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YouTube bans vaccine misinformation – sometimes science prevails

YouTube vaccine

On 29 September 2021, YouTube announced that it was banning all videos with vaccine misinformation, and it was banning the accounts of several dangerous anti-vaccine activists such as Joseph Mercola, Erin Elizabeth, Sherri Tenpenny, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The tide is turning against the vaccine denialists who have used social media, including YouTube, to push anti-vaccine nonsense. It couldn’t happen soon enough.

YouTube said it would remove videos claiming that vaccines are not effective in reducing the rates of transmission or contraction of the disease. It will remove content that includes disinformation about the ingredients in a vaccine. And they will remove any video that claims that approved vaccines cause autism, cancer, or infertility. Finally, they will remove any information that claims that vaccines contain electronic trackers.

Continue reading “YouTube bans vaccine misinformation – sometimes science prevails”
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Tiffany Dover did NOT die after getting COVID-19 vaccine – harassed by anti-vaxxers

This article about the anti-vaxxer harassment of Tiffany Dover was written by Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, Professor of Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law (San Francisco, CA), who is a frequent contributor to this and many other blogs, providing in-depth, and intellectually stimulating, articles about vaccines, medical issues, social policy, and the law.

Professor Reiss writes extensively in law journals about the social and legal policies of vaccination. Additionally, Reiss is also a member of the Parent Advisory Board of Voices for Vaccines, a parent-led organization that supports and advocates for on-time vaccination and the reduction of vaccine-preventable disease. She is also a member of the Vaccines Working Group on Ethics and Policy.

For several weeks, anti-vaccine activists from all around the world have targeted a nurse from Tennessee, Tiffany Dover, stalking and harassing her, her employer, and her family. This post describes the kind of behavior Tiffany Dover was subjected to, offers some steps people in that situation can take, and points to the features of social media that make this kind of targeted harassment possible.

Ms. Dover was not the only – or even the worst – case of this kind of sustained harassment in the past years. The worst is probably the extensive, ugly, horrible targeting of the families who lost children in the Sandy Hook shooting. 

This kind of behavior is highly problematic and needs a response.

Continue reading “Tiffany Dover did NOT die after getting COVID-19 vaccine – harassed by anti-vaxxers”
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Facebook banned Natural News – say goodbye to anti-vaccine crackpot

Facebook banned natural news

Finally, on 9 June 2019, Facebook banned Natural News, grifter Mike Adams‘ (also known as the Health Ranger) pseudoscientific woo-pushing, anti-vaccine website. If only Facebook would clean up some of the anti-science junk on their website, maybe we would actually respect them more, but clearly, despite their public claims of removing fake news about vaccines, they aren’t really doing enough to get rid of anti-vaccine groups.

Facebook needs to do more to remove pseudoscience and fake science from its website. This is a start. Continue reading “Facebook banned Natural News – say goodbye to anti-vaccine crackpot”

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Anti-vaccine tweets correlated with affluent white women in five states

anti-vaccine tweets

Although there’s evidence that the anti-science beliefs surrounding vaccines cross a broad political spectrum, I’ve always wondered if rich white liberal women were the center of the anti-vaccine universe – this is based on my own personal anecdotal evidence, so let’s just consider that a belief than a fact. A recent analysis of anti-vaccine tweets may or may not confirm my beliefs about these rich white liberals.

There has been a dramatic increase, over the past few years, in the volume of tweets that claim that life-saving vaccines are linked to autism. Anyone who reads this blog knows that that claim is demonstrably and scientifically false. Despite the science, the belief that vaccines cause autism remains. And this view is promulgated on various locations on the internet.

Like with a lot of other controversial topics, the Twitter outrage about the danger of vaccines doesn’t actually reflect a sudden surge in anti-vaccine beliefs amongst the general population. According to a recently published peer-reviewed article, most of increase in these anti-vaccine tweets represent a very specific demographic. Individuals from affluent, populated areas in five states – California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania – seem to be the backbone of this sudden increase in anti-vaccine tweets.

Let’s take a look at this new paper. It could provide us with some information about the who is pushing the anti-vaccine narrative. Continue reading “Anti-vaccine tweets correlated with affluent white women in five states”

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Jenny McCarthy asks Twitter for help, Twitter replies “vaccinate”

Last week, former Playboy Playmate, recently appointed co-host of the ABC-TV (USA) show, the View, and anti-science/antivaccination rabble rouser Jenny McCarthy, decided to head to Twitter to get relationship advice. Not sure what she expected, and maybe she’s much more clever than we think by making this a trending topic, but it started rather quietly:

A hurricane of replies flew across Twitter (much of the evening I was retweeting the best ones, or just laughing). As one Tweeter remarked, “this is why the internet was invented.” Yup. Maybe Jenny didn’t know what she was doing?

 

Here are my favorites, and ones I haven’t seen on other articles. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hysterical. A nerdy reference:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were so many more I could have used, but laughing that hard for so long can wear a person out. I did a rough estimate of pro-vaccine to anti-vaccine Tweets for #JennyAsks, and it was around 100-200:1. So, you can conclude that either most Twitter users who follow hashtags are pro-science/pro-vaccine, or anti-vaxxers have limited access to computers and Twitter, since they’re living off the grid avoiding the evil Jews trying to vaccinate them. Oh yeah, that’s a thing amongst the antivaccination crowd.

A few months ago, I got into a discussion with writer and brand new mother Tara Haelle, claiming that social media wasn’t very useful in changing the society’s views on topics. I was skeptical that massive “protests” on Twitter or Facebook would move the body politic on any issues. Apparently, I was wrong. Because Jenny’s hashtag was completely and utterly hijacked by the pro-science/pro-vaccine world.

By the way, I added my own tweet to #JennyAsks a few days ago:

 

 

 

Visit the Science-based Vaccine Search Engine.

 

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The history of the anti-vaccination movement, includes a theme song

The rousing anti-vaccination hymn.

Sometimes I run across articles and posts just because someone I follow on Twitter or Facebook will post a link that I happen to catch.  Of course, I miss about 95% of what’s posted because I just don’t have the time to read them all.  One person’s postings gets checked more frequently, since she focuses on vaccines, autism, and health care myths of all sorts.  I ran across her while reading comments that followed an article in the LA Times (the story has long been deleted from my overloaded memory cells).  She was responding to someone who maintained parents of autistic children were cheating the government out of disability payments.  Let’s just say she was much nicer than I was.

Today, she posted a link to the College of Physicians of Philadelphia‘s History of Vaccines blog, which I had never seen before.  I could go on about how much information is out there in the internet, but I pick and choose what I read and don’t read.  This blog will be on the “must read” list. Continue reading “The history of the anti-vaccination movement, includes a theme song”