “wild conjecture and conspiracy theories” to present a series of increasingly batshit arguments as the only logical conclusions.

Specifically, Paardekooper argues that most or all of the deaths and injuries reported to VAERS are clearly real, were definitely caused by the vaccines, and are just a fraction of the true vaccine casualty count. So, not all vaccine doses are created equal; some are obviously more toxic than others, he falsely claims. There’s a clear and direct link between the alphanumeric sequences of lot codes and their level of toxicity, he further tries to argue via a series of charts and graphs, which he takes to mean that this variation isn’t the result of random quality control errors—but an intentional scheme.

As he puts it on the site, “the batches have been labelled [sic] with batch codes for the purpose of distinguishing one toxic level from another.”

The Daily Beast attempted to contact Paardekooper several times via multiple email addresses, social-media accounts, and phone numbers associated with him and projects he’s worked on. But neither he nor anyone else who’s reportedly worked with him on his site responded.

The site itself is not particularly innovative; anti-vax groups have been churning out web tools to help people cherry pick data—and gin up fear about vaccines—for years. Yet this bizarre new project has rapidly gained visibility and acclaim in anti-vax circles, because the spurious arguments Paardekooper and his allies have posted on the site, based on their facile analyses of batch-specific data, are unique and striking.

Misinformation experts believe that these arguments could also be compelling to many people who nurse doubts about vaccines but haven’t gone full anti-vaxxer yet. After all, it’s easier to sell someone on the claim that only a portion of the shots—that in truth have saved millions of lives and only cause notable adverse reactions in exceedingly rare cases—are dangerously toxic than it is to argue that they are uniformly malignant. And the embrace of this “bad batch” theory could hamper vaccination efforts and fuel general mistrust in governments and health-care systems—all as experts and institutions struggle to contain the spread of the highly infectious Omicron variant.

“It’s a very worrisome, paranoid evolution of anti-vax sentiment,” Ofer Levy, a doctor who works on vaccine programs and studies public attitudes towards vaccinations in general, told The Daily Beast.

Beyond his core assertions, Paardekooper also claims that he obtained information from an unidentified source that shows only the most toxic lots have expiration dates, which he suggests means that most vaccines are likely placebos. (This is, of course, not the case.) At some times, he argues this proves governments and big pharma players worldwide are engaged in one big experiment, figuring out which toxic slurries lead to specific levels of death and injury in key demographics. At others, he suggests placebos just serve to obscure the effects of scattered toxic batches.

Either way, he argues that it’s likely a nebulous they are using selectively toxic batches to quietly kill off undesirable groups, and to leave others so permanently weakened that they can no longer resist the rise of tyranny and are utterly dependent on pharmaceuticals. (None of this is remotely true.)

Notably, on Jan. 15, Paardekooper posted a video to a social-media channel connected to his site explaining, “with a sense of some urgency,” that after a recent round of number crunching, he realized that “the vaccines being distributed to the red states [in America are] more toxic than the vaccines being distributed towards the blue states.” This, he falsely suggests, can only mean that America is attempting to cripple and/or kill off its conservative populations.

In a blurb under the clip, he adds: “This is like a civil war… You are being targeted. You are under fire. The bullets are biological.”

And here's how the assholes spread this nonsense via the right-wing noise machine.

Paardekooper also relies on what several biostatistics and misinformation experts characterized as laughably weak statistical analyses, which largely fail to account for numerous important factors, like the size of each batch of vaccines, where they were distributed, and when. What’s more, the logic of Paardekooper’s overarching theory of a giant, malicious conspiracy only holds together as long as one doesn’t poke the elaborate series of fanciful assumptions undergirding it too hard.

Yet over the last month, several prominent pandemic misinformation brokers have picked up on Paardekooper’s site and claims, and put them into heavy circulation. Notably, on Jan. 13, Robert Malone, currently one of the highest-profile vaccine skeptics on the planet, promoted the project in his newsletter, noting that it seemingly explained why his first dose of Moderna was quick and easy—but his second “almost did me in. As in I almost died.” That dose was on Paardekooper’s list of the most toxic batches, Malone wrote. “The data is so compelling,” he added.

He then echoed many of Paardekooper’s talking points on a livestream hosted by Steve Bannon. (Paardekooper’s site now features a Malone Tweet on its homepage. Malone did not reply to a request for comment.)

“In the last week, for the first time during the pandemic, I’ve noticed people on vaccine skeptical streams saying things like, ‘and of course we know that certain lots of the vaccine are toxic,’” vaccine misinformation researcher Jennifer Reich told The Daily Beast. “Vaccine opponents are increasingly inserting the idea into their conversations as if it’s a common and established fact.”

[LFC]

Mea culpa if this is a repeat from another thread. It really is just totally bonkers.

[pnwguy]

Jan 30, 2022 20:05:46 GMT LFC said:

Mea culpa if this is a repeat from another thread. It really is just totally bonkers.

These days, EVERYTHING that gets highlighted on RightWingWatch seems to be totally bonkers, but sadly real.  Putin should just skip Ukraine and take the US now.  We're so f*cked.

[AnBr]

[LFC]

Feb 12, 2022 0:25:19 GMT AnBr said:

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This is sick, in more ways than one.

[LFC]

Everything non-political seems to eventually become political anymore. Here are a group of anti-vaxxers and Trump dead-enders filled with their own self-importance who want to "indict" Dr. Anthony Fauci. There is just sooooo much wrong with these people I don't even know where to start. Of course if you look at how this thing is being run it quickly becomes obvious that it's grift from those at the top. Sheople gotta' be fleeced.

A motley crew of right-wing activists, a former Trump administration official, and a disgraced former state attorney general have launched an amateur “grand jury” to vote on whether to indict Dr. Anthony Fauci on fictitious criminal charges. But the effort could also become a windfall for its organizers, with positions on the grand jury selling for as much as $2,500.

The upstart organization, dubbed “America’s Grand Jury,” has no actual legal powers. Instead, starting on April 11, the group will present a livestreamed presentation of Fauci’s “prosecution.” The mock grand jury will also include “evidence” presented by vaccine opponents, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Robert Malone.

The event will culminate in the grand jury voting on whether to indict Fauci. Unlike an actual grand jury, though, the slots on this grand jury have been sold to Fauci-haters willing to splash out some cash to express their dislike for the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. A voting spot on the jury starts at $25 and goes up from there, with those willing to pay $2,500 for “VIP Juror” status receiving one-night access to mingle with anti-vaccine celebs in the grand jury’s green room.

The mock grand jury even has its own merchandise line, with jurors who pay at least $100 to attain the title of “Super Juror” promised special“swag.”

America’s Grand Jury didn’t respond to requests for comment. Its website referred media requests to a far-right group called the Unity Project, an anti-vaccine group that backed a trucker convoy that traveled to Washington to protest Covid restrictions.

While “America’s Grand Jury” has no ability to actually indict Fauci, its website declares that it will “decide if Anthony Fauci should be INDICTED.” In a much smaller font elsewhere on the page, the group notes that it won’t actually be able to indict Fauci.

[LFC]

As is the case with so many other groups in the world today some of the anti-vaxxers are looking to turn to violence to get their way. This time it was in Germany and it was a full out fascist plot, hoping to overthrow democracy. These people are nutty enough that it doesn't surprise me in the least.

German police are searching for a fifth suspect after four people were arrested for what’s described as an elaborate plot to cripple the country and spark a civil war over COVID restrictions. The alleged scheme is said to have included a plan to kidnap Health Minister Karl Lauterbach and sabotage utility facilities to cause a nationwide power outage.

Police on Thursday searched 20 residential properties and confiscated dozens of weapons, including a Kalashnikov assault rifle and weapons. They said they also found foreign currency, gold bars, and silver coins to be used to fund the foiled plan that was “intended to cause civil war-like conditions and ultimately overthrow the democratic system in Germany,” the state prosecutor said in announcing the arrests.

Police made the arrests after surveilling a Telegram chat group called Vereinte Patrioten, which translates to United Patriots.

Police also found a stash of fake vaccination certificates and negative COVID tests that would have been needed to gain entry to carry out the plot. Last week Germany’s lower house of parliament voted down a vaccine mandate for people over age 60 after Chancellor Olaf Scholz failed to win support.

“The two main suspects are believed to have agreed with others to mount an attack on the federal health minister,” Koblenz prosecutor’s office said. They are part of a far-right Reichsbürger group that believes that the modern German state is illegitimate.

[goldenvalley]

Apr 14, 2022 15:38:56 GMT LFC said:

As is the case with so many other groups in the world today some of the anti-vaxxers are looking to turn to violence to get their way. This time it was in Germany and it was a full out fascist plot, hoping to overthrow democracy. These people are nutty enough that it doesn't surprise me in the least.

Those Germans are as screwed up as certain Americans are.  I'm sort of glad that America is not "exceptional" in this regard.

[LFC]

These f***-wits continue to be f***-wits. How they're blaming the death of a gorilla on the COVID vaccine because of course they are. The anti-science runs strong with these dangerous imbeciles.

After spending over a year attempting to implicate overwhelmingly safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines in as many deaths and injuries as possible, you’d think pandemic truthers would be running low on novel fearmongering narratives to peddle. But earlier this month, influencers in this space identified a totally new and unexpected alleged vaccine victim: a gorilla.

Until last month, Martha, a 32-year-old western lowland gorilla, lived at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Texas. According to a slew of COVID truther articles, newsletters, and social media posts, she was a happy, healthy mother—until zoo staff senselessly injected her with a COVID-19 vaccine. Then she died suddenly and unexpectedly of multiple organ failure, stemming from an undetected fibrosing heart disease. Which, to anti-vax eyes, was clearly caused by the jab. (It wasn’t).

This is a compelling narrative for many in the truther crowd. It seems to signal a new level or type of so-called COVID tyranny, and involves a uniquely tragic victim—a sweet, endangered animal. Yet for all its novel elements, this tale still appears to be grounded in long-standing truther tropes about the risks that vaccines supposedly—but in fact do not—pose to heart health and current or expectant mothers in particular. Accordingly, it’s triggered a fresh round of digital outrage as it’s spread across fringe corners of social media.

“TOTALLY UNNECESSARY TO GIVE THE ANIMALS THE VACCINE FOR COVID. FAUCI’S NA?I [Nazi] SCIENCE KILL HER,” one account on Twitter blared in a tweet posted on May 7. The tweet ultimately linked back to a conspiratorial Substack newsletter post about Martha’s death that has circulated widely in vaccine-skeptic circles.

[LFC]

Monkeypox already has the anti-vax "truthers" melting down. These people are ignorant, superstitious, overwrought, irrational, emotional, and dumb as rocks.

Public health experts and most mainstream media outlets have spent much of the last week or two assuring people that monkeypox is not the new COVID-19.

Sure, the global outbreak of a couple hundred cases of a disease usually confined to clusters in Africa is odd and not yet well understood, and after two years of COVID, news of a virus potentially doing something new inevitably has people on edge. But unlike the novel coronavirus, several experts on the disease told The Daily Beast, monkeypox is a known entity. It doesn’t spread all that easily between humans, nor, to experts’ current understanding, asymptomatically. So few see any cause for widespread concern—and no actual experts or officials of any note appear to be calling for COVID-style control measures.

As Grant McFadden, a poxvirus expert at Arizona State University, put it, “For a virologist, this transmission is worth study, and it’ll probably teach us a few new things about monkeypox. But for the average person, on a worry meter from 0 to 10, it’s probably below a 1.”

But over in the bizarro world of pandemic truthers and far-right conspiracy theorists, many folks have been spreading a drastically different message: Monkeypox is clearly “Covid 2.0.” Naturally, this crowd baselessly believes, global elites will soon enact a new wave of supposedly inane and harmful mass lockdowns, vaccinations, and more.

“Soon: Just 2 weeks to flatten the monkeypox curve,” a member of a conspiratorial Reddit group with over 1.7 million users posted last week. “Msm [mainstream media] will push monkeypox lockdowns within the next month……….here we go again,” reads another post from Monday.

Or, as one recent article in a popular truther publication put it, “We might be in for an epic summer of scare-mongering, panic-buying & bucket loads of cringe…”

The contrast between experts’ measured accounts of the realities of this strange—yet likely manageable—outbreak and the conspiracists’ frenzied predictions about a pandemic repeat is striking. But according to several experts on anti-vaxxers, pandemic truthers, and conspiracy theorists The Daily Beast spoke to for this article, it’s hardly surprising. After all, these communities have spent years now arguing that the pandemic is the centerpiece of a grand (if vague) sinister plot, and finding ways to shoehorn anything and everything they find suspicious or distasteful into those narratives.