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The flexible rules of the Paycheck Protection Program allowed virtually any small business or corporation in the United States to qualify for a government-guaranteed relief loan. Citizens and activist groups have criticized thousands of recipients they deem unworthy, including wealthy lawyers, politicians and political lobbyists, publicly traded companies and companies under government investigation.
Now, an advocacy group fighting online disinformation is drawing attention to a group of loan recipients it finds troubling: anti-vaccine campaigners.
According to data from the Small Business Administration, which manages the program, six organizations that have challenged the safety of vaccines and said scientists labeled bogus have received loans collectively totaling more than $ 1.1 million. (The data was released last month under a court order, in response to a lawsuit filed by the New York Times and other news outlets.)
The groups that received the loans are Children’s Health Defense, founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr .; the informed consent action network; the National Vaccine Information Center; Mercola.com Health Resources and Mercola Consulting Services, both affiliated with prominent vaccine skeptic Joseph Mercola; and the Tenpenny Integrative Medical Center, a medical practice run by Dr Sherri Tenpenny, a physician and author who opposes vaccines.
The loans, made by banks and backed by the government, ranged from $ 72,500 at Dr. Tenpenny’s medical center to $ 335,000 at Mercola.com. They don’t seem to break Small Business Administration rules: PPP loans were widely available to any small business or nonprofit (typically those with 500 workers or less) willing to certify that “the current economic uncertainty makes this loan application needed ”to support their ongoing activities.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate, a London-based advocacy group, discovered the loans and alerted the Washington Post, which made an initial report. Imran Ahmed, the group’s chief executive, called it “bananas” that these groups are eligible for taxpayer-funded financial assistance.
“There is an anomaly here,” Ahmed said. “The PPP was necessary to deal with the economic shock of Covid, and anti-vaxxers fundamentally inhibit our ability to defeat and overcome Covid.
Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center in Sterling, Va., Said by email that her group applied for the loan “when it became clear that lockdowns and restrictions on social distancing were threatening. directly the job security of a number of our employees. and jeopardized the continued tenancy of our head office in Virginia. The group used the loan to retain all of its 21 workers, she said.
Ms. Fisher took issue with the idea that her group is anti-vaccine. The organization “does not make recommendations on the use of vaccines and encourages everyone to be fully informed about the risks and complications of infectious diseases and vaccines,” she said.
The Paycheck Protection Program distributed $ 523 billion to more than five million small businesses from April through August to help them endure closures and other economic shocks caused by the coronavirus pandemic. As long as the beneficiaries use most of the money to pay their workers and comply with other rules, the loans can be fully canceled and repaid by the US government.
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