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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Popular culture

The BMJ publishes another biased “investigation” that promotes antivax narratives

The BMJ, once a bastion of evidence-based medicine, has become disturbingly susceptible to publishing biased “investigations” that feed antivax narratives. Its latest report on VAERS by Jennifer Block, who in the past has defended Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop and whose history is not one of supporting science, is just another example of this deterioration.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

The COVID-19 “vaccine holocaust” accelerates in antivax messaging

The antivax lie that vaccines are killing lots of people long predates COVID-19, but now the idea of the “vaccine holocaust” has reached the ridiculously implausible proportions of 20 million dead and 2 billion injured. How did antivaxxers do this?

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Antivaccine nonsense Clinical trials Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Economist Mark Skidmore publishes antivax propaganda disguised as a survey

Antivaxxers love surveys. This time BMC Infectious Diseases has the dubious “honor” of publishing a truly awful one by an economist named Mark Skidmore that claims that COVID-19 vaccine have killed nearly 300K people.

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Bad science Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Misuse of the VAERS database: An old antivax deception repackaged to spread fear of COVID-19 vaccines

With the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines continuing apace, so are the efforts of antivaxxers to portray the vaccines as dangerous. This time around, they’ve resurrected the old antivaccine trick of deceptively misusing the VAERS database to imply causation from VAERS reports. That’s not how VAERS works, however.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Popular culture Pseudoscience

The Guardian: “Explaining” vaccine hesitancy by amplifying antivax disinformation

Writing in The Guardian, Musa al-Gharbi tries to explain vaccine hesitancy to “the left.” Unfortunately, he parrots antivax conspiracy theories to do it.