The latest antivaccine disinformation, spread by Peter McCullough, Mike Adams, and RFK Jr., consists of pointing to the large numbers of reports of death (and other adverse events) to the VAERS database. It’s an old antivax deception.
Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski.
That this particular surgeon has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 35 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)
DISCLAIMER:: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.
To contact Orac: [email protected]
The latest antivaccine disinformation, spread by Peter McCullough, Mike Adams, and RFK Jr., consists of pointing to the large numbers of reports of death (and other adverse events) to the VAERS database. It’s an old antivax deception.
There is no post today, because WordPress and its Gutenberg editor ate large swaths of it. Lesson learned. I had written about Eric Clapton’s reaction to the AstraZeneca vaccine but don’t know if I’ll revisit and reconstruct the original post.
The short answer to the question in the title of this post is no. The long answer is that antivaxxers are now taking the trope of “shedding” to the new extreme of “self-spreading, self-propagating transmissible vaccines” and applying it to COVID-19 vaccines.
David and Leila Centner run an expensive private school in Miami. Unfortunately, it’s a microcosm of what happens when antivaxxers and COVID-19 conspiracy theorists educate children. It’s not good.
Antivaxxers have been working overtime lately to claim that the spike protein used as the antigen in COVID-19 vaccines is deadly, and they’ll cite any old tenuous evidence based on a misunderstood (by them) study to do it.