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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Pseudoscience

An antivaccine slasher myth originated in The BMJ

Recently, a claim that Pfizer’s own documents demonstrate that the efficacy of its COVID-19 vaccine was only 12% went viral. This is a slasher stat, so-named because like the killers in slasher movie series, even when it appears to be dead it always reappears to kill again. This particular myth originated in The BMJ in 2021.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Politics Skepticism/critical thinking

Martin Kulldorff promotes an old antivax narrative about “natural immunity”

Great Barrington Declaration author Martin Kulldorff, who is also the “scientific director” of the Brownstone Institute, a public health science denialist right wing “think tank,” is promoting an antivax narrative about “natural immunity” against COVID-19, because of course he is.

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Bad science Medicine Politics Science

The Great Barrington Declaration never would have worked

A new paper provides yet more evidence that the “let COVID-19 rip” strategy behind the Great Barrington Declaration would have made the pandemic even more disastrous than it has already been.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Popular culture Pseudoscience

No one should be surprised at the number of antivax doctors in a new survey

A recent survey suggests that a disturbingly high percentage of physicians are either vaccine hesitant or actually antivaccine. Those of us who have been writing about the antivaccine movement know that this is not new, but it seems new to our colleagues who weren’t paying attention before the pandemic.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics

Eliminating school vaccine mandates is the antivax endgame

The endgame of the antivaccine movement has always been the elimination of school vaccine mandates. The pandemic has greatly accelerated the timeline for them to accomplish this.