[ad_1]
Rather than covering Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial on Tuesday night, the presenter spoke of the pandemic, saying orthodoxies surrounding masks and social distancing evolved without explanation and that any dissent was immediately silenced.
“What about this vaccine?” He asked. “Why are Americans discouraged from asking simple, straightforward questions about this? How effective are these drugs? Are they safe? What is the risk of miscarriage for pregnant women, for example? Is there a study on this? Can we see it? And by the way, how much are the drug companies getting out of this stuff?
“Well, there’s nothing QAnon about questions like that,” he continued. “These are not conspiracy theories, these are the most fundamental questions. In a democracy, every citizen has the right to know the answer, but instead we have fluff and propaganda.
“The media rollout of the vaccine went like a Diet Pepsi advertisement at the Super Bowl. Tons of celebrity endorsements, not a lot of science. “
Mr Carlson did not openly question the vaccines themselves, agreeing that most Americans supported them for seeing the beneficial effects of treatments for polio, tetanus and chickenpox, but attacked “the way authorities managed the coronavirus vaccine, “saying it” did not inspire confidence. “.
“If the vaccine was so great, why were all these people lying about it?” Honest question. And they were lying. Obviously, they were lying. You know this for sure because from the moment the Covid vaccine arrived, America’s most powerful people are working to make sure no one can criticize it.
He then launched into criticism of vaccine promoter Melinda Gates, wife of billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates – which was shown in a clip from a CNN interview in December in which she said social media had moral responsibility to tackle anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories – and pointed to the removal of a Facebook group named “COVID-19 Vaccine Injury Stories”.
The host then contradicted his own anti-censorship argument somewhat by hinting at a recent New York Times article reporting that Covid vaccines could trigger blood disorders in some cases, a story that remains available online, on Facebook and on Twitter.
While Tucker Carlson’s argument had more to do with the attack on the Silicon Valley Guardians than explicitly doubting the vaccines – he said he intended to take the hit himself and that his employer, Rupert Murdoch, already had his – his defense of the right to question medical expertise. The anti-vaxxer movement has been following a pattern among American conservative media outlets since the start of the pandemic.
Most recently, her Fox colleague Laura Ingraham used her Quake Media podcast to interview Robert F. Kennedy Jr, son of the assassinated presidential candidate and United States Attorney General, who took the opportunity to attack the The country’s leading infectious disease specialist, Dr Anthony Fauci, calling him “a very sinister guy who delivered this country to Big Pharma” and “the J Edgar Hoover of public health.”
“Tony Fauci has arranged for all of these vaccines to be exempt from liability, so no matter how negligent the company is, no matter how toxic the ingredients are, however reckless they may be, no matter how serious your injury or of your death, you cannot sue them. ,” he said.
On mass vaccination strategies in pursuit of herd immunity, Mr Kennedy asked, “You have to give 300,000 vaccines to avoid one death – how many deaths are you going to cause in this cohort?”
Another Fox host, Sean Hannity, said on his show Jan. 26 that he “was starting to doubt” if he would personally receive the vaccine because half of his friends “weren’t going to take it in a million dollars. ‘years’ and it doesn’t. I don’t know who to listen to.
Evangelical pastors including Rodney Howard-Browne and Guillermo Maldonado have also expressed similar skepticism online, with the former claiming last April that vaccines kill more people than viruses and the latter claiming in December that vaccines “prepare the structure of the Antichrist ”.
On the pandemic more generally, Fox’s One America News challenger published a segment in May 2020 claiming that the coronavirus was an elite-orchestrated ‘globalist conspiracy’ to ensure then-US President Donald Trump did not not be re-elected, citing controversial medical researcher Judy Mikovits, who contributed to the much discredited Plandemic viral video, which made similar hysterical claims.
While Mr Carlson’s free speech arguments against Big Tech may be reasonable, his accusation that medical authorities are “lying” to the American public risks further undermining trust after the pandemic has already claimed the lives of 468,000 Americans.
New US President Joe Biden and his deputy Kamala Harris as well as celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger have made it their business to receive their punches in public to counter public concerns about safety, while organizations such as International SOS have released Fact-checking guidelines for countering myth-making online. on vaccines.
[ad_2]
Source link