CR: COVID-19 --Political Talk

[Biff Tannen 46203]

5 minutes ago, RDCanecutter said:

Update. Talked again later, s'alright.

Neither one of us is going to change our views on the virus, but we agreed to "theoretically" work together as if the worst case is true, and we'll be having the dinner, outside, on a wind-swept patio of my choice.

She had not caught my Nicholas-Cage-"Chrissy-Bring-Me-The-Big-Knife" side before. Maybe I should use it more.

So you’re part of a nursing home swinger’s club. That’s what I learned tonight. 

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

Not to mention that with an indoor venue the vaccinated will shed all over her, so you probably saved her life by having it outdoors! 

[RDCanecutter 26924]

3 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

So you’re part of a nursing home swinger’s club. That’s what I learned tonight. 

 

[BrickHorn 18450]

4 hours ago, elfenix said:

 

 

On the subject of coolers: I only caught the end of the segment, but I believe the hyenas on Gutfeld! were just now pushing vaccines and dropping some subtle pro-vax propaganda. One of them noted that most things she puts in her body aren’t FDA approved and that it’s more liberating to ingest things that are not Deep State endorsed.

These people are awful. But they’re really good at propagandizing to fucking idiots. 

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20950]

 

[NWBuck 8630]

10 minutes ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

 

The accumulated filth of all their anti-vax and anti-science beliefs will fill up all of the emergency facilities, and all the Sooners and Cowboys will look up and shout "Save us!" and the Governor will whisper "Sorry... I'm in Azerbaijan. I'll get back to you when I return."

[Born to Run 6601]

 

That's fucking great. My Kids first year of high school is going to be lit AF.


Not to imply that I live in Oklahoma or frequent said state under any circumstances.
Moreso that shits hitching a ride around this summer- woo hoo.

[WhatTheBuck 28941]

I just saw a piece on BBC News about “vaccine tourism.” Foreigners coming to the U.S. - mostly from Latin America - to get vaccinated. As long as we have the vaccine and a bunch of citizens too stupid to take it, I say come and get it. 

[956 Worldwide 35602]

1 hour ago, WhatTheBuck said:

I just saw a piece on BBC News about “vaccine tourism.” Foreigners coming to the U.S. - mostly from Latin America - to get vaccinated. As long as we have the vaccine and a bunch of citizens too stupid to take it, I say come and get it. 

This is such a perfect parable about America. We are a nation fortunate enough to possess vast riches, formidable organizational capacity, brilliant scientists and research. A lot of that thanks to a culture that rewards and encourages creativity and freedom. And in the midst of a pandemic, with easily the most inept administration in our history—- we rushed THREE safe, effective, brilliant vaccines by clubbing the problem with money and math. We made enough of it to take it all ourselves and then start packing it up. When the world sees an America they admire and want to be in, that’s why. That’s why America is great. We could be the country to end a pandemic.

What do our hayseeds, lunatics, and charlatans admire about America? Displaying firearms in a coffee shop.

[Neonmoon 38130]

1 hour ago, WhatTheBuck said:

I just saw a piece on BBC News about “vaccine tourism.” Foreigners coming to the U.S. - mostly from Latin America - to get vaccinated. As long as we have the vaccine and a bunch of citizens too stupid to take it, I say come and get it. 

Get shots in arms. 

[Post Oak 20588]

6 hours ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

 

Well that's gonna keep me up at night.

[HenryJames 67466]

 

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19332]

Fucking phone....

[Post Oak 20588]

32 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

 

I see a bunch of pre-existing conditions in that video.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13743]

1 hour ago, HenryJames said:

 

Imagine being the county director of public health, and you’re introduced at a county council meeting with the preface that you’re not from the US?

the comment was from one of the council member. It shouldn’t be surprising that the council member’s good friend, mark mcloskey was nearby. He’s the guy who pulled guns, with his wife, on the St. Louis demonstrators.

Edited July 29, 2021 by Nice Guy Eddie

[Anastasis 23718]

People with no power or agency grasp at straws. 

[Chewy's Hairy Horn 868]

And sometimes guns...

[Buzzrock 15148]

 

[BrickHorn 18450]

24 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

People with no power or agency grasp at straws. 

No power or agency? Those dumb motherfuckers just got the county council to do exactly what they want. The mob of stupid rubes has consolidated far too much power in this country, and they’re fucking shit up for everyone. 

[HenryJames 67466]

 

[Anastasis 23718]

4 minutes ago, BrickHorn said:

No power or agency? Those dumb motherfuckers just got the county council to do exactly what they want. The mob of stupid rubes has consolidated far too much power in this country, and they’re fucking shit up for everyone. 

Fair point. But these people strike me as lashing in coordination about the one thing in their life they can have some control over. 

[bolverk 30375]

17 hours ago, Bama Chick said:

I read somewhere - and now I can’t find it but I think it was in something by Kyle Whitmire - that the counties in Alabama with the best vaccination rates are the predominantly Black counties.

Sorry for the late response - wasn't very active on the board yesterday. Here's the Bama map as of today.

[Don Johnson 4852]

This is the Mississippi DOH.  Maybe the sample sizes are too small, but honestly these orange (fully vaxx) percentages are the exact opposite of what I would expect.  Would expect them to be higher percentage of cases but lower of hospitalizations and deaths.

 

Edited July 29, 2021 by Don Johnson

[Longhorn_Fan68 34108]

I just don't fucking get it. Should we hang Jenny McCarthy up by her toes since she started all this shit? We had 200+ years of good science and a dumb twat who got naked once ruined it for everyone.

I just had to cancel some weekend plans that I was really looking forward to. My gf's crew was having a get-together and it was going to be a reunion of sorts as many of the people attending hadn't seen each other in a while. On the group text thread where everyone was organizing what they were bringing, it was revealed that almost no one was vaccinated. Me and my gf and one other couple (incidentally, the couple we're going to visit in USVI in a couple weeks who are in town visiting family) appeared to be the only ones vaxed. We're also the only ones without kids. There was bunch of talk about everyone getting tested before the gathering to make sure no one had covid. One attendee mentioned they were going to an all-day baby shower the day before with a bunch of kids and unvaxed peeps. I told my gf hell to the nope. We have to submit a negative covid test no more than 5 days prior to our trip. We both agreed we'll self quarantine, if we have to, to make sure we can travel. I don't get it. Many of these are college educated people. They're all seemingly smart and relatively normal. Yet they seem unfazed about potentially repeatedly exposing themselves and their children to a virus that has killed millions. I cannot be a part of that. I will not have on my conscious that I possibly transmitted covid to a kid that died from it. How do their own parents not have at least that much compassion for their children? It's fucking maddening.

[Hornius Emeritus 12812]

36 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

 lashing in coordination about the one thing in their life they can have some control over. 

Eating Cheetos?

[OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys 2153]

looks like two things most predictive of not getting jabbed are being black and being a trump voter.  Well, good luck AL, MS, LA, because those are your only choices there.

 

[Anastasis 23718]

2 minutes ago, Hornius Emeritus said:

Eating Cheetos?

Fat people that don't want to protect themselves from a virus that loves to kill fat people are a special kind of stupid.  

[Biff Tannen 46203]

3 hours ago, HenryJames said:

 

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck these people.

[bolverk 30375]

35 minutes ago, Don Johnson said:

This is the Mississippi DOH.  Maybe the sample sizes are too small, but honestly these orange (fully vaxx) percentages are the exact opposite of what I would expect.  Would expect them to be higher percentage of cases but lower of hospitalizations and deaths.

 

Those data for Mississippi seem way off from what's being reported elsewhere.

DR. WALENSKY: And maybe I’ll just add: When we look at the age demographics of people being hospitalized now, we are seeing them go up in all age demographics, exactly as Dr. Fauci noted, differently for the vaccinated and unvaccinated. But, importantly, over 97 percent of people who are entering the hospital right now are unvaccinated.

Taken from r/dataisbeautiful:

 

[OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys 2153]

More like taken from r/dataisAIDS with that garbage legend. 

[wildcat09 29600]

 

At what point is it reasonable to start viewing this as them attempting to wage biological warfare against the rest of America?

[27-25 2088]

43 minutes ago, Don Johnson said:

This is the Mississippi DOH.  Maybe the sample sizes are too small, but honestly these orange (fully vaxx) percentages are the exact opposite of what I would expect.  Would expect them to be higher percentage of cases but lower of hospitalizations and deaths.

 

I hope the sample size is small, though that detail would be lost on the dim witted.  18% of deaths for the vaccinated is really high compared to the <1% reported by Arkansas and some other states.

[Js1 87288]

12 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

 

At what point is it reasonable to start viewing this as them attempting to wage biological warfare against the rest of America?

Kick them out of their elite Ivy League schools that they rail against in public.  They can go to Liberty or Oral Roberts instead. 

[Judge Roybeanbag 11860]

1 hour ago, Don Johnson said:

This is the Mississippi DOH.  Maybe the sample sizes are too small, but honestly these orange (fully vaxx) percentages are the exact opposite of what I would expect.  Would expect them to be higher percentage of cases but lower of hospitalizations and deaths.

 

The tweet below the one you linked has this graphic for deaths.  Mostly elderly, but doesn't seem to match the data above.

Edited July 29, 2021 by Judge Roybeanbag

[Anastasis 23718]

4 hours ago, Post Oak said:

Well that's gonna keep me up at night.

Yeah.  A facebook post inside a tweet in some inception level shit.

[DigglerontheHoof 21564]

40 minutes ago, OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys said:

looks like two things most predictive of not getting jabbed are being black and being a trump voter.  Well, good luck AL, MS, LA, because those are your only choices there.

 

Looking at the bright side, tickets to SEC away games should be easier to come by....keep it up, Deep South. 

[BrickHorn 18450]

8 minutes ago, Judge Roybeanbag said:

The tweet below the one you linked has this graphic for deaths.  Mostly elderly, but doesn't seem to match the data above.

Small sample size, yadda yadda. But the data could make sense given the skew of breakthrough cases toward elderly populations. It may be that if you’re old and get Covid despite vaccination, you’re more statistically fucked than an unvaccinated youngster. 

[Pods 7638]

The hospitalization number tracks with other worldwide data, expect it to go up to at least 15-20% soon and then substantially past that. Israel's covid hospitalizations have been ~50% vaccinated people for more than a month, but most of their population is vaccinated. Mississippi may be lower due to low vaxx rates. LA, Houston and Chicago were all bouncing around 15-20% of hospitalizations being vaccinated patients in the past few days. Expect to see lots of news stories about vaccinated people going to the hospital. It's going to happen. 

That death number is an extreme outlier. Also, note that 18% of deaths are vaccinated, but just 12% of hospitalizations. That's pretty weird and is very unlikely to hold over time for vaccinated patients. I think it's likely this is small data doing weird shit.  

Just like last time, deaths are going to trail hospitalization spikes by several weeks, but the countries that are substantially ahead of us on vaccinations and delta exposures are not showing death spikes in vaccinated patients. 

We've got co-morbidity issues that Israel and Gibraltar aren't packing around, so I think we will see more deaths than they did, but a big spike in vaccinated deaths would greatly surprise me.  

[Anastasis 23718]

6 minutes ago, Pods said:

I think it's likely this is small data doing weird shit.  

This. 

[washparkhorn 9974]

46 minutes ago, OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys said:

Interesting Economist article accompany the tweet:

Covid-19 is not the only health epidemic raging across America.

• The states struggling the most with covid-19 infections also have the least healthy populations.
• About two out of five American adults are obese, according to the CDC.
• America is the fattest country in the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries.
• Heart disease accounts for one in four deaths.
• Almost half of Americans have high blood pressure, and 12% have high cholesterol.
• About one in ten has type 2 diabetes.
• For all these diseases, states with the highest prevalence also tend to have the lowest vaccination rates.

Many Americans have trouble staying healthy because they lack access to resources.

• Only 23% of people get enough exercise and only one in ten eats enough fruit and vegetables, says the CDC.
• But more than half of Americans do not live within one mile of a park, and
• 40% of all households do not live within a mile of shops where they can buy fresh produce.

For many, illiteracy is also part of the trouble.

• Less than half of Americans are proficient readers, and
• only 12% are considered by the country’s health department to be “health-literate”.
• Over one-third struggle with basic health tasks, such as following prescription-drug directions.
• Couple this with a lack of access to consistent health care (one in eight adults reports not going to a doctor in the past year because of the cost), and
• America was bound to have a vaccination problem.

In the longer term, education—along with access to better health care—will be vital in overcoming disinformation, raising vaccination rates and improving America’s overall health. 

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/07/27/americas-vaccination-woes-cannot-be-blamed-only-on-politics

I seriously don't know how the US keeps its position as the holder of the dominant reserve currency with all of the problems that accompany those who have adopted trumpism. 

[Asithappens 978]

It's nature's way of receiving you. 

It's nature's way of retrieving you.

It's nature's way of telling you something's fucking wrong.

[bolverk 30375]

@FletchThis guy may well be the source for the misinformation your "friend" is consuming and spreading. Check the bolded in the spoiler.

The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online
Researchers and regulators say Joseph Mercola, an osteopathic physician, creates and profits from misleading claims about Covid-19 vaccines.

SAN FRANCISCO — The article that appeared online on Feb. 9 began with a seemingly innocuous question about the legal definition of vaccines. Then over its next 3,400 words, it declared coronavirus vaccines were “a medical fraud” and said the injections did not prevent infections, provide immunity or stop transmission of the disease.

Instead, the article claimed, the shots “alter your genetic coding, turning you into a viral protein factory that has no off-switch.”

Its assertions were easily disprovable. No matter. Over the next few hours, the article was translated from English into Spanish and Polish. It appeared on dozens of blogs and was picked up by anti-vaccination activists, who repeated the false claims online. The article also made its way to Facebook, where it reached 400,000 people, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool.

The entire effort traced back to one person: Joseph Mercola.

Dr. Mercola, 67, an osteopathic physician in Cape Coral, Fla., has long been a subject of criticism and government regulatory actions for his promotion of unproven or unapproved treatments. But most recently, he has become the chief spreader of coronavirus misinformation online, according to researchers.

Spoiler

An internet-savvy entrepreneur who employs dozens, Dr. Mercola has published over 600 articles on Facebook that cast doubt on Covid-19 vaccines since the pandemic began, reaching a far larger audience than other vaccine skeptics, an analysis by The New York Times found. His claims have been widely echoed on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

The activity has earned Dr. Mercola, a natural health proponent with an Everyman demeanor, the dubious distinction of the top spot in the “Disinformation Dozen,” a list of 12 people responsible for sharing 65 percent of all anti-vaccine messaging on social media, said the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate. Others on the list include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, and Erin Elizabeth, the founder of the website Health Nut News, who is also Dr. Mercola’s girlfriend.

“Mercola is the pioneer of the anti-vaccine movement,” said Kolina Koltai, a researcher at the University of Washington who studies online conspiracy theories. “He’s a master of capitalizing on periods of uncertainty, like the pandemic, to grow his movement.”

Some high-profile media figures have promoted skepticism of the vaccines, notably Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham of Fox News, though other Fox personalities have urged viewers to get the shots. Now, Dr. Mercola and others in the “Disinformation Dozen” are in the spotlight as vaccinations in the United States slow, just as the highly infectious Delta variant has fueled a resurgence in coronavirus cases. More than 97 percent of people hospitalized for Covid-19 are unvaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

President Biden has blamed online falsehoods for causing people to refrain from getting the injections. But even as Mr. Biden has urged social media companies to “do something about the misinformation,” Dr. Mercola shows the difficulty of that task.

Over the last decade, Dr. Mercola has built a vast operation to push natural health cures, disseminate anti-vaccination content and profit from all of it, said researchers who have studied his network. In 2017, he filed an affidavit claiming his net worth was “in excess of $100 million.”

And rather than directly stating online that vaccines don’t work, Dr. Mercola’s posts often ask pointed questions about their safety and discuss studies that other doctors have refuted. Facebook and Twitter have allowed some of his posts to remain up with caution labels, and the companies have struggled to create rules to pull down posts that have nuance.

“He has been given new life by social media, which he exploits skillfully and ruthlessly to bring people into his thrall,” said Imran Ahmed, director of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which studies misinformation and hate speech. Its “Disinformation Dozen” report has been cited in congressional hearings and by the White House.

In an email, Dr. Mercola said it was “quite peculiar to me that I am named as the #1 superspreader of misinformation.” Some of his Facebook posts were only liked by hundreds of people, he said, so he didn’t understand “how the relatively small number of shares could possibly cause such calamity to Biden’s multibillion dollar vaccination campaign.”

The efforts against him are political, Dr. Mercola added, and he accused the White House of “illegal censorship by colluding with social media companies.”

He did not address whether his coronavirus claims were factual. “I am the lead author of a peer reviewed publication regarding vitamin D and the risk of Covid-19 and I have every right to inform the public by sharing my medical research,” he said. The Times was unable to verify the claims in the study, which was published by Nutrients, a monthly journal from Molecular Diversity Preservation International, a nonprofit in Basel, Switzerland.

A native of Chicago, Dr. Mercola started a small private practice  in 1985 in Schaumburg, Ill. In the 1990s, he began shifting to natural health medicine and opened his main website, Mercola.com, to share his treatments, cures and advice. The site urges people to “take control of your health.”

In 2003, he published a book, “The No-Grain Diet,” which became a New York Times best seller. He has since published books almost yearly. In 2015, he moved to Florida.

As his popularity grew, Dr. Mercola began a cycle. It starts with making unproven and sometimes far-fetched health claims, such as that spring mattresses amplify harmful radiation, and then selling products online — from vitamin supplements to organic yogurt — that he promotes as alternative treatments.

To buttress the operation, he set up companies like Mercola.com Health Resources and Mercola Consulting Services. These entities have offices in Florida and the Philippines with teams of employees. Using this infrastructure, Dr. Mercola has seized on news moments to rapidly publish blog posts, newsletters and videos in nearly a dozen languages to a network of websites and social media.

His audience is substantial. Dr. Mercola’s official English-language Facebook page has over 1.7 million followers, while his Spanish-language page has 1 million followers. The Times also found 17 other Facebook pages that appeared to be run by him or were closely connected to his businesses. On Twitter, he has nearly 300,000 followers, plus nearly 400,000 on YouTube.

Dr. Mercola has a keen understanding of what makes something go viral online, said two former employees, who declined to be identified because they had signed nondisclosure agreements. He routinely does A/B testing, they said, in which many versions of the same content are published to see what spreads fastest online.

In his email, Dr. Mercola said, “Translation and a variety of media positions are standard for most content oriented websites.”

Facebook said it has labeled many of Dr. Mercola’s posts as false, banned advertising on his main page and removed some of his pages after they violated its policies. Twitter said it has also taken down some of Dr. Mercola’s posts and labeled others. YouTube said Dr. Mercola was not part of a program from which he can make money from ads on his videos.

In 2012, Dr. Mercola began writing about the virtues of tanning beds. He argued that they reduced the chances of getting cancer, while also selling tanning beds with names like Vitality and D-lite for $1,200 to $4,000 each. Many of the articles were based on discredited studies.

The Federal Trade Commission brought false-advertising claims against Dr. Mercola in 2017 based on the health claims about tanning beds. He settled and sent $2.95 million in refunds to customers who bought the tanning beds.

The Food and Drug Administration has also issued warning letters to Dr. Mercola for selling unapproved health products in 2005, 2006 and 2011.

Many of Dr. Mercola’s claims have been amplified by other vaccine skeptics, including Ms. Elizabeth. She worked for Mercola.com from 2009 to 2011, according to her LinkedIn page.

But while Ms. Elizabeth and others are overtly anti-vaccine, Dr. Mercola has appeared more approachable because he takes less radical positions than his peers, Ms. Koltai said. “He takes away from the idea that an anti-vaccination activist is a fringe person,” she said.

In an email, Ms. Elizabeth said she was “shocked to have been targeted as one of the 12” in the “Disinformation Dozen” and called it a “witch hunt.”

When the coronavirus hit last year, Dr. Mercola jumped on the news, with posts questioning the origins of the disease. In December, he used a study that examined mask-wearing by doctors to argue that masks did not stop the spread of the virus.

He also began promoting vitamin supplements as a way to ward off the coronavirus. In a warning letter on Feb. 18, the F.D.A. said Dr. Mercola had “misleadingly represented” what were “unapproved and misbranded products” on Mercola.com as established Covid-19 treatments.

In May, Dr. Mercola took down many of his own Facebook posts to evade the social network’s crackdown on anti-vaccine content. Facebook also recently removed his Feb. 9 article.

But Dr. Mercola has continued to raise vaccine questions. In a Facebook post on Friday, he used another study to mull how useful the Pfizer vaccine was against Covid-19 variants. One headline in the post said the vaccine was only 39 percent effective, but it did not cite another statistic from the study that said the vaccine was 91 percent effective against serious illness.

“Is this possible? We were told 95 percent effectiveness,” he wrote.

Within a few hours, the post had been shared more than 220 times.

 

[DigglerontheHoof 21564]

10 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

Interesting Economist article accompany the tweet:

Covid-19 is not the only health epidemic raging across America.

• The states struggling the most with covid-19 infections also have the least healthy populations.
• About two out of five American adults are obese, according to the CDC.
• America is the fattest country in the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries.
• Heart disease accounts for one in four deaths.
• Almost half of Americans have high blood pressure, and 12% have high cholesterol.
• About one in ten has type 2 diabetes.
• For all these diseases, states with the highest prevalence also tend to have the lowest vaccination rates.

Many Americans have trouble staying healthy because they lack access to resources.

• Only 23% of people get enough exercise and only one in ten eats enough fruit and vegetables, says the CDC.
• But more than half of Americans do not live within one mile of a park, and
• 40% of all households do not live within a mile of shops where they can buy fresh produce.

For many, illiteracy is also part of the trouble.

• Less than half of Americans are proficient readers, and
• only 12% are considered by the country’s health department to be “health-literate”.
• Over one-third struggle with basic health tasks, such as following prescription-drug directions.
• Couple this with a lack of access to consistent health care (one in eight adults reports not going to a doctor in the past year because of the cost), and
• America was bound to have a vaccination problem.

In the longer term, education—along with access to better health care—will be vital in overcoming disinformation, raising vaccination rates and improving America’s overall health. 

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/07/27/americas-vaccination-woes-cannot-be-blamed-only-on-politics

I seriously don't know how the US keeps its position as the holder of the dominant reserve currency with all of the problems that accompany those who have adopted trumpism. 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13743]

1 hour ago, Don Johnson said:

This is the Mississippi DOH.  Maybe the sample sizes are too small, but honestly these orange (fully vaxx) percentages are the exact opposite of what I would expect.  Would expect them to be higher percentage of cases but lower of hospitalizations and deaths.

 

Data like this might require a much deeper dive to explain. My understanding that the vaccinated, who are hospitalized and dying, are people with serious health problems. Perhaps even taking medication that may have caused limited vaccine protection. As an example there hasn't been a study on the impact on the vaccine for people on immunosuppressant drugs. 

But even if we go with that 18% of the deaths will be the vaccinated, that's still a strong story that everyone should be vaccinated.

[Biff Tannen 46203]

1 hour ago, wildcat09 said:

 

At what point is it reasonable to start viewing this as them attempting to wage biological warfare against the rest of America?

 

18 minutes ago, bolverk said:

@FletchThis guy may well be the source for the misinformation your "friend" is consuming and spreading. Check the bolded in the spoiler.

The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online
Researchers and regulators say Joseph Mercola, an osteopathic physician, creates and profits from misleading claims about Covid-19 vaccines.

SAN FRANCISCO — The article that appeared online on Feb. 9 began with a seemingly innocuous question about the legal definition of vaccines. Then over its next 3,400 words, it declared coronavirus vaccines were “a medical fraud” and said the injections did not prevent infections, provide immunity or stop transmission of the disease.

Instead, the article claimed, the shots “alter your genetic coding, turning you into a viral protein factory that has no off-switch.”

Its assertions were easily disprovable. No matter. Over the next few hours, the article was translated from English into Spanish and Polish. It appeared on dozens of blogs and was picked up by anti-vaccination activists, who repeated the false claims online. The article also made its way to Facebook, where it reached 400,000 people, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool.

The entire effort traced back to one person: Joseph Mercola.

Dr. Mercola, 67, an osteopathic physician in Cape Coral, Fla., has long been a subject of criticism and government regulatory actions for his promotion of unproven or unapproved treatments. But most recently, he has become the chief spreader of coronavirus misinformation online, according to researchers.

  Reveal hidden contents

An internet-savvy entrepreneur who employs dozens, Dr. Mercola has published over 600 articles on Facebook that cast doubt on Covid-19 vaccines since the pandemic began, reaching a far larger audience than other vaccine skeptics, an analysis by The New York Times found. His claims have been widely echoed on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

The activity has earned Dr. Mercola, a natural health proponent with an Everyman demeanor, the dubious distinction of the top spot in the “Disinformation Dozen,” a list of 12 people responsible for sharing 65 percent of all anti-vaccine messaging on social media, said the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate. Others on the list include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, and Erin Elizabeth, the founder of the website Health Nut News, who is also Dr. Mercola’s girlfriend.

“Mercola is the pioneer of the anti-vaccine movement,” said Kolina Koltai, a researcher at the University of Washington who studies online conspiracy theories. “He’s a master of capitalizing on periods of uncertainty, like the pandemic, to grow his movement.”

Some high-profile media figures have promoted skepticism of the vaccines, notably Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham of Fox News, though other Fox personalities have urged viewers to get the shots. Now, Dr. Mercola and others in the “Disinformation Dozen” are in the spotlight as vaccinations in the United States slow, just as the highly infectious Delta variant has fueled a resurgence in coronavirus cases. More than 97 percent of people hospitalized for Covid-19 are unvaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

President Biden has blamed online falsehoods for causing people to refrain from getting the injections. But even as Mr. Biden has urged social media companies to “do something about the misinformation,” Dr. Mercola shows the difficulty of that task.

Over the last decade, Dr. Mercola has built a vast operation to push natural health cures, disseminate anti-vaccination content and profit from all of it, said researchers who have studied his network. In 2017, he filed an affidavit claiming his net worth was “in excess of $100 million.”

And rather than directly stating online that vaccines don’t work, Dr. Mercola’s posts often ask pointed questions about their safety and discuss studies that other doctors have refuted. Facebook and Twitter have allowed some of his posts to remain up with caution labels, and the companies have struggled to create rules to pull down posts that have nuance.

“He has been given new life by social media, which he exploits skillfully and ruthlessly to bring people into his thrall,” said Imran Ahmed, director of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which studies misinformation and hate speech. Its “Disinformation Dozen” report has been cited in congressional hearings and by the White House.

In an email, Dr. Mercola said it was “quite peculiar to me that I am named as the #1 superspreader of misinformation.” Some of his Facebook posts were only liked by hundreds of people, he said, so he didn’t understand “how the relatively small number of shares could possibly cause such calamity to Biden’s multibillion dollar vaccination campaign.”

The efforts against him are political, Dr. Mercola added, and he accused the White House of “illegal censorship by colluding with social media companies.”

He did not address whether his coronavirus claims were factual. “I am the lead author of a peer reviewed publication regarding vitamin D and the risk of Covid-19 and I have every right to inform the public by sharing my medical research,” he said. The Times was unable to verify the claims in the study, which was published by Nutrients, a monthly journal from Molecular Diversity Preservation International, a nonprofit in Basel, Switzerland.

A native of Chicago, Dr. Mercola started a small private practice  in 1985 in Schaumburg, Ill. In the 1990s, he began shifting to natural health medicine and opened his main website, Mercola.com, to share his treatments, cures and advice. The site urges people to “take control of your health.”

In 2003, he published a book, “The No-Grain Diet,” which became a New York Times best seller. He has since published books almost yearly. In 2015, he moved to Florida.

As his popularity grew, Dr. Mercola began a cycle. It starts with making unproven and sometimes far-fetched health claims, such as that spring mattresses amplify harmful radiation, and then selling products online — from vitamin supplements to organic yogurt — that he promotes as alternative treatments.

To buttress the operation, he set up companies like Mercola.com Health Resources and Mercola Consulting Services. These entities have offices in Florida and the Philippines with teams of employees. Using this infrastructure, Dr. Mercola has seized on news moments to rapidly publish blog posts, newsletters and videos in nearly a dozen languages to a network of websites and social media.

His audience is substantial. Dr. Mercola’s official English-language Facebook page has over 1.7 million followers, while his Spanish-language page has 1 million followers. The Times also found 17 other Facebook pages that appeared to be run by him or were closely connected to his businesses. On Twitter, he has nearly 300,000 followers, plus nearly 400,000 on YouTube.

Dr. Mercola has a keen understanding of what makes something go viral online, said two former employees, who declined to be identified because they had signed nondisclosure agreements. He routinely does A/B testing, they said, in which many versions of the same content are published to see what spreads fastest online.

In his email, Dr. Mercola said, “Translation and a variety of media positions are standard for most content oriented websites.”

Facebook said it has labeled many of Dr. Mercola’s posts as false, banned advertising on his main page and removed some of his pages after they violated its policies. Twitter said it has also taken down some of Dr. Mercola’s posts and labeled others. YouTube said Dr. Mercola was not part of a program from which he can make money from ads on his videos.

In 2012, Dr. Mercola began writing about the virtues of tanning beds. He argued that they reduced the chances of getting cancer, while also selling tanning beds with names like Vitality and D-lite for $1,200 to $4,000 each. Many of the articles were based on discredited studies.

The Federal Trade Commission brought false-advertising claims against Dr. Mercola in 2017 based on the health claims about tanning beds. He settled and sent $2.95 million in refunds to customers who bought the tanning beds.

The Food and Drug Administration has also issued warning letters to Dr. Mercola for selling unapproved health products in 2005, 2006 and 2011.

Many of Dr. Mercola’s claims have been amplified by other vaccine skeptics, including Ms. Elizabeth. She worked for Mercola.com from 2009 to 2011, according to her LinkedIn page.

But while Ms. Elizabeth and others are overtly anti-vaccine, Dr. Mercola has appeared more approachable because he takes less radical positions than his peers, Ms. Koltai said. “He takes away from the idea that an anti-vaccination activist is a fringe person,” she said.

In an email, Ms. Elizabeth said she was “shocked to have been targeted as one of the 12” in the “Disinformation Dozen” and called it a “witch hunt.”

When the coronavirus hit last year, Dr. Mercola jumped on the news, with posts questioning the origins of the disease. In December, he used a study that examined mask-wearing by doctors to argue that masks did not stop the spread of the virus.

He also began promoting vitamin supplements as a way to ward off the coronavirus. In a warning letter on Feb. 18, the F.D.A. said Dr. Mercola had “misleadingly represented” what were “unapproved and misbranded products” on Mercola.com as established Covid-19 treatments.

In May, Dr. Mercola took down many of his own Facebook posts to evade the social network’s crackdown on anti-vaccine content. Facebook also recently removed his Feb. 9 article.

But Dr. Mercola has continued to raise vaccine questions. In a Facebook post on Friday, he used another study to mull how useful the Pfizer vaccine was against Covid-19 variants. One headline in the post said the vaccine was only 39 percent effective, but it did not cite another statistic from the study that said the vaccine was 91 percent effective against serious illness.

“Is this possible? We were told 95 percent effectiveness,” he wrote.

Within a few hours, the post had been shared more than 220 times.

 

I mean, we have to stop this.  This is how and why social media may destroy humanity.  This is information warfare that leads to death.

[wildcat09 29600]

Gibbets for disinfo spreaders. Everyone start calling your reps (who aren't Republicans) and let's get them on board.

[Biff Tannen 46203]

2 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Everyone start calling your reps (who aren't Republicans)

Wish I could help you there.

[bolverk 30375]

21 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

Wish I could help you there.

No shit. Here's mine throwing an absolute baby fit. I wish a hearty FUCK YOU to any member of this board (or lurker) who voted for him, because I know some of you assholes actually did.

 

Edited July 29, 2021 by bolverk

[RDCanecutter 26924]

2 hours ago, Don Johnson said:

This is the Mississippi DOH.  Maybe the sample sizes are too small, but honestly these orange (fully vaxx) percentages are the exact opposite of what I would expect.  Would expect them to be higher percentage of cases but lower of hospitalizations and deaths.

 

Vaccinated in southern states probably heavily weighted to old people, so that death graph might be comparing lots of vaccinated 80-year-olds to unvaccinated 45-year-olds.

[OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys 2153]

The cooler article from yesterday has me convinced this problem is 99% fear of looking wrong.  We need to focus our efforts on creating structures for people to not be wrong about their position to now and still result in a shot.

1) "Wow, delta is way different from before. It wasn't clear a shot was the right path before, but now the risks are really too high."

2) "Wow, all that data coming in shows the vaccines are great. It was pretty crazy to be leading the charge in getting shots, but now everything has been verified."

3) "Wow, this J&J version 2.0 provides way better immunity than the previous ones.  That goodness we waited so we get the prime vaccine."

Messages like that needs to be disseminated all the time now.