Be careful, fake anti-Covid news is everywhere!

COVID-19 is one of the worst diseases the world has ever known. For not only has it caused a great deal of physical and psychological suffering to humans, but it has also destroyed the economies of relatively wealthy nations. What then of the economies of poor countries?

Perhaps the greatest damage he has caused is to human relations. If in its early days it was predicted that physical contact with other human beings would be minimized by fear of Covid, few would have believed it. But it happened. People in nursing homes; hospitals; workplaces and even the homes of friends and neighbors a short distance away have found themselves shunned by their own friends and co-workers.

So, in the final analysis, the pandemic can kill many people with solitude and depression, caused by an unfounded belief that they are somehow responsible for the lack of “attraction” that has led to their social isolation. In reality, we will never be the same again after the psychological scars that the Covid may have inflicted on us.

It is heartbreaking to learn that in addition to these horrific realities we face from Covid, some individuals in wealthy countries are trying to make money by selling “snake oil” as a cure for Covid. More dangerous is the fact that in order to sell their bogus “cures,” they have deliberately tried to undermine the immensely skillful scientific advances that have been made in enhancing human immunity to disease – through vaccination.

Vaccination is, of course, “counterintuitive” at the best of times. The human mind is, for its own protection, wired to resist attempts to introduce foreign elements into the body that houses it. (Indeed, in Ghana some of us, when we were children, used to run away from school whenever we heard people coming to “head”Us (prick us with sharp instruments and inject something into our body!) Unfortunately for us, those responsible for the inoculation seemed wise, as they invariably took us by surprise. And almost always caught us!

Our fear of vaccination was compounded by the fact that some of the people who carried out the vaccination sometimes paid too little attention to hygiene. The result was that they ended up causing a painful sore on our arm! Personally, I have vaccination scars and know many others who have similar scars. In fact, we sort of accepted the idea that such scars were a sort of “vaccination certificate!” Some even bragged about exhibiting them!

Who, I wonder, trained these health workers? They seemed completely oblivious to the psychological aspects of their work! I remember when I was about to leave Ghana for the first time and needed a health certificate, a moron in charge of giving injections to the immunization department of the Ministry of Health, Mr. ‘annoyed a lot by pointing out that he was having a hard time pricking me because the skin on my arm was – I remember his rude words to this day – “too flabby!”

Covid, I’m sorry to say, has rightly scared people and many are afraid to approach loved ones, not only because they fear they can catch Covid from them, but because they might transmit Covid to relatives. How can you be absolutely certain that your vaccination (if you have had both vaccines) has endowed a person with one hundred percent complete immunity that will prevent them from contracting and / or transmitting the disease? People in the UK (for example) aren’t they “tensions” by telephones specially equipped to isolate themselves, despite having received the two jabs? Are errors not common in health prevention?

In the midst of all these real uncertainties, the New York Times reports someone is making money in America online, peddling vaccine untruths, while offering – as vaccine replacements – what he calls ‘natural cures’ for Covid that have not been tested and granted official approval.

According to the newspaper, the person concerned had published an article which began with a seemingly innocuous question about the “legal definition of vaccines”. But he then spent more than 3,000 words denouncing coronavirus vaccines in general as “medical fraud”! .

He claimed that anti-Covid injections do not prevent infections, confer immunity or stop the transmission of the disease. Instead, (according to him) the shots instead “alter” the “genetic coding” of people, turning their bodies into “a viral protein factory that has no switch ”(!)

The article has been translated from English into Spanish and Polish. It has appeared on dozens of blogs and has been picked up by anti-vaccination campaigners, who have repeated the false claims online. He also made his way on Facebook.

The person responsible for this astonishing example of disinformation was, reports The New York Times, a Joseph Mercola. He is 67 years old and practices as an osteopathic physician in Cape Coral, Florida. The document describes him as someone who “has long been the subject of criticism and government regulatory action for his promotion of unproven or unapproved treatments. But more recently, it has become the main disseminator of coronavirus misinformation online, according to the researchers. ”

An “internet-savvy entrepreneur”, (as Time described it) he employs dozens of people and has “published over 600 articles on Facebook that have cast doubt on COVID-19 vaccines since the start of the pandemic, reaching a much larger audience than other vaccine skeptics.

Such activities have earned Mercola (“a proponent of natural health with everyone’s behavior”) the dubious distinction of occupying the top spot in the “Dozen misinformation “, a list of 12 people responsible for sharing 65% of all anti-vaccine messages on social networks.

“Mercola is the pioneer of the anti-vaccine movement,” said a University of Washington researcher who studies conspiracy theories online. “He is a past master in the art of capitalizing on times of uncertainty, such as the pandemic, to develop his movement. ”

Mercola and others from the “Disinformation Dozen” are in the spotlight as vaccinations in the United States slowed and the highly infectious “delta variant” of Covid fueled a resurgence of cases.

According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “mor more than 97% of people hospitalized for COVID-19 are not vaccinated. ” President Joe Biden blamed “online lies” for causing people to refrain from receiving the injections. He also urged social media companies to “do something about disinformation.”

the New York Times further reveals that “Over the past decade, Mercola has built a large operation to promote natural remedies, disseminate anti-vaccination content and profit from it all …. In 2017, he filed a statement under oath claiming that his net worth was “in excess of $ 100 million.

Rather than stating directly online that vaccines don’t work, Mercola’s posts often ask pointed questions about their safety and discuss studies that other doctors have refuted. “Social media has given him new life, which he is skillfully and ruthlessly harnessing to bring people under his control,” said Imran Ahmed, director of the Center for Combating Digital Hate, which studies disinformation and hate speech. His “Disinformation Dozen” report was cited in Congressional hearings and by the White House.

Meanwhile, a conservative radio host from Tennessee who was openly skeptical of COVID-19 vaccines, has been hospitalized with the illness and is in intensive care. He is named Phil Valentine, who hosts a show on Nashville, Tennessee’s WWTN-FM. He was diagnosed with coronavirus and is now “in very serious condition,” his family said in a statement.

The family added: “Phil would like his listeners to know that although he was never an ‘anti-vaccine’, he ‘regrets not being more vehement’ ‘Pro-Vaccine’ and looks forward to being able to defend more. vigorously this position as soon as he gets back on air … AND PLEASE GET YOUR VACCINATION! the declaration added (!).