The anti-vaxxers are on a tear
My loathing for these madmen knows no bounds:
It was a peaceful Sunday afternoon at the Conscious Life Expo, and in a large, windowless ballroom, Del Bigtree was red-faced and triumphant in front of a captivated crowd.
“These people,” he told them, “need to go to prison!” There was a smattering of solemn applause. “For life!” someone in the audience cried out.
Bigtree is a TV producer turned big fish in the anti-vaccine world, and this talk was, more or less, part of his victory lap. In a lecture running nearly two hours, he accused government officials and pharmaceutical companies of fraud for promoting mRNA vaccine, and for downplaying the effectiveness of drugs like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. (Neither drug is effective as a cure, treatment, or preventative for COVID; the FDA warns against using hydroxychloroquine for COVID due to possible heart rhythm problems, and ivermectin because it can lead to problems ranging from hypotension to death. The use of both drugs has been heavily politicized, and a recent study found that conservative doctors are more likely to prescribe them, despite a large and growing body of research showing neither drug is effective for COVID.)
But Bigtree also had another, more optimistic agenda: to assure his audience that he and other anti-vaccine figures are now seeking their legal and political revenge.
Bigtree falsely claimed governments and health departments had killed people with overdoses of hydroxychloroquine “so they could say it doesn’t work,” and told the crowd, “I am going to take that to a court of law.” He also swore never to forgive the media for their role in the pandemic. “New York Times, CNN, MSNBC,” he cried, “The blood is on your hands! We will never forget that you did that.”
While the rhetoric was overheated, even for Bigtree, it’s also an indicator of the moment we’re in. As COVID cases continue to gradually decline, and with the U.S. government declaring it will end the formal public health emergency on May 11, the pandemic is, in the view of many people, receding into the rearview mirror. (This despite the fact that the disease continues to kill many people every day, especially endangering the elderly and becoming a leading cause of death for children.)
And major anti-vaccine figures are now seizing their chance to enact what they see as justice—and do a little fundraising and image-burnishing in the process. Besides Bigtree’s nonspecific legal threats, we have Children’s Health Defense, the most moneyed and influential anti-vaccine organization in the U.S., led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. CHD is often involved in strange and frequently doomed litigation, but recently, and with much fanfare, it launched a new one: an antitrust lawsuit against major news organizations and social media outlets, which they accused of conspiring to “collectively censor online news” about COVID. The defendants included frequent anti-vax targets like the Washington Post and the BBC, and the plaintiffs are a veritable who’s who of people making bogus health claims, including CHD itself; Ty and Charlene Bollinger, who run websites and sell products devoted to making bogus claims about cancer and vaccines; Jim Hoft, who founded right-wing news site Gateway Pundit, and Joseph Mercola, a longtime figure in the natural health world who’s also been a major funder of the anti-vax movement. The lawsuit made quite a bit of noise in conservative media and the anti-vaccine world—and it allowed CHD to continue asking for donations for its general litigation fund.
(As Vox recently reported, CHD got a possible advantage in the Texas judge assigned to the case: Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee who’s also in position to single-handedly outlaw medication abortion in a separate upcoming case.)
Besides the anti-trust lawsuit, Children’s Health Defense is also pledging to lobby the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on behalf of what it calls “vaccine-injured” service members. The organization is calling on its audience to help it lobby the VA to get disability benefits for service members who claim they were injured by COVID vaccines. Again, the action serves several separate purposes: to help CHD raise its public profile, to align it with the cause of veterans’ rights, and to give it the appearance of demanding some sort of corrective action from an arm of the U.S. government.
These sorts of pseudo-legal legal threats and jumbled court filings aren’t confined to the United States. The anti-vaccine world has also been paying a great deal of attention to a self-described former Swiss investment banker named Pascal Najadi, who claimed recently that he filed criminal charges against the current Swiss President Alain Berset, who is also the country’s former minister of health, for promoting COVID vaccines and claiming, incorrectly, that they meant you could not spread the disease. This is, more or less, like saying you’ve sued the sky for creating rain clouds, but anti-vaccine figures have been enthralled; one of them, a woman named Dr. Jane Ruby, exulted on Telegram that Najadi “may have started a worldwide c19 bioweapon investigation!” (COVID vaccines are not “bioweapons.”)
The article reveals that this “movement” isn’t confined to the USA. Apparently anti-vaxxers are organized around the world and are bringing legal actions in places as disparate as Switzerland and Thailand. (Thanks internet!)
In all, this rash of grandiose legal threats, doomed lawsuits and excitable rumors of foreign prosecutions has a lot in common with the basic shape of QAnon beliefs. It promises that justice will be served, evildoers will be dragged into the light and prosecuted, and those who doubted “the COVID narrative” will be vindicated. (Elsewhere, the former light of QAnon’s hopes and dreams, Donald Trump, has declared he will bring back public executions if he’s elected president again.)
More than anything, the people making money in the anti-vaccine world need to keep their audience’s hope, and their attention, as long as they possibly can. The false promises are yet another way to keep them in their seats.
It would be one thing if these people were just confined to the fringe and had no political power. But they have friends in high places:
Under the guise of “just asking the questions,” Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin spread anti-vaccine misinformation on a right-wing radio show Thursday, questioning why efforts were being made to vaccinate the general US population, especially young people and those who had previously been infected with Covid-19.Johnson, who tested positive for coronavirus last fall, said he was “sticking up for people who choose not to get vaccinated.” As of March, Johnson told CNN he had not yet been vaccinated because he previously had Covid-19.
In Thursday’s interview with conservative radio host Vicki McKenna, Johnson suggested there have been thousands of deaths connected to Covid-19 vaccinations and that receiving a vaccine could be particularly dangerous for those who had previously been infected.
He was spreading these lies as recently as his testimony before the House “weaponization” committee last week. Rand Paul is right there with him. And they are planning to grill Dr Fauci and try to take away his pension (which they can’t do…) It’s sick.
I mean…
There’s a new theory that’s been leaking out of the cracked pots of the people who will believe everything except the truth when it comes to the pandemic, which on Wednesday claimed its one-millionth American victim, a number that would have been unthinkable just two years ago. What is an anti-vaxxer believing these days? Let’s go to our old friend, Senator Ron (Shreds of Freedom) Johnson. If it’s a crazy idea in politics, then Ron Johnson has consumed it. He’s a great white shark in the sea of American crazy, gobbling whatever rancid intellectual chum floats into his path.
Johnson was asked about a theory—one that’s new to me, anyway—offered by a lawyer named Todd Callender that the COVID vaccines are giving people AIDS. Most people would respond with incredulity, and a demand that the person making such an assertion immediately undergo a CAT scan. However, Ron Johnson is not most people, for which we can be grateful because, were that the case, we’d all be eating oatmeal with our toes. From the Wisconsin State Journal:
“Let me challenge you there. That’s way down the road,” Johnson replied. “I mean, you gotta do one step at a time. Everything you say may be true, OK, but right now the public views the vaccines as largely safe and effective, that vaccine injuries are rare and mild. That’s the narrative, that’s what the vast majority of the public accepts. So until we get a larger percentage of the population with their eyes open to ‘woah, these vaccine injuries are real, why?’ You know, it’s gotta be step by step. You can’t leap to crimes against humanity. You can’t leap to another Nuremberg trial.”
He’s not saying he agrees with this lunacy, mind you. He’s just open to any and all speculation, no matter how firmly attached it is to planet Earth.
Johnson has long entertained conspiratorial and disproven theories regarding COVID-19 or promoted less effective treatments, such as gargling mouthwash. He has also convened a group of doctors and scientists who have been criticized for spreading COVID-19 misinformation to “get a second opinion” on the health issues facing Americans because of the pandemic.
Johnson spokesperson Alexa Henning said in a statement, “To be clear, the Senator has never stated nor does believe that the vaccine causes HIV. Someone else brought it up on the call and the senator pushed back on his claim.”
Saying that it isn’t time for a Nuremberg trial yet over whether vaccines are giving people AIDS is not exactly “pushing back.” And it’s not like Johnson hasn’t been a professional traveling nut salesman before.
He is a professional travelling nut salesman and he’s still selling this QAnon ant-vax bullshit. From the US Senate. Who knows how many equally nutty judges are out there who are willing to push this same thing?