Roots to Sky’s Covid & Misinfodemic Resources

MISINFODEMIC RESOURCES & REFERENCES

KEEPING YOUR HEAD SCREWED ON: DEBUNKING MISINFORMATION

If you are coming from a direct link, please keep in mind this is the second page of my Covid Resources – specifically this is my Misinfodemic References, for my tips and tools on Covid in general, refer to Page 1 here.

I have separated these addendums to keep my personal views away from the document itself so that the previous section can stand on its own.

Some might ask what qualifies a TCM practitioner to write and post so much on pandemics, misinformation, and vaccine science? I’ve been dispelling myths and translating TCM to modern audiences even before my professional career. Our advanced TCM training (our “Doctor” title is still undergoing legislation, but is on its way) consisted heavily of modern biomedicine, pharmacology (of which we were trained more than an average GP MD due to our combining advanced herbal formulas with modern medications), pharmacodynamics/kinetics, training in and conducting formal science-based research, and obviously historical epidemics (the leading killers of the time) and their treatment with highly technical herbal formulas, refined through centuries – simply not found in historical Western medicine (which instead was burning witches at the stake in a parallel timeframe…)

But again – does this specifically give me the expertise to discuss vaccinology? No. Absolutely not. And that’s the point: We should all be generally listening to the extremely well trained, exhausted professionals in their fields: the nurses, the lawyers, the research scientists, and the immunology/vaccinology experts who all have come together to shape public policy. To protect public health.

So when I see people in my social media feeds discussing vaccines or masking it is blatantly obvious the vast majority of us have zero idea what they are talking about. How do I know? Because *I* have no idea what I’m talking about – and the more I listen to the actual experts listed below (especially on LinkedIn and Twitter) the more I realize that. Here I agree with Bakunin’s “in the matters of the boots we defer to the bootmaker”. This is why my entire thesis has been around #debunk: learning to debunk ourselves for the betterment of human health and public discourse.

Lastly this has all cumulated into me writing an actual book, so far totalling over 150 pages – check out the Public Draft here.

*Note I’ve *chosen* to post less direct studies as many if not most of these articles reference them, rather than double posting. Articles are just easier to understand for the general public, if you want to dive deeper into the research, follow the citation they provide (which I have yes vetted for myself).

1. MISINFORMATION DATABASE: Keeping Your Head Screwed On: Debunking Conspiracies
   1. Fact Checking Resources
   2. General Misinformation Overviews
   3. Conspirituality Overview
   4. Masks
   5. The Vaccine
      1. Overview/Summaries
      2. Transmission & Vaccinated vs Unvaccinated
      3. MRNA/Spike Protein
      4. Vaccine Capitalism (Pfizer, etc)
      5. Omicron/Boosters/Israel
      6. Mandates/Convoy
      7. Long Covid, Post Convoy, Omicron Subvariants
      8. Antivax Conspirituality & the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism
      9. Pregnancy
      10. Side Effects
      11. QUACKS: Ivermectin/Weinstein/Battacharya/GBD/Rogan/Russel Brand etc
      12. Actual Evidence-Based Personalities to Follow
2. 2020 Archive
   1. 2020 Debunked: “Plandemic”, Bill Gates, 5G etc
   2. Big Picture (Now Outdated)
   3. Emerging Newsfronts
   4. Socio-Political Implications

---

Let’s begin with this:

Where I stand on the politics, you can read more in my public drafts as I prepare to launch my weekly blog series. That’s right! No more half hour-long articles from me, just reader-friendly updates. Stay tuned!

✨PLEASE BEGIN WITH MY ESSAY SERIES: (and always remember, it’s as easy as typing “debunk” into every web search you do!)

1. Admitting my Covid-19 Biases: A Reflective Re-Introduction to my Pandemic Blogs
2. COMBATING MISINFORMATION IN THE COVID-19 ERA (Parts 1-2)
3. MISINFORMATION IN THE COVID-19 ERA: DANGERS & DELUSIONS (Parts 3-4)
4. Valid Mandate Concerns: Why I Argued in Polarized Terms
5. Arrogance: Flipping the Script to Respect Medical Professionals
6. You are a Statistic: Public vs Individual Health

1. FACT CHECKING DATABASES

• ⭐⭐Media Bias/Fact Check.com
• ⭐#CoronaVirusFacts Alliance
  • “Poynter’s mission is to champion the duty of a free press to inform, educate and hold the powerful accountable. As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, journalists, fact-checkers, educators and students around the world look to Poynter for best practices in covering the most significant story of this generation. …The IFCN is on the front lines of fighting the coronavirus infodemic by coordinating the largest collaborative fact-checking project ever.”
• ⭐⭐Skeptical Raptor
• ⭐⭐The Debunking Handbook 2020
• FirstDraft Alpha: Debunk information about coronavirus (Covid-19)
  • Search for information and debunks in more than 20 languages.
• FactCheck.org: A Guide to Our Coronavirus Coverage
• Misinformation Watch – COVID19MisInfo.org
• FullFact.org

2. GENERAL ARTICLES

• ⭐⭐Coronavirus Capitalism – And How to Beat It (Video, The Intercept)
• ⭐⭐⭐For much more on Covid Capitalism see: Kersplebedeb
• Excess deaths associated with covid-19 pandemic in 2020: age and sex disaggregated time series analysis in 29 high income countries (5/21)
• Covid-19 Bullshit Exposed in 5 Simple Graphics (11/20)
• The Atlantic – Renee Diresta (9/2020)
• 🌟Why smart people believe coronavirus myths (BBC)
• Here’s How to Fight Coronavirus Misinformation (The Atlantic)
• Why Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories Flourish. And Why It Matters. (NY Times)
• Debunking Coronavirus Trutherism (Medium)
  • Looking at hard evidence in response to conspiracy theories
• The Atir-Rosenzweig-Dunning Effect: when experts claim to know the unknowable (Big Think)
• COVID-19 conspiracy theories: Vaccines and 5G (along with Bill Gates) are responsible! (Science Based Medicine)
• Coronavirus Is the Crisis of Conspiracy Theorists’ Wildest Dreams (Vice)
• Fact-checking hoaxes and conspiracies about the coronavirus (PolitiFact)
• Coronavirus conspiracy theories spread panic and dangerous misinformation (Mashable)

3. CONSPIRITUALITY IN GENERAL

(References from my Misinformation 2 Essay)

• The Psychiatrist Who Calmly Denies Reality
  • “Dr. Andrew Kaufman made the rounds in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic by claiming the virus did not exist. Now, he leads anti-maskers in public demonstrations and tells hundreds of thousands of YouTube users that everything they know about medicine is wrong”
• Kelly Brogan’s Covid-Denying Conspiracy Machine | GEN (medium.com)
• Yoga influencers are battling to quash QAnon conspiracy theories – Insider
• Leading New Age Conspiracy Influencers Plan Their Retreat to Utopian Lagoon (vice.com)
• New Agers and Wellness Influencers Are Falling for Far-Right COVID Conspiracies (vice.com)
• ‘I’ve been called Satan’: Dr Rachel Clarke on facing abuse in the Covid crisis | Books | The Guardian
• The Real Conspiracies Are Right In Front Of You | by Jessica Wildfire | An Injustice! | Jan, 2021 | Medium
• The Great Reset Conspiracy Smoothie (theintercept.com) (Naomi Klein)
• Beyond ‘trusting the experts’ – Canadian Dimension
• Laurel Bristow: Teaching People How to Spot Bad Science Is a Public Health Tool – Mother Jones
• Naomi Klein on Coronavirus and Disaster Capitalism (vice.com)
• QAnon Is More Important Than You Think – The Atlantic

4. MASKS

📍N95 MASKS WORK—"We found combination of a #N95 mask that passed a quantitative fit-test & portable #HEPA filter **provided near complete protection** against high viral aerosol loads at close range for prolonged periods of time"—while surgical did not. https://t.co/txczDzlikR pic.twitter.com/x9Q5d989hs

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) August 31, 2022

We’ve always known masks are not perfect, nor any single Covid measure which is why I begin this section with the Swiss cheese and precautionary principle. We have to use all the tools in the toolbox against an unknown dangerous pathogen. Even if they prove less effective, we needed ALL the tools until we understood what we were up against. To flout those, demonstrates a deep self-centredness as because the jury is still out, why not simply opt to protect others than risk transmission? And yes, I may be harsh in my claim of self-centredness – this is because will never know the numbers of how many people died as a result of someone not wearing a mask. Because they have.

And again, even if they prove less effective, that is how science works – we learn more, and now right on cue mask mandates are being lifted as we get a grip on the pandemic – no conspiracy required. Was it really too much to ask? Rather than assuming you have the answers, approach professionals, especially those I have listed below, with inquisitive respect rather than arrogant shitposting (hence my clear frustration in these personal notes). If anti-maskers are really so confident, please go to Wikipedia and start editing the “Masks during Covid” page.

I can go on, but it’s boring. Frankly, don’t be a douche, wear a mask when advised.

• ⭐Masks for COVID: Updating the evidence (July 2022)
• ⭐⭐An evidence review of face masks against COVID-19
• Multiple studies show that face masks reduce the spread of COVID-19; a Cochrane review doesn’t demonstrate otherwise
• Cloth Mask’s Effectiveness Against Airborne Infection Is Questionable | by Shin Jie Yong | Microbial Instincts | Medium
• Largest study on masks and Covid-19 demonstrates their effectiveness in the real world | Yale Economic Growth Center
• Japan has long accepted COVID’s airborne spread, and scientists say ventilation is key (June ’22)
• Covid-19 vs Surgical Mask. Do Masks Work Or Not?
• Modeling COVID-19 Mortality Across 44 Countries: Face Covering May Reduce Deaths (Journal of Preventative Medicine, Nov 2021)
  • Just an 80% reduction in per capita covid death in countries that had mask policies.
  • Via In Global Study, Tougher Mask Laws Linked to Fewer COVID Deaths
• Masks Work. Really. We’ll Show You How. (New York Times)

5. THE VACCINE

(Citation database for my upcoming Misinformation blog series/book)

OVERVIEWS/SUMMARIES

• ⭐⭐COVID-19 vaccine facts and myths – UPDATED info about the new vaccines (skepticalraptor.com) (Dec 5, 2021)
• ⭐⭐COVID-19 vaccine facts and debunking myths — the semi-complete list (Skeptical Raptor, Feb 1/22)
• ⭐⭐Excellent debunking summary video (12/21) (despite my disdain for YouTube research)
  • “Trust data, not people”.
  • Very valid in Jan/22
  • Check out the linked references.
• Every Covid-19 Vaccine Question You’ll Ever Have, Answered
• ⭐⭐Debunking 30 bad arguments about COVID/vaccines
• ⭐⭐Vaccine hesitancy: Why ‘doing your own research’ doesn’t work, but reason alone won’t change minds
• ⭐⭐Safety of mRNA vaccines administered during the initial 6 months of the US COVID-19 vaccination programme: an observational study of reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System and v-safe (The Lancet March 7/22)
  • One of the most comprehensive and conclusive studies to date. Note that this is an “observational” study which mean anyone who died, would have died with or without a vaccine or a pandemic. Because… People die.
• ⭐Answers from COVID experts : How do you talk to family members who aren’t vaccinated? How can the vaccines be safe if they were developed so quickly? Is natural immunity better than being vaccinated?
• People, Not Science, Decide When a Pandemic Is Over (Scientific American, March 14/22)
• Article by OffGuardian, ZeroHedge claiming to list 30 facts about COVID-19 contains multiple inaccurate and misleading statements
• ⭐Underlying health conditions? That’s almost all of us
• Quick Summary: COVID-19: Popular UBC professor busts myths about the virus and vaccines on social media
• The Whole Truth: Covid-19 Vaccination
  • “Declining the vaccine is far riskier than having it.”
• ‘Nocebo effect’: two-thirds of Covid jab reactions not caused by vaccine, study suggests (Guardian: Jan/22)

TRANSMISSION & UNVACCINATED vs VACCINATED (aka Vaccines Work… Extremely well.)

• ⭐⭐Only nine Ontarians under the age of 60 have ended up in the ICU with a breakthrough case of COVID-19 (Nov 25, 2021)
  • “As a point of comparison a total of 8,355 unvaccinated individuals under the age of 60 have ended up in hospital with COVID-19 over the same time-period and 1,722 of them have required treatment in the ICU.”
    • This… Quite honestly, should be the end of any debates in regards to Delta, and I may as well stop adding to this database 😜 In terms of Omicron (below), vaccines still work to keep people out of ICU’s – their primary purpose. Omicron specific vaccines are due in Fall ’22 and will likely begin an annual cadence similar to flu vaccines.
• ⭐CDC Science Brief: SARS-CoV-2 Infection-induced and Vaccine-induced Immunity
  • Key statement: “Available evidence shows that fully vaccinated individuals and those previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 each have a low risk of subsequent infection for at least 6 months.” – Here I now stress that one route confers protection without the dangers of dying choking from Covid, one route prevents Long Covid, and one route has essentially infinitely less side effects. I wonder which one? 🤔
• ⭐COVID infection rates are NOT unrelated to vaccines – debunking research
  • “I’m going to set aside the irony that anti-vaxxers love to argue that the bulk of vaccine research is garbage, usually bought by Big Pharma. But any “research” that supports their pre-conceived conclusion is, of course, Nobel Prize-worthy.”
• ⭐⭐‘Thirty-, 40- and 50-year-olds shouldn’t be dying at this level’: A day in a Victoria ICU
  • Also this 😢 B.C. COVID patients in ICU younger, sicker; many won’t make it – Victoria Times Colonist
• ⭐⭐The Right’s Anti-Vaxxers Are Killing Republicans (Intercept – Oct/22)
• Why should the vaccinated care that the unvaccinated are unvaccinated? (Feb/22)
• The Anti-Vaxxer Hunt for Dead People Is Getting Even Weirder (Daily Beast Apr/21)
  • “Coronavirus shots are overwhelmingly safe. Just don’t tell the cottage industry of sleuths obsessed with proving otherwise.”
• Antibody protection after mild COVID-19 may not last; an estimated 100 mln people have had long COVID (Reuters 11/21)
  • KEEP IN MIND: The sheer difference in severity of disease in the flu vs Covid-19: “Among 43 Australians who dealt with mild COVID-19 early in the pandemic, 90% still had antibodies 12 months later. But only 51.2% had antibodies that showed “neutralizing activity” against the original version of the virus and only 44.2% had antibodies that could neutralize the early Alpha variant, the research team at the University of Adelaide reported on Thursday on medRxiv ahead of peer review. Neutralizing antibodies against the now dominant and highly transmissible Delta variant were seen in only 16.2%, with 11.6% against Gamma, and against Beta in only 4.6%. Those who had mild COVID-19 “are vulnerable to infection with circulating and newly emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants 12 months after recovery,” the researchers said. The findings “reinforce the potential benefit” of tailoring vaccine boosters to currently circulating variants, similar to how annual flu vaccines are tailored to current influenza strains, they said.”
• ⭐COVID would have killed 58% more Americans without vaccines: Study
• mRNA-1273 and BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccines elicit antibodies with differences in Fc-mediated effector functions (Science, March 29/22)
• How Hospitals Became Vaults That Hid Evidence of Covid-19’s Toll (The Intercept)
• Unvaccinated 60 times more likely to end up in ICU with COVID-19, Ontario data shows (Global News)
• Doctors and Nurses Are ‘Living in a Constant Crisis’ as Covid Fills Hospitals and Omicron Looms (NYT)
  • ““Unless you are up in that unit working side by side with me seeing the true devastation of the virus and what it physically does to the human body, how can you appreciate it? How?” said Jamie Vinson-Hunter, a respiratory therapist.”
• ‘The Impact of the Vaccine Has Been Tremendous’ (Medscape)
• Stop Calling It a ‘Pandemic of the Unvaccinated’ (Atlantic)
• As Omicron Hits, COVID-19 Case Counts Don’t Mean What They Used To (Time)
  • “It no longer makes sense to assume “cases” equate to “disease” in areas of high vaccination coverage and this misguided equivalency can have negative consequences.”
• What J&J Can Still Teach Us (Atlantic)
• More than 98 per cent of eligible people have received COVID-19 vaccine in this Calgary region
• Vaccine offers more protection against COVID-19 than natural immunity, CDC study finds
• Vaccinated America Has Had Enough (Atlantic)
• Covid Vaccines Prevented Nearly 40K Deaths Among US Seniors From January to May: Report (Common Dreams)
• RFK Jr. Is Our Brother and Uncle. He’s Tragically Wrong About Vaccines. (Politico)
• TRANSMISSION
  • ⭐COVID vaccines DO reduce transmission (Debunk the Funk)
  • Yes, vaccines curb COVID-19 transmission — but that’s not enough to protect those without a shot
  • The impact of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination on Alpha & Delta variant transmission (MedRxIV Database)
  • COVID-19: The Unvaccinated Pose a Risk to the Vaccinated (FactCheck 9/21)
  • The Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine doesn’t prevent transmission: Antivax disinformation goes viral again | Science-Based Medicine (sciencebasedmedicine.org)
  • It’s Not News, Nor ‘Scandalous,’ That Pfizer Trial Didn’t Test Transmission – FactCheck.org
    • Keep in mind all the posts above, and the fact that there are more vaccines than Pfizer, and *as always* the primary function of a vaccine is to *keep people from dying*.

MRNA VACCINES & SPIKE PROTEIN

• ⭐What are COVID-19 mRNA vaccines? Science to help debunk myths (Skeptical Raptor)
• ⭐The next act for messenger RNA could be bigger than covid vaccines (MIT Review)
• ⭐Unlocking the potential of vaccines built on messenger RNA (Nature)
• ⭐Malaria is notoriously hard to vaccinate against. A new vaccine technology might change that. (Vox)
• ⭐An Appreciation for Vaccines, and How Far They Have Come (NY Times)
• ⭐Byram Bridle’s Vaccine Misinformation
• Lipid nanoparticles for mRNA delivery (Nature)
• mRNA Vaccine Stays Active in the Body Longer Than Expected, New Data Shows. But It Isn’t Dangerous.
• mRNA vaccine technology
• mRNA vaccines — a new era in vaccinology (nature.com)
  • PubMed: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5906799/
  • “Nucleic acid therapeutics have emerged as promising alternatives to conventional vaccine approaches. The first report of the successful use of in vitro transcribed (IVT) mRNA in animals was published in 1990”
    • Yep – That’s officially THIRTY years ago.
• How mRNA Technology Could Change the World – The Atlantic (ampproject.org)
• Study says Pfizer vaccine immunity is so strong, it might prevent COVID-19 transmission – BGR
• Reverse Engineering the source code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine – Articles (berthub.eu)
• Talk:RNA vaccine – Wikipedia
• Skeptical Raptor – Science of vaccines, cancer, nutrition, evolution

CAPITALISM IS THE CONSPIRACY (Vaccine Capitalism Fronts I’m Monitoring)

• ⭐We Must Take The Vaccine Industry Into Public Ownership To Ensure Its Products Are Available To All (Common Dreams)
• Rich Nations Have Delivered Just 14% of Vaccine Doses Promised to Poor Nations
• Public Citizen Blasts Pfizer for Putting Corporate Profit Over Increasing Access to COVID Vaccines (Democracy Now)
• ⭐How Bill Gates Impeded Global Access to Covid Vaccines (New Republic)
• PFIZER
  • I post the following here to let readers be aware I am currently researching and will be providing conclusions as to their validity and especially context in the big picture. Keep in mind – as all the posts above and below show – the vaccines work – the issue, as I’ve broken down in my own essays and upcoming book – remains capitalism not conspiracy.
    • ‘Paramount importance’: Judge orders FDA to hasten release of Pfizer vaccine docs | Reuters
    • Covid-19 vaccines and treatments: we must have raw data, now
    • CDC Right to Withhold COVID Data to Prevent Misinformation, Scientists Say
    • ⭐False Claims about Pfizer document
    • Fact Check-Screenshots do not show Pfizer declaring vaccines unsafe
  • ‘Unprecedented’ Shareholder Resolutions Call on Pfizer, Moderna to Share Vaccine Tech
  • Pfizer Forecasts Record Vaccine Revenue for 2022 as Billions Remain Unprotected
  • No, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla Was Not Arrested, Here’s How This Conspiracy Theory Emerged
  • A Viral Theory Cited by Health Officials Draws Fire From Scientists
  • Did Pfizer make a ‘scandalous’ admission to the European Parliament about its COVID-19 vaccine? – ABC News

OMICRON, BOOSTERS & ISRAEL

⚠️UPDATE—#BA2 is now 11.6% in US, up from 8.3% last week. It’s definitely increasing, as warned. #COVID19 still dropping, but BA2 is growing in underbelly—it’s a matter of when (not ‘if’) case drop plateaus, then reverses. Likely late April, early May.🧵https://t.co/amAjDWcDSR pic.twitter.com/4fOxUrGPVQ

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) March 8, 2022

Just published @NEJM
4th dose vaccine protection in >620,000 people vs 3-doses in >620,000, all age 60+, Omicron wave, Israel
—4-fold lower rate of severe disease, no waning at 6 weeks
—2-fold lower rate of infection, rapidly wanedhttps://t.co/g8uGMXGHD6 pic.twitter.com/D7WHywTI1j

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) April 5, 2022

• ⭐Why do we need COVID vaccine boosters for the Omicron variant? (skepticalraptor.com)
• ⭐Safety and immunogenicity of SARS-CoV-2 variant mRNA vaccine boosters in healthy adults: an interim analysis (nature.com)
• ⭐⭐COVID-19 variants will keep coming until everyone can access vaccines (nationalgeographic.com) (National Geographic)
  • Available here: https://www.msn.com/en-ca/health/medical/covid-19-variants-will-keep-coming-until-everyone-can-access-vaccines/ar-AAScEFW?ocid=winp2octswipe&utm_source=pocket_mylist
• COVID vaccine boosters: the most important questions
• Effect of mRNA Vaccine Boosters against SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Infection in Qatar
  • See also: https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1501679470658428932?s=20&t=Rq0JQjG7B0w1-g_-4R0LVw
• COVID vaccines protect against Delta, but their effectiveness wanes
  • And, as I keep repeating – despite the waning, how many lives were saved during this period? That’s all that matters.
• Q&A: Why COVID-19 booster shots turned out to be more complicated than vaccines
• 14% of Israeli adults are unvaxxed. They account for 100% of ECMO patients – Israel News – Haaretz.com (Jan 13)
• New COVID cases, deaths fall further in Israel and globally as Omicron wave fades (Feb 23)
  • WHO also reported that available vaccine evidence shows that “booster vaccination substantially improves” vaccine effectiveness against Omicron, but said more details are still needed on how long such protection lasts.
  • The agency had previously said there was no proof that boosters were necessary for healthy people and pleaded with rich countries not to offer third doses to their people before sharing them with poorer countries.
  • Health officials have noted that omicron causes milder disease than previous COVID-19 variants and in countries with high vaccination rates, omicron has spread widely but COVID-19 hospitalization and death rates have not increased substantially.
  • Scientists, however, warn that it’s still possible that more transmissible and deadly variants of COVID-19 could still emerge if the virus is allowed to spread uncontrolled.
  • WHO’s Europe chief Dr. Hans Kluge says the region is now entering a “plausible endgame” for the virus and said there is now a “singular opportunity” for authorities to end the acute phase of the pandemic.
• Israeli study suggests booster vaccine highly effective
• Protection of BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster against Covid-19 in Israel
• What pushed Israel out of herd immunity?
• Q&A: Why COVID-19 booster shots turned out to be more complicated than vaccines
• COVID-vaccine booster shot shows promise in Israeli study
• ⭐The Covid spike in highly vaccinated Israel holds grim omens for other economies
  • Likely the best discussion I have found.
• ‘Goldmine’ U.K. study may hint why Israel has had a larger issue with waning vaccine protection
• Pfizer says Israel data shows third Covid shot restores protection from infection to 95% as it makes case to FDA for boosters
• COVID’s “fifth wave” exceeds all previous waves combined
• COVID vaccine effects wane over time but still prevent death and severe illness
• Biden Covid team sees vaccine efficacy waning in unpublished data from Israel
  • A key point with this one is the recommendation against boosters in the general population. Meaning, as evidenced from the articles above, there appears to be evidence in boosters only for the most vulnerable populations.

MANDATES & THE CONVOY

My initial views on the Convoy can be found here – more on the way!

As can be found in my final Misinformation Essays, I’m quite on the fence when it comes to mandates, and absolutely see both sides of the issue. While I actively avoid posting YouTube content and choose researched articles instead, the ZDoggMD video below shares a similar view that I have. Yet that said to me, it always comes down to numbers: If it can be shown that mandates save lives by increasing vaccination rates, then I am generally for them as a health professional with public health in mind. Lives trump a temporary loss in personal freedoms, as the vast majority of Canadians agree, in our democracy. If you don’t agree, as I show below, check yourself for eugenics/ablelism – and the ring-wing commentators some blindly follow (ahem, Peterson). MUCH more on this in my next essay.

NOTE: Unlike the other science-based sections above/below, this one I make no attempt to hide my obvious bias here. These articles are posted to illustrate my thesis of far-right politicization that does not serve public health nor workers. So to whom does this serve?

This amazing Doc was posted in a thread of mine but is very deserving of its own with almost countless described links detailing exactly why the Convoy was in no way shape or form a 'peaceful protest. If you have some time, check it out:https://t.co/ZXxvT7p5bQ

— Mike Morris (@1MikeMorris) August 14, 2022

🧵If you're new around here and are interesting in convoy financing, here's a quick thread of my biggest hits on the topic. Articles are behind a paywall, but here are the threads with most of the details:

— JMDavis (@JessMarinDavis) February 8, 2022

Made this visualization in my personal attempt to understand what's going on where I live, in #Ottawa. #FreedomConvoyCanada2022 #FreedomConvoyCanada pic.twitter.com/sIEMxXiOKF

— merlyna (@merlyna) February 25, 2022

• EMERGENCIES ACT REVISTED 2023
  • The Verdict Is In (Justin Ling)
    • “This is all a useful reminder that anyone who suggests that extremists were nowhere to be found during this movement is being willfully obtuse. Both MacKenzie and Vriend were in Ottawa, they have both made repeated calls to hang or murder the prime minister, and they have both lied about their ties to the crew arrested in Coutts. They are domestic extremists, and anyone carrying water for them should give their head a shake.”
• I DO SEE BOTH SIDES/EMERGENCIES ACT/HYPOCRISY/Lessons (aka the anarchist advantage 😉)
  • ⭐This Vaccine Mandate Is A Huge Mistake | A Doctor Explains (ZDoggMD)
  • WHO wades into vaccine mandates dispute, saying they should be an ‘absolute last resort’
  • Why I’m for COVID vaccines, but against vaccine mandates.
  • Leftists must oppose the suppression of dissent—even when we disagree with the dissenters
  • Can the Left Learn From Canada’s “Freedom Convoy”? (The Intercept)
  • WHAT THE EMERGENCIES ACT REVEALS ABOUT CIVILIAN POLICING IN OTTAWA
  • The Freedom Convoy – by Justin Ling (bugeyedandshameless.com)
    • “Andrew Lawton talks about his book on the occupation of Ottawa, what the media got wrong, and how to reach people beholden to conspiracy theories.“
• FALLACY OF DEMANDS
  • ⭐⭐Why Vaccine Mandates Do Not Infringe on Liberty (Current Affairs)
    • This is the best piece I’ve read so far and fits perfectly with my core thesis of social welfare & health being co-opted by the right wing via misinformation propaganda.
  • ⭐⭐No, anti-vaxxers — your freedoms aren’t in jeopardy | Canada’s National Observer: News & Analysis
  • ‘No air of reality’: Judge shoots down private prosecution of Doug Ford over COVID vaccine ‘crimes’
  • ⭐⭐Do mandatory vaccines violate human rights? (Quartz)
    • Save to Pocket to get behind paywall.
  • Are COVID-19 vaccine mandates human rights violations? | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)
  • Convoy blockades cost Canadian economy billions in reduced GDP, documents show
    • Wasn’t this supposed to be about the workers or something?
• NOT DEMOCRATIC
  • Honestly, just type “how many Canadians support the freedom convoy” into a search and stop seeking to confirm your own biases/shifting your goalposts as these are the best and largely *only* polls available from reputable unbiased agencies.
  • ⭐⭐Covid19 Monitor: “Restrictions”
  • Wikipedia List of Opinion Polls
  • ⭐Majority of Canadians disagree with ‘freedom convoy’ on vaccine mandates and lockdowns (Feb/22)
  • ⭐How Doug Ford hid from dealing with the Freedom Convoy
  • ⭐⭐The Ottawa convoy is not peaceful: megalist
  • Fact check: Strong majority of Canadians oppose convoy protests, poll after poll finds
• DANGERS OF BOWING TO POLITICAL PRESSURE (Rather than science) PREEMPTIVELY
  • More than a third of Canadian households got COVID-19 after restrictions lifted, poll finds
  • CDC Is Bowing to Political Pressure With COVID Changes
  • Ending all Covid restrictions ‘premature and not based on evidence’, says BMA
  • Benefits of vaccine mandates and vaccine passports for SARS-CoV-2
  • The latest Covid variant is 1.5 times more contagious than omicron and already circulating in almost half of U.S. states
    • I’m posting this to show that just because we want out of restrictions – the virus will continue to evolve.
  • As Mask Mandates End, COVID Experts Fear It’s Too Soon (Truthout)
• ORGANIZERS/DONERS (I love how people continue to deflect from these facts…)
  • ⭐⭐ramranchdata (convoytimeline.ca)
  • ⭐⭐Was the ‘Freedom Convoy’ really about vaccine mandates — or something darker? | The Star
    • https://www.reddit.com/r/ontario/comments/tin80s/was_it_really_about_vaccine_mandates_or_something/
  • Unmask the Right: Profiles in Extremism
  • Some trucker convoy organizers have history of white nationalism, racism
  • CANADIAN CONSERVATIVE DENIED GIVING TO “FREEDOM CONVOY,” BUT HIS NAME WAS ON DONOR LIST (Intercept)
  • ⭐OATH KEEPERS, ANTI-DEMOCRACY ACTIVISTS, AND OTHERS ON THE FAR RIGHT ARE FUNDING CANADA’S “FREEDOM CONVOY” (Intercept)
• ALT RIGHT HIJACKING/WORKERS VOICES
  • ⭐⭐Why is there now such an affinity between antivaxxers and fascism?
    • From the editor of Science Based Medicine. That… says a lot.
    • “Scratch an anti-mandate protester, and you’ll very frequently find an antivaxxer.”
    • “I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen the claim that “vaccine passports” and mandates are about “control,” not public health.”
  • The trucker convoy shows how Canadians are being sucked into larger conspiratorial narratives
  • #FreedomConvoy2022 and Canada’s descent into Trumpism (Now Magazine)
  • Solutions exist for Canada’s alt-right radicalization
  • The so-called Freedom Convoy was never about truckers, or border mandates (TruckNews.com – like…seriously….)
  • The far-right’s dangerous political momentum (Canadian Dimension)
  • THE CONVOY AND CANADA – A CALL TO STEP UP (Council of Canadians)
  • Zcomm » Why the Freedom Convoy Is More American Than Canadian
    • “How ironic it is that those proclaiming they want “freedom” are protesting against the very thing that offers society a path toward liberation from the pandemic. The protests are taking place around the one-year anniversary of when lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines first became available to residents of Western nations like the United States and Canada. To most of us a year ago, the vaccines offered a tantalizing glimpse of what the end of quarantine and isolation could look like.”
  • 5G and QAnon: how conspiracy theorists steered Canada’s anti-vaccine trucker protest
    • See also: The whole world should be worried by the ‘siege of Ottawa’. This is about much more than a few anti-vaxx truckers
  • Swastikas and Confederate Flags Seen at Canada’s ‘Freedom Convoy’ (Snopes)
  • Freedom Comes to Canada (Popular Resistance)
  • ⭐Canada’s “Freedom Convoy” Is a Front for a Right-Wing, Anti-Worker Agenda (Jacobin)
  • Convoy Movement Isn’t a Struggle Over Freedom, It’s an Attempt to Kill Democracy (Henry A. Giroux, Truthout)
  • Ottawa truckers’ convoy galvanizes far-right worldwide (Politico)
• EFFECTS ON HEALTHCARE WORKERS
  • From heroes to hated: Health-care workers sign open letter slamming abuse
    • This piece especially hit hard for me, as it reflects trends that I’m seeing even in my immediate circles – a backlash against those of us who have worked tirelessly through the pandemic only to now be perceived as “Leftist morons”.
    • “But on Monday, when Dr. Nili Kaplan-Myrth walked into her office, she had a different kind message waiting on her answering machine. “You’re a lying a– c—,” said the voicemail, which was left on the phone at her family health practice in Ottawa over the weekend. “I bet you love doing abortions, that’s why you’ve got a hyphen in your name, couldn’t even take take your f— husband’s last name. I’m sure of it. Another f—— extreme leftist, freakin’ extreme feminist c– who is just trying to destroy the world. Those people are fighting for your freedoms too, you dumb c—.”
  • ‘Rage’: Physicians speak out against threats over COVID-19 public health measures
  • No Jab, No Job? Ethical Issues in Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccination of Healthcare Personnel (PubMed)
  • The loudmouths are losing. When this is all over, remember the helpers (TVO)
    • “Ottawa police estimate that the crowds on Parliament Hill fell somewhere between 5,000 and 18,000; you could double the higher estimate, and that would still be a fraction of the number of people who received vaccine doses on Saturday and Sunday in Ontario alone; nearly 160,000 people received vaccines over the weekend. Most of those are third doses at this point, but plenty of young children are still showing up to get their first and second doses as well. And those many thousands join millions more — more Ontarians have now had three shots than only two or one, and while the sad, deluded spectacle in Ottawa is already making a high-speed transition from tragedy to farce as numbers dwindle, the ranks of the vaccinated grow every day. … Vaccinations are just the most easily counted example of the actual mass movement going on in Canada right now: people trying their hardest to end this pandemic with the light of reason instead of bitter, nasty authoritarian cosplay. And, as with any movement, the broad sweep of the narrative conceals uncountable smaller stories, little acts of generosity and grace that many of us will never know.“
• The ‘freedom convoy’ protesters are a textbook case of ‘aggrieved entitlement’
• US railroad companies used to mandate smallpox vaccines — Quartz (qz.com)
• American truckers distance from Canada protests
• ⭐Americans Are Suing to Protect Their Freedom From Infection (Atlantic)

LONG COVID, POST-CONVOY & BA-2+

Shock and Awe.

What omicron can do (Left). What vaccines do (Right).

1/ pic.twitter.com/ywR0GqLe69

— Vincent Rajkumar (@VincentRK) April 1, 2022

As we navigate the next phase of the pandemic, I'd like to remind everybody that testing data will be undercounted on levels never seen before, as well as deaths. Hospitalizations may be the only "reliable" metric from now on. However, hospitalizations are a lagging indicator.

— COVID News Network (CNN) 🦠 😷 (@COVIDnewsfast) April 3, 2022

The lives of people who die from COVID matter. That seems to be a controversial statement in some quarters. Their lives are just as valuable as the lives of murder victims, or car accident victims, or war victims, or…

— Tim Bousquet (@Tim_Bousquet) April 3, 2022

Yesterday CDC released a report tracking rates of cardiac issues (myo/pericarditis) after infection or mRNA vaccination combining information across 40 health systems in the USA, stratified by age/sex.https://t.co/Yfnzvkblpm

— Prof Jeffrey S Morris (@jsm2334) April 2, 2022

“To bear witness to the human suffering that we have to bear witness to that we know is so unjust. It’s too much. There’s no time to get over that. There’s no time to metabolize it and be able to come back all fresh.”

Nurses brace for 6th wavehttps://t.co/NdeZslsL4N

— Chris is 😷 💉💉💉 (@ChristyCeeCK) April 2, 2022

There is now little doubt that SARS-CoV-2 is neurotrophic. It infects the brain: “neuroinflammation, microhemorrhages, brain hypoxia…including neuron degeneration and apoptosis [is] seen among animals that do not develop severe respiratory disease” https://t.co/GATm7WIwUn

— Dr Satoshi Akima FRACP 『秋間聰』 (@ToshiAkima) April 2, 2022

New Study: Covid found to infect the eyes and replicate with in them: virus found in eyes months after infection:

'our data give us reason to believe that so-called long-Covid symptoms may include degenerative retinal disease.'

Study leader says. pic.twitter.com/ScYlmpWMgs

— Chris Turnbull (@EnemyInAState) March 31, 2022

Impaired driving kills ~1,500 Canadians yearly. Imagine if someone said: “Impaired driving is a personal choice. Drive sober if you want.”

COVID killed 13,885 Canadians in 2021 & 6,645 so far in 2022.

So…can someone explain the logic behind dropping mask mandates, right now?

— Dr. Amit Arya (@AmitAryaMD) March 21, 2022

So many times I was asked “But Sweden …”
Now we have a detailed, and damning account of what went wrong. “drastic deviation from 280 years of respect for scientific facts” A reminder that a well prepared country with expertise +++ can go terribly wrong https://t.co/EQz4DXOoVx

— Martin McKee 🇺🇦 (@martinmckee) March 23, 2022

• Urgency of Normal, the Great Barrington Declaration, and the antivax movement
• The pandemic and the boiling frog story (Eric Topol, July ’22)
• ⭐⭐The Pandemic’s Legacy Is Already Clear
• Once again, America is in denial about signs of a fresh Covid wave (March 16)
• Will Omicron finally overpower China’s COVID defences? (Nature – March 30)
• Defining the risk of SARS-CoV-2 variants on immune protection (Nature – March 31)
• ‘Very clear’ Ontario is in 6th wave of COVID-19 pandemic driven by easing restrictions, science table head says (CP24)
• LONG COVID
  • One of the best places to hear actual Long Covid stories is – yep – TikTok:
    • https://www.tiktok.com/tag/longcovid
    Even mild Covid is linked to brain damage, scans show
  • Long-term neurologic outcomes of COVID-19 (Nature – Sept’22)
  • COVID raises risk of long-term brain injury, large U.S. study finds (Sept 22)
  • Nearly half of COVID patients haven’t fully recovered months later, study finds
  • Can long Covid lead to death? A new analysis suggests it could
  • What 2 new studies reveal about long COVID in Canada
  • Covid-19 ‘linked to increase in new diagnoses of type 1 diabetes in children’
• • COVID Affects Executive Functioning in Young to Middle-Age Adults: Study (Medscape)
• • More than a third of Canadian households got COVID-19 after restrictions lifted, poll finds
• • Risk factors and disease profile of post-vaccination SARS-CoV-2 infection in UK users of the COVID Symptom Study app: a prospective, community-based, nested, case-control study
    • Vaccines prevent Long Covid. “We found that the odds of having symptoms for 28 days or more after post-vaccination infection were approximately halved by having two vaccine doses. This result suggests that the risk of long COVID is reduced in individuals who have received double vaccination, when additionally considering the already documented reduced risk of infection overall. Almost all individual symptoms of COVID-19 were less common in vaccinated versus unvaccinated participants, and more people in the vaccinated than in the unvaccinated groups were completely asymptomatic. This increased incidence of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic infection in vaccinated participants underlines the importance of individuals who interact with unvaccinated or clinically vulnerable groups (eg, health-care workers and social care workers) continuing to regularly take tests for SARS-CoV-2, even if vaccinated, in line with current UK testing guidelines.33 We also found that COVID-19 was less severe (both in terms of the number of symptoms in the first week of infection and the need for hospitalisation) in participants after their first or second vaccine doses compared with unvaccinated participants. We have previously shown that having more than five symptoms in the first week of infection was associated with COVID-19 severity20 and disease duration.”
    SARS-CoV-2 is associated with changes in brain structure in UK Biobank
• • Covid May Cause Changes in the Brain, New Study Finds
  • There is more to Sars-CoV-2 than meets the eye (March/22)
    • Coronavirus not only infects the human retina, but can also replicate in it
  • Neuropathology and virus in brain of SARS-CoV-2 infected non-human primates (Nature, April/22)

ANTIVAXX CONSPIRITUALITY and the SLIPPERY SLOPE TO RIGHT WING EXTREMISM

I launched my misinformation campaign the day the lockdowns began here in Ontario. That was my original intent: to prevent needless strain on mental health by debunking misinformation. I didn’t expect this to become a partisan issue – I had no political agenda besides promoting “#debunk”. This trend emerged on its own, not due to my bias. So, despite how it may seem – I’m not being partisan in my views: just calling out those who are, those who have co-opted a public health crisis to advance their own political agenda – and you should be angry about that. My views are evidence based – and I’m sorry if the evidence “leans left” – you may need to reflect on why. I didn’t choose this – it emerged, I’m simply an observer: these facts revealed *themselves*. So if there is confusion or surprise why Nazis have appeared, here’s why: There may be a need to take a step back from the echo chamber of cult personality some surround themselves with, that has blinded this very obvious trend I’ve been documenting for 2 years and is dangerous. No state actor conspiracies required.

• ⭐⭐The Conspirituality Report
• ⭐⭐The Trouble with J.P. Sears (& why we shouldn’t support Toxic “Influencers”). (Waylan Lewis, founder of Elephant Journal…. that says a lot.)
• ⭐How cognitive biases and adverse events influence vaccine decisions (maybe even your own)
• ⭐Chakras, crystals and conspiracy theories: how the wellness industry turned its back on Covid science (Guardian)
• ⭐Inside the Mind of an Anti-vaxxer (Atlantic)
• ⭐The great COVID-19 infodemic: How disinformation networks are radicalizing Canadians (Global News, Dec 18, 2021)
• ‘Sharp increase’ in online disinformation since delta outbreak began
  • “We started noticing that there was a closer link between Covid-19 disinformation and wider sets of fringe beliefs,” explained Kate Hannah, the project lead of The Disinformation Project, in a briefing to media. “From August last year we noticed it was becoming two or three steps to take people through to white supremacist or far-right ideologies, QAnon material, extreme misogyny, incel material and transphobic material, and we started viewing Covid disinformation as one of the entry-level ideas that draws people down these further disinformation ideology pathways.”
• ⭐Covid-19: Three weeks inside a rabbit hole of dangerous misinformation (Sept 2021)
  • “Around 2.2 million people in New Zealand have had one vaccine dose. Even if the death toll was 117, it would mean a fatality rate of 0.005 per cent, about 20 times less than the seasonal flu and 150 times lower than the Covid-19 fatality rate in New Zealand so far. For vaccines to be as deadly as the lowest possible estimate of Covid-19 (0.15 per cent, which is not deemed plausible by most experts) there would need to be thousands of deaths. Even the argument against vaccines supports their use.“
• Misinformation from the U.S. is the next virus—and it’s spreading fast (Maclean’s – Jan 2022)
• Guests urged to be vaccinated at anti-vaxxer Robert F Kennedy Jr’s party
• Counties that voted for Trump have a higher Covid death rate, analysis reveals
  • “New data analysis has revealed that if US Democratic voters were to make up their own country, it would have one of the world’s most vaccinated populations, with over 91% of adults having received at least one shot.”
• Medical experts v anti-vaxxers: the Covid-19 information battle | World news | The Guardian
• Opinion: State medical boards should punish doctors who spread false information about covid and vaccines
• NEW REPORT: IMMEDIATE ACTION NEEDED TO HOLD DOCTORS ACCOUNTABLE FOR SPREADING COVID-19 DISINFORMATION
• Unverified reports of vaccine side effects in VAERS aren’t the smoking guns portrayed by right-wing media outlets – they can offer insight into vaccine hesitancy
• New Age Wellness Cranks Are Joining Forces With the Far Right (Jacobin)
• Anti-Vaxxers Are Bullies, and They Don’t Deserve Sympathy
• Nuclear Experts: Hey, So, Those Anti-5G Radiation Necklaces Are Actually Radioactive
• As a virologist I’m shocked my work has been hijacked by anti-vaxxers
• How Yoga Journal Set Off an Anti-Vax Backlash | by Matthew Remski | Medium
  • “Yogis are enraged by an article on vaccination as an act of nonviolence”
• Stop Coddling Covidiots. It’s Making Everything Worse.
• The Rise of the Anti-Mask Influencer (Vice)
• America’s Health Will Soon Be in the Hands of Very Minor Internet Celebrities (Atlantic)
• Anti-Vaxxers Misuse Federal Data to Falsely Claim COVID Vaccines Are Dangerous (Vice)
• How conspiracy theories bypass people’s rationality (Psyche)
• ⭐The Wellness Grift of JP Sears (Conspirituality)
• Anti-vaxxers make up to $1.1 billion for social media companies
• With Trump gone, QAnon groups focus fury on attacking coronavirus vaccines
• The anti-vaxx agenda of The Plandemic
• Inside Kelly Brogan’s Covid-Denying, Vax-Resistant Conspiracy Machine

PREGNANCY & PRO-CHOICE

• By far the best resource I have here, is this Instagram account.
• COVID-19 Vaccines While Pregnant or Breastfeeding (cdc.gov)
• “God, No, Not Another Case.” COVID-Related Stillbirths Didn’t Have to Happen.
• COVID-19 vaccine side-effects less likely in pregnant people, says study
• Posts misrepresent outdated UK document on COVID-19 vaccines
• Data on COVID-19 during Pregnancy: Birth and Infant Outcomes
• ‘Pregnancy is a scary time’: four women on getting the Covid vaccine
• Fact check: COVID-19 vaccines are not causing a rise in stillbirths in Canada
• Ovarian follicular function is not altered by SARS–CoV-2 infection or BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccination
• Pregnancy increases risk of severe COVID-19, new research shows
• Doctors are speaking out to dispel the ‘groundless’ myth that the COVID-19 vaccine affects fertility in women or men
• What we know about COVID-19 vaccines in pregnant people
• Pandemic periods: why women’s menstrual cycles have gone haywire
• PRO CHOICE HYPOCRISY?
  • Anti-vaxxers using pro-choice slogans make me so angry
  • I’ll be sharing my entire view on this topic in an upcoming essay or video!

SIDE EFFECTS

Much more on this subject on the way as I strive be balanced in my reporting. Long story short: Get vaccinated.

Yesterday CDC released a report tracking rates of cardiac issues (myo/pericarditis) after infection or mRNA vaccination combining information across 40 health systems in the USA, stratified by age/sex.https://t.co/Yfnzvkblpm

— Prof Jeffrey S Morris (@jsm2334) April 2, 2022

• Most Side Effects From Pfizer, Moderna Covid Shots Are Mild And Short-Lived, Major Study Finds (March 8)
• Reported side effects following COVID-19 vaccination in Canada
• Bell’s palsy following COVID-19 vaccination
• MYOCARDITIS
  • ⭐Fact Check-Most cases of myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccines are not irreversible Study saying COVID-19 vaccines cause heart inflammation that was hyped by anti-vaxxers, withdrawn due to miscalculation
  • Study claiming 1 in 1,000 risk of heart inflammation after COVID vaccine got calculation wrong (National Post)
    • “The study authors have requested the paper be retracted because the incorrect data ‘vastly inflates the incidence of post-vaccine myocarditis’
• “SUDDEN ADULT DEATH SYNDROME”
  • No. Go debunk yourself by typing “debunk” with SADS.
• HEAVY METALS
  • Unbreakable Myths of COVID-19 Vaccines | Psychology Today
  • No, go debunk yourself first.

ENDEMIC/HERD IMMUNITY

• No, omicron is not leading us closer to herd immunity against COVID
• ‘Natural’ Herd Immunity: A Really Bad Idea

QUACKS: IVERMECTIN/JOE ROGAN/RUSSEL BRAND/AFLDS etc

• ⭐Network of Right-Wing Health Care Providers Is Making Millions Off Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, Hacked Data Reveals (The Intercept)
• ⭐⭐‘You will not believe what I’ve just found.’ Inside the ivermectin saga: a hacked password, mysterious websites and faulty data.
• ⭐The dishonest doctors who were Fox News’ most frequent medical guests in 2021
• Discredited ‘mass formation psychosis’ theory spreads COVID misinformation
• America’s Frontline Doctors Plans to Open Clinics (theintercept.com)
  • “The “disinformation doctors” are expanding, even as Congress and state medical boards scrutinize the operation and the group’s founder, Simone Gold.”
• The Real Scandal About Ivermectin (Atlantic)
• BRAND
  • I dont know how anyone can stand this clearly unstable man, debunked over and over and constantly taking things out of context in his paranoid rants.
  • Comedian Russell Brand Has Become a Powerful Voice for Anti-Vaxxers
    • Stay tuned – I’m going to be taking a deep dive into Russel Brand (In the meantime refer to JP Sears, above, a similar trend.)
  • The Backlash Against Russell Brand, Explained
• ROGAN
  • (Dont get me wrong, I still generally like him, but he platforms dangerous quacks and right wing hacks and needs to ask harder questions, else he is dangerous.)
  • Joe Rogan’s Use of the N-Word Is Far From the Whole Story
  • Neil Young vs Spotify, and the gathering storm (Macleans)
    • “Rogan stands accused of engaging in dezinformatsiya, as the Russians elegantly describe the traffic in dangerous half-truths and lies deployed as offensive weaponry in propaganda warfare.”
  • Dr. Rhonda Patrick Tells Joe Rogan the Risk of Adverse Reactions to the Covid Vaccine Are Relatively Low
    • Additional: Watch A Doctor Set Joe Rogan Straight on Vaccine Misinformation
• JAY BATTACHARYA & THE BARRINGTON DECLARATION
  • Meet the anti-lockdown doctor that conservative pundits are flocking to
  • The dishonest doctors who were Fox News’ most frequent medical guests in 2021
  • ‘Natural’ Herd Immunity: A Really Bad Idea
• BRET WEINSTEIN
  • Essentially the biggest conspiracy quack right now
  • Follow TheBadStats and Chris Kavanaugh who debunk him nearly daily.
• DEL BIGTREE
  • Is Vaxxed producer Del Bigtree credible on vaccines? Not really.
  • Fact Check: Natural Immunity Is NOT Far Superior To COVID-19 Vaccines
  • Where Del Bigtree’s Anti-Vaccine Conspiracy Theories Come From
  • Deception by omission: Del Bigtree’s ICAN calls the studies licensing MMR into question
  • Hidden cameras capture misinformation, fundraising tactics used by anti-vaxx movement (Reddit Thread)

ACTUAL DEBUNKING & FACT-BASED SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS TO FOLLOW

There are so many more, please send me your favourites because #TeamDebunk has the most fun! 😜

• KingGutterBaby (love her – all about her stories)
• Eric Topol (best of the best)
• Tara Moriarty
• Jennifer Kwan MD (Amazing, fact based, local for us in Ontario)
• TheBadStats and Chris Kavanaugh
• Debunk the Funk – Direct link to his recent takedown of Misinformation spreaders
  • His “science communicators to check out:”
  • This Week in Virology: https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/
  • Dr. Alison Campbell: https://blog.waikato.ac.nz/bioblog/
  • Dr. Susan Oliver: https://www.youtube.com/c/Backtothesc…
  • Dr. David Gorski: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/auth…
  • Dr. Katelyn Jetelina: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.subst…
  • Authors at Skeptical Raptor: https://www.skepticalraptor.com/skept…
• Dr. Garth Davis (doesn’t hold back)
• WokeScientist (love the political angles)
• Dr. Risa Hoshino

---

SPRING 2020 ARCHIVE

6. “PLANDEMIC” (Please read the articles in General, above, first)

• Leading New Age Conspiracy Influencers Plan Their Retreat to Utopian Lagoon (vice.com)
• Why It’s Important To Push Back On ‘Plandemic’—And How To Do It
• Seen ‘Plandemic’? We Take A Close Look At The Viral Conspiracy Video’s Claims
• DISCREDITED VIRUS RESEARCHER PUSHES CORONAVIRUS DISINFORMATION (Excuse the caps, its the actual title)
• This.
• Why People Cling To Conspiracy Theories Like ‘Plandemic’

6. BILL GATES (Please read the articles in General, above, first)

• PolitiFact | Anti-vaxxers spread conspiracy about Bill Gates and India’s polio vaccination
• Conspiracy Theory Misinterprets Goals of Gates Foundation (FactCheck.org)
• What has Bill Gates done to help curb epidemics, pandemics, and COVID-19? (Quora)
• False claim: Bill Gates planning to use microchip implants to fight coronavirus (Reuters)
• Did Bill Gates Admit Vaccinations Are Designed So Governments Can Depopulate the World? (Snopes)
• FACT CHECK: Does A Bill Gates-Funded Research Institute Own The Patent For Coronavirus? (CheckYourFact)
• Fact check: A Bill Gates-backed pandemic simulation in October did not predict COVID-19 (USA Today)
• Bill Gates Tells Trump: Stop Stoking Coronavirus Miracle Cure Rumors (Daily Beast)

8. 5G AS A CONNECTION TO COVID-19 (Please read the articles in General, above, first)

(I have less here because… of how little time I’ve devoted to the topic because of how silly it is. And to be clear, this is specifically on the claims of 5G related to Covid – not a discussion on the safety of 5G itself, per se)

• RETRACTED: 5G Technology and induction of coronavirus in skin cells (PubMed)
  • I’m just sharing this because someone shared the original with me, and I’m pointing out it was very, very retracted.
  • PubMed Leaps Into Pseudoscience, Links 5G, Coronavirus
  • This is by far the stupidest coronavirus ‘study’ ever published
• COVID-19 and the 5G Conspiracy Theory: Social Network Analysis of Twitter Data
• How the 5G coronavirus conspiracy theory tore through the internet (Wired)
• Your 5G Phone Wont Hurt You. But Russia Wants You To Think Otherwise. (NY Times – 5/12/19 – Note the date!)
• No, 5G Is Not Causing Coronavirus (or Anything Else)
• No, 5G doesn’t cause the coronavirus (CBC debunking Dr. Thomas Cowan)
• The latest COVID-19 conspiracy theory puts the blame on 5G (FastCompany 4/03/2020)

THE BIG PICTURE/NEWS SUMMARIES

• We looked at every confirmed COVID-19 case in Canada. Here’s what we found (CBC Sept 2020)
• 7 Predictions for a Post-Coronavirus World
• How deadly is the coronavirus? It’s still far from clear
• Coronavirus: nine reasons to be reassured
  • While this article is now relatively outdated, please keep your facts aligned with resources such as Medscape, CDC, WHO, and Wikipedia, instead of zero-ing in on the absolute worst-case scenarios and contributing to public hysteria.
• COVID-19 Mortality Rate May Be ‘Considerably Less Than 1%’
  • This is world-wide, rather than individual regions where there obviously can be significant variations/variables – most notably in the US.
• Coronavirus Will Change the World Permanently. Here’s How.
• The entire premise of my original video has been confirmed by this latest report from Italy – please take this as a chance to have your loved ones begin the path to overall health!
• COVID-19 compared to other diseases
• The Ecology of Disease (from 2012!)
• The coronavirus did not escape from a lab. Here’s how we know.
• COVID-19 crisis tells world what Indigenous Peoples have been saying for thousands of years
• ‘Tip of the iceberg’: is our destruction of nature responsible for Covid-19?

EMERGING NEWSFRONTS

• Meta-Analyses Reveal Who Should Be More Cautious of COVID-19
• The Four Possible Timelines for Life Returning to Normal
• Some Good News: You Don’t Need to Worry About the Coronavirus Mutating
• What the Science Really Says About Ibuprofen and Coronavirus
• Potential impact of seasonal forcing on a SARS-CoV-2 pandemic
• Severe Outcomes Among Patients with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) — United States, February 12–March 16, 2020
• Study: COVID-19 Is Also Spread by Fecal-Oral Route
• Infected people without symptoms might be driving the spread of coronavirus more than we realized

SOCIO-POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS

Not wanting to wade into political debate… But these are simply pretty hard to argue against.

• Trump holds “financial interest” in pharmaceutical company that produces hydroxychloroquine: NYT
• ‘Literally Weaponizing Coronavirus’: Despite One of World’s Worst Outbreaks of Deadly Virus, US Hits Iran With ‘Brutal’ New Sanctions
• Coronavirus has revealed left wing ideas are nothing more than plain common sense
• A debt jubilee is the only way to avoid a depression
• Reality Has Endorsed Bernie Sanders
• These Companies Enriched Themselves. Now They’re Getting a Bailout.