A timeless reminder of the timely nonsense that regularly occurs here:

 

Pseudoscience and COVID-19 — we’ve had enough already

The scientific community must take up cudgels in the battle against bunk

 

"Cow urine, bleach and cocaine have all been recommended as COVID-19 cures — all guff. The pandemic has been cast as a leaked bioweapon, a byproduct of 5G wireless technology and a political hoax — all poppycock. And countless wellness gurus and alternative-medicine practitioners have pushed unproven potions, pills and practices as ways to ‘boost’ the immune system.

 

Thankfully, this explosion of misinformation — or, as the World Health Organization has called it, the “infodemic” — has triggered an army of fact-checkers and debunkers. Regulators have taken aggressive steps to hold marketers of unproven therapies to account. Funders are supporting researchers (myself included) to explore how best to counter the spread of COVID-19 claptrap.

 

I have studied the spread and impact of health misinformation for decades, and have never seen the topic being taken as seriously as it is right now. Perhaps that is because of the scale of the crisis and the ubiquity of the nonsensical misinformation, including advice from some very prominent politicians. If this pro-science response is to endure, all scientists — not just a few of us — must stand up for quality information.

...

We need physicists, microbiologists, immunologists, gastroenterologists and all scientists from relevant disciplines to provide simple and shareable content explaining why this hijacking of real research is inaccurate and scientifically dishonest."  [emphasis added]

 

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Timothy Caulfield is a Canada research chair in health law and policy at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.

https://archive.ph/UDjoS

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01266-z

 

 

I'd like to see the evidence that the covid-19  virus actually exists.

NewsGuard Reports More Than 300 Vaccine-Related False Narratives Now Spreading Online

Nearly four years since the outbreak of COVID-19 — and amidst a constant stream of false claims about vaccine efficacy — NewsGuard reports that there are now more than 300 vaccine-related false narratives infecting social media and online search results

 

(February 7, 2024 — New York) Health misinformation site Natural News (NewsGuard Trust Score: 5/100) reports that elderberries are more effective protection against flu than a vaccine. The National Vaccine Information Center (Trust Score: 12.5/100) cites research claiming measles vaccines cause measles. U.K-based Principia-Scientific (Trust Score: 20/100) claims COVID-19 vaccines contain monkey DNA.

 

These are among the now more than 300 vaccine-related false narratives that NewsGuard’s healthcare information team has identified circulating on the internet, shared by 4,387 websites and other news sources and social media accounts — and counting. Two thirds of all the news and information websites that NewsGuard has rated as untrustworthy since 2018 publish healthcare misinformation.

 

“The vaccine-related false narratives we’ve found don’t just reflect the spike in conversations about vaccines since the pandemic,” said John Gregory, health editor at NewsGuard. “Long before COVID-19, people made all kinds of questionable statements about vaccines, related to autoimmune diseases, infertility, cardiac arrest and other health topics. In fact, 67% of news sites rated as generally untrustworthy (below 60/100) by NewsGuard have been flagged for publishing health misinformation, making it one of the largest categories of misinformation we track.”

 

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NewsGuard

https://www.newsguardtech.com/press/newsguard-reports-more-than-300-vaccine-related-false-narratives-now-spreading-online/