Unhinged Anti-Vaxxers

‘She probably chose Maderna because she knew she couldn’t spell Fizur’: Fake vaccine card sparks memes
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/maderna-fake-vaccine-card-memes/

A 24-year-old woman was arrested in Hawaii after she tried to use a fake vaccination card that said she received the “Maderna” COVID-19 shot, misspelling the name of the actual vaccine.

Chloe Mrozak, of Illinois, was arrested after an administrator for Hawaii’s Safe Travels Program, which requires vaccination to enter the state, noticed a possible fraudulent vaccination card.

The news was first reported by KHON2, a local news outlet.

Hawaii requires that anyone traveling to the state self-quarantine for 10 days after arriving. However, they can bypass the quarantine if they are fully vaccinated. A vaccination card must be uploaded to the Safe Travels website and the traveler needs to have a hard copy of one when they arrive in the state, according to the state’s COVID website.

When officials reviewed Mrozak’s vaccination card, it was discovered that the card misspelled “Moderna” as “Maderna.” They also could not verify that she was staying at the hotel she listed on her Safe Travels form, KHON reported.

On Wednesday, “Maderna” was trending online, with many people cracking jokes about the misspelled vaccine name on the fake card.

“See what that Funky, cold Maderna makes you do,” one person tweeted.

“Maderna is literally what my Grandma Dorothy called Madonna in the 80s,” another person wrote.

“Well… she probably chose Maderna because she knew she couldn’t spell Fizur,” one user joked.

But they were far from the only people online who decided to make a joke about the “Maderna” vaccine.

(More at above url)
 
gwb-trading said:
Long overdue to take away the medical licenses of these clowns... the reality is that most of them are not actually currently practicing and many have already lost their medical licenses.

A warning to doctors--spreading COVID misinformation could cost them their licenses
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-08-16/doctors-coronavirus-misinformation-license

On the list of things that doctors shouldn’t need to be told, one would expect that promoting bogus COVID-19 remedies would rank pretty high. The top of the list, in fact.

But no. The problem has become so acute that the Federation of State Medical Boards recently felt compelled to issue a stark warning to medical professionals:

“Physicians who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation are risking disciplinary action by state medical boards, including the suspension or revocation of their medical license.”

The federation, which has been around since 1912 and represents 70 medical and osteopathic boards in every state and U.S. territory, also felt it had to spell out its rationale.

“Due to their specialized knowledge and training, licensed physicians possess a high degree of public trust and therefore have a powerful platform in society, whether they recognize it or not.”

The federation mentioned doctors’ responsibility to share information that is “factual, scientifically grounded and consensus-driven,” and added: “Spreading inaccurate COVID-19 vaccine information contradicts that responsibility, threatens to further erode public trust in the medical profession and puts all patients at risk.”

That America’s medical regulators had to put this warning in black and white tells you that things are getting bad. That was already becoming clear, however. Misinformation and flat-out lies about the pandemic have been washing over us like a tsunami, thanks to the work of cynical politicians, uninformed celebrities and ignorant and irresponsible social-media “influencers.”

What’s most distressing is how some of the purveyors of anti-vaccine claptrap and hokum about supposed COVID treatments and cures have the initials M.D. after their names.

“It’s one thing when a celebrity or an elected public official says something, but when a licensed physician says it, that amplifies the message and gives it some credibility,” Humayun J. Chaudhry, the federation’s CEO, told me. “Across the country, at a time when we don’t need this, we’re seeing a handful of physicians engaging in that sort of activity.”

Even if it’s only a “handful” of America’s approximately 1 million doctors, Chaudhry says the spread of misinformation by doctors has become so alarming that the federation board asked its ethics and professionalism committee to draft a statement to be presented at the board’s annual meeting in Denver at the end of July. The full board approved the statement unanimously.

“Science does change, we recognize that,” Chaudhry says. “But it’s incumbent upon physicians to keep up with what’s permissible, what’s approved, what’s authorized and what’s not.”

When it comes to vaccines, he says, “We’ve seen the gamut of everything from whether the vaccines contain a microchip or whether they’re connected to 5G communications networks or even whether they work or not. Our statement points out to physicians that if you’re going to make statements that are not grounded in science or consensus-based, you are taking a risk with your license to practice medicine.”

Doctors using their authority to give misinformation a veneer of respectability isn’t a new phenomenon. The hydroxychloroquine craze last year, in which an antimalarial drug was touted as a “cure” for COVID-19, was touched off by claims made by a French physician with an elite following. Before the drug was proved to be useless for the purpose, the theme was picked up by President Trump and Mehmet Oz, a doctor with a huge broadcast following.

Some doctors have purveyed misinformation on Fox News and other right-wing broadcast outlets. Pierre Kory, a Wisconsin doctor assiduously promoting the anti-parasitic medicine Ivermectin as a COVID treatment despite the absence of valid scientific evidence for the claim, was even invited to testify to a Senate subcommittee.

Some have allegedly inflated or misrepresented professional credentials or achievements, which enhances their authoritativeness.

Take Texas doctor Peter McCullough, who has questioned the safety of COVID-19 vaccines and advised pregnant women and recovered COVID patients against taking them — advice that runs counter to that of the medical establishment.

Since Feb. 24, according to a legal filing, McCullough has conducted “dozens, if not hundreds, of interviews in print and video,” during some of which he is identified as a staff official at Baylor Medical Center or its affiliated institutions, such as “vice chief of internal medicine” at Baylor.

That’s a key date, according to a lawsuit filed against McCullough by Baylor affiliates, because it’s the date on which McCullough reached an agreement with Baylor not to use his previous Baylor titles or “hold himself out as affiliated” with Baylor or its related institutions. The July 28 lawsuit seeks to force McCullough to stop using his former relationship.

A McCullough lawyer told the Dallas Morning News that every misidentification cited in the lawsuit is “something said/printed by a third party with no encouragement from Dr. McCullough.” The lawyer told MedPage Today that the lawsuit was “a politically motivated attempt to silence Dr. McCullough as he saves countless patient lives from COVID-19.”

A few state medical boards have taken action against doctors spreading COVID or vaccine misinformation, but enforcement appears to have been spotty.

In part that’s because in virtually every state and territory, investigations of doctors remain confidential at least until a formal accusation or stipulated resolution is filed. That moment can come years after the alleged wrongdoing, during which the doctor can continue practicing without informing patients of an ongoing inquiry.

Medical boards are typically underfinanced and understaffed, and often underambitious. They often sit on their hands until they receive a complaint, whether from a patient or a medical colleague, instead of opening investigations on their own initiative.

It also can be hard to expose doctors communicating misinformation, because that can happen privately in clinical encounters between doctors and patients, rather than through public statements.

State medical boards are typically most aggressive in disciplining doctors for offenses that fall into certain clear-cut categories, such as practicing while under the influence of drugs or alcohol, sexual improprieties with patients, or felony convictions. They’re shyer about making judgments about medical practice.

“When it comes to making judgment calls about doctors practicing outside of the standard of care, they’re a lot more reluctant to do so, ”observes the veteran pseudoscience debunker David Gorski, a Detroit-area surgical oncologist.

Thus far, there appear to have been only two disciplinary actions taken against doctors strictly for misinformation or disinformation related to the pandemic.

Last December, the Oregon Medical Board issued an emergency suspension of the license of Steven LaTulippe after finding that he was seeing patients without wearing a mask, allowing his staff to interact with patients unmasked, and encouraging patients to doff their masks. Oregon law requires masks to be worn by healthcare workers in clinical settings.

LaTulippe’s “continued practice constitutes an immediate danger to the public,” the board ruled. LaTulippe stated in a letter to the medical board that “not only is the mask completely worthless, but it also is very dangerous” — a position that contradicts the medical consensus. He also spread anti-mask claims in public, including at a pro-Trump rally in November. “Take off the mask of shame,”he urged attendees.

According to the medical board, LaTulippe claims that “the body’s natural immune system is a more effective defense against COVID-19 than a mask.” He told the board at a hearing that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Oregon Health Authority favor masking because they have “an alternative agenda” that is “comprised primarily of money and power and politics and control of the population.”

The board’s order means that LaTulippe will be barred from practicing medicine in Oregon at least until its governor ends the ongoing state of emergency.

In January, a San Francisco doctor who had garnered notoriety for claiming that the pandemic was caused by the spread of 5G telecommunications technology voluntarily surrendered his license to the California Medical Board. Thomas Cowan, whose assertion was widely and conclusively debunked, already had said on his website that he would “re-emerge as an unlicensed ‘health coach’ or consultant.”

Cowan had been placed on five-year probation in 2017 for prescribing an unapproved drug for a breast cancer patient, and without conducting a physical examination of the patient or examining records of her prior treatment.

When I asked the Medical Board of California if it was keeping its eye on whether California doctors were spreading misinformation, its spokesman, Carlos Villatoro, told me by email that “the Board will review complaints it receives about its licensees on this topic, as it does with all complaints. To date, no accusation has been filed against a licensee regarding this issue.”

He did say, however, that “publicly spreading false COVID-19 information may be considered unprofessional conduct and could be grounds for disciplinary action.”

In its most notable pre-pandemic action against a doctor for anti-vaccine practices, the California board in April 2020 sanctioned “Dr. Bob” Sears, an Orange County pediatrician who has spread anti-vaccine advice at his practice and through books, for “repeated negligent acts” — issuing medical exemptions from vaccines for four children “without an appropriate medical basis.”

But the board merely extended an earlier 35-month probation imposed on Sears for an earlier issuance of an unwarranted vaccine exemption. During this period he isn’t prevented from continuing to counsel patients.

Some medical boards apparently prefer to take a hands-off approach even to flagrant misrepresentations about the pandemic. After Stella Immanuel, a Houston physician, appeared at a Washington rally in July 2020 touting hydroxychloroquine as a “cure” for COVID-19, despite the lack of any scientific evidence for its efficacy, the Texas Medical Board issued a statement warning against the claim but not mentioning Immanuel by name.

“In the past week there was a widely published claim of a ‘cure’ for COVID-19,” the board said in its July 28 advisory. “While there are drugs and therapies being used to treat COVID-19, there is no definitive cure at this time.”

Immanuel also claims that gynecological problems such as endometriosis and infertility are caused by “evil deposits from the spirit husband.” The video featuring Immanuel’s Washington appearance was retweeted by Trump, who called her “very impressive.” As of this writing, Immanuel remains a licensee in good standing with the Texas Medical Board.

Despite this unprepossessing record of vigilance, the federation’s statement drew fire from anti-vaccination groups. “The Federation of State Medical Boards Channels the Soviet NKVD,” wrote Tamzin Rosenwasser, an officer of the Assn. of American Physicians and Surgeons,a hive of anti-vaccination activism. Rosenwasser was equating the federation to the Stalin-era precursor to the KGB.

“Is there now a consensus among all 50 States that physicians are to be muzzled, silenced, and have their lives destroyed in case they do not agree with the new NKVD?” Rosenwasser wrote.

Unfortunately, given the torrent of deceit about the pandemic and the surfeit of information sources willing to funnel it into the public sphere, there’s reason to doubt that medical boards will be up to the task of regulating rogue physicians who bank on people’s inability to distinguish bunk from science-based medical consensus.

That’s especially true if medical boards don’t take the most aggressive tack possible to shut charlatans down. That means putting teeth on the threat of license revocation. Medical misbehavior is often life-threatening, but seldom has the threat been as dire as it is now.

“What we’re saying is almost a truism,” Chaudhry says. “Every physician should know that what they say matters.”
More...

Licenses of doctors who spread harmful COVID-19 information should be at risk
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthc...ead-harmful-covid-19-information-should-be-at
 
As a virologist I’m shocked my work has been hijacked by anti-vaxxers
A news interview I did was re-edited and misquoted by online conspiracy theorists. My advice is: get the vaccine.
David LV Bauer is head of the RNA virus replication laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute in London.

As a virologist, I’ve spent the past year or more studying the novel coronavirus that has upended all our lives. Communicating our work to the public and speaking to the media is an important part of my job, and I’ve always tried to be clear and accurate about the science: I believe the available vaccines against Covid-19 are safe,and they are our best route back to a more normal way of living.

I’ve been concerned about the anti-vaccination movement since before the pandemic.But I never imagined that my own work could actually be part of their misinformation arsenal. So I was shocked to discover that a recent TV interview I did for ITV London Newshad been seized on by anti-vax and conspiracy activists and now has thousands of likes, shares and retweets across social media.

The original interview was about our research on the Pfizer vaccine, which found that the antibody levels it generates are not as good at neutralising the Delta variant than against the original Wuhan strain – a simple update on likely vaccine protection. But the widely shared versions of the video were often edited, or taken out of context, to make me out to be some sort of supervillain, or the unlikely hero of the anti-vax world.

In some videos, I’m shown playing the part of the brave dissenter inside the establishment, blowing the whistle against some imagined harm of the vaccine. In another, I’m introduced as the head of the “UK bioweapons programme”, being caught admitting that the Covid vaccine could somehow destroy your immune system.

Like the virus itself, the videos seemed to be mutating and spreading, with new, more virulent variants catching on online. One of the most widely viewed videos created a convoluted and conspiratorial narrative involving vaccines, alien DNA and abortion which was repeated over and over – and featured the same clip of me replayed over and over at various points.

Judging by the messages coming into my inbox, there are a lot of people taken in by this. I get tens of notifications a week (even three months later) from people still citing these videos as proof that vaccines don’t work.

And I still get direct inquiries from people genuinely worried about the impact of these videos. I’ve heard from a nurse for a prison in New Zealand, wanting to reassure prisonersunder her care who were fearful of being vaccinated. I’ve heard from a woman in the United StatesS, fearful for her clinically vulnerable brother, who she said was taken in by online conspiracies. I’ve heard from a couple in Canada trying to decide whether to accept the vaccine, who wanted to understand exactly where these videos adhered to the truth, and where they had departed from it.

When I’ve replied to them, the response has always been grateful. I hope I’ve been able to persuade people to get the protection vaccination offers. But the hundreds of thousands of social media accounts sharing this distortion of my words are a different matter, forcing me to reflect on what makes anti-vaxxers share their misguided views so energetically.

A clever aspect of the videos is that they start with a trace of plausibility before veering into the implausible. In our research we did find that antibodies generated by the vaccine neutralise the Delta variant six times less well than they did the original strain in the lab.

But it’s far better to have some antibodies than none at all – a fact borne out by the vaccine’s continued success in preventing severe disease and death worldwide. And the idea that the vaccines destroy your immune system is just plain false: antibody levels in vaccinated people are still far higher than they are in unvaccinated people. Obscuring this fact has obvious tragic consequences, as unvaccinated patients continue to fill intensive care units around the world.

Another part of the appeal of such misinformation is that it restores a sense of agency to people who lack a sense of control over their own lives. It makes people feel part of a “tribe” of those in the know. Every time Twitter or YouTube blocked one of these videos, people commenting on it took it as proof that its misinformation was therefore true.

And the fact that these claims are obviously ridiculous and widely condemned by doctors and scientists serves its own purpose. The people most involved in spreading misinformation can claim they and their followers are being oppressed – further isolating those who are susceptible, and creating an online echo chamber.

It may seem contradictory for a scientist to discourage scepticism: after all, the first thing I teach my students is to be critical of data and to think of alternative interpretations. But in this case, it is scepticism built on a foundation of deep theoretical and practical knowledge and an understanding of the field in which they work – something that vaccine critics lack, no matter how knowledgable they may be in other areas.

It would be as if I, as a scientist, refused to drive a car fitted with airbags because I heard they had explosives in them, no matter how many times qualified engineers explained to me that airbags would save my life.

Everyone, no matter how clever, relies on the judgment of experts to shape parts of their worldview and make decisions. Even the people spreading dangerous conspiracies know this, and that is why I ended up in the anti-vax vortex: I was used as an expert voice against vaccines.

On Twitter, one person exasperatedly argued against people sharing one of the conspiracy videos in which I am the unwilling star, saying: “Come on people, can’t you see he’s a nobody?” Without trivialising the accomplishments of myself and my colleagues, that person is correct. I haven’t invented a vaccine. I don’t have a role in government and I don’t run a hospital.

But I do have an official title as a scientist, and a large body of scientific work proving my relevant expertise. And the anti-vax movement has almost no one with those things willing to take their side – the overwhelming majority of scientists correctly believe in vaccines.

So when I appeared in a video that could be easily misrepresented, they jumped at the chance to “recruit” me. So if you were somehow swayed by the claims that I appeared to make in those videos, please take the advice I actually believe: the vaccine will protect you from Covid. Get vaccinated.
 
Unhinged anti-vaxxers are a worldwide problem...

French doctors demand protection from death threats at work
https://nypost.com/2021/09/08/french-doctors-demand-protection-from-death-threats-at-work/

PARIS — French doctors and scientists on Tuesday called on authorities to take action against the insults and threats— including death threats — that they have frequently received during the coronavirus pandemic.

The doctors said they fear that someone from the world of conspiracy theories will take action, not just against them but against other medical professionals and condemned the silence of authorities.

“It’s months that some of us are receiving, regularly, death threats. Be it via social networks … Twitter, email, by telephone, or by the post. We are targets,” said Jerome Marty, a physician who heads a union for doctors in private practice, UFMLS.

Some doctors like himself receive threats “several times a day,” he said and some now have bodyguards.

“What we fear is not so much the threats to us personally,” Marty said. Their biggest fear is that “an anonymous doctor, an anonymous nurse, an anonymous scientist, the people fighting today in the face of the (COVID-19) crisis … will be assaulted by someone who takes action.”

Those in the group included medical professionals who often appear on TV to explain the current state of the pandemic to French residents.

Verbal threats were played, one from an anonymous man in Toulouse who said, “Listen, buddy. The population is starting to get angry … So shut your big trap. It’s like you’re looking for it.” Tougher was a threat on social media to one doctor, not present: “And the bullet in your head that I’m going to plant, how are you going to stop it?”

Vulgar insults were scrawled on a note to Karine Lacombe, head of infectious diseases at a Paris’ Saint Antoine Hospital and once a regular on news shows. “We’ve been following you for a while: car, house, route, garbage is destroyed,” it read in part.

“What shocks me is the impunity that the people who lit the fuse on purpose benefit from, to disturb an established order, to disturb what scientists say and make the population waver,” Lacombe said. She also expressed shock that the messages are relayed on social media and at weekly anti-health pass demonstrations.

Tens of thousands of people opposed to health passes needed to access restaurants, cafes and other gathering spots, including some opposed to COVID-19 vaccinations, march in cities around France each weekend.

Marty and others claimed the threats come from individuals who are being “manipulated.” He said there are perhaps a dozen to 20 people propelling the threats, but . “We aren’t detectives.”

Damien Barraud, an anesthetist in Metz, who denounces conspiracy theories linked to the virus on Twitter, said in a Zoom call at the news conference that he received his first threat in April 2020.

But “It’s amplifying now … getting more serious.”

Concerns about the threats grew with the publication last month in France Soir, a daily that has given voice to COVID-19 doubters, of an unsigned commentary taking down the medical establishment over the issue and naming names of doctors and scientists. The commentary, since revised, concluded with a cryptic reference to “La Veuve” (The Widow), a word once used to denote the guillotine. It was the last straw for the collective of doctors and scientists.

Lacombe stressed the need for the political class to “take a stance at some stage and not believe that freedom of speech, which of course must be protected in France, means accepting that there may be some verbal and physical violence.”
 
Infamous anti-vax pastor throws tantrum after Twitter ban -- and claims he was kicked off for 'gospel bombs
https://www.rawstory.com/anti-vax-pastor-2655027309/

On Tuesday The Tennessean reported that infamous anti-vaccine Pastor Greg Locke has been permanently suspended from Twitter for spreading COVID-19 disinformation — and that he posted a lengthy tantrum on Facebook in response.

"I was just finally permanently banned from Twitter," said Locke, who claimed he has immediately filed suit against the "censorship Nazis" at the social network and that he was kicked off for dropping "gospel, political, and biblical bombs."

"Guess who is still on Twitter. The Taliban," he continued. "Are you awake yet sheep? Wake up."

Locke has been one of the most prolific purveyors of false claims about the COVID-19 pandemic, claiming that the delta variant is "nonsense" and that those trying to promote vaccinations are "wicked fools."

"Locke's church has held in-person services, including in a tent, since 2020 amid the pandemic. He has been vocal in his opposition to COVID-19 protocols, even declaring his church a mask-free area," noted reporter Natalie Neysa Alund. "Early in the pandemic, he held services at the church even against warnings from Gov. Bill Lee."
 
My daughter sent me this.. I wonder if any the if treatments for hysteria could work on antivaxers?

hysteria.jpg
 
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