Ben Garrison, whose fame comes from his QAnon-invoking and Trump-supporting cartoons, has COVID-19 and is treating it with ivermectin. Because of course he is. Orac’s schadenfreude is tempered by the knowledge that when Garrison recovers he’ll attribute his good fortune to the quackery he’s using.
Florida State Senator Manny Diaz wants to “review” all vaccine mandates in Florida, not just COVID-19 mandates. This was always the endgame for the antivaccine movement, and COVID-19 might just make it happen in some states, thanks to the embrace of antivaccine and antimask “freedumb” by Republican politicians
Yesterday, Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Dr. Joseph Ladapo, an apostle of the Great Barrington Declaration’s eugenics lite “focused protection” approach to COVID-19, as Florida Surgeon General. If you want to see the harm caused by the GBD and crank “COVID contrarian” physicians, look no further.
The embrace of antimask and antivaccine views by the right wing is due to more than just clever reaching out by antivaxxers. There’s a big money astroturf machine encompassing various “think tanks” behind it.
It’s been several years coming, but President Biden’s issuing of a vaccine mandate for federal employees and large employers has removed all doubt that the Republican Party is not just anti-vaccine mandate. It’s antivaccine.
