There has been an endless number of GOP politicians pushing fake Covid information over the past 28 months. All of this misinformation undermines public health, leads to more Covid deaths, and delays our recovery from the pandemic. It is time to document these misinformation purveyors and hold them politically accountable for the damage they are causing. We will start with this clown from my state of North Carolina... ‘I don’t do interviews’: NC lawmaker declines to discuss email full of false COVID claims https://www.fox46.com/news/u-s/nort...-to-discuss-email-full-of-false-covid-claims/ A North Carolina lawmaker whose email to every member of the General Assembly was found to be full of misinformation about COVID-19 emphatically refused Thursday to answer questions about it. “I don’t do interviews,” Rep. Larry Pittman, R-Cabarrus, said repeatedly when CBS 17 asked him about it. The 616-word email was the subject of a CBS 17 Fact Check earlier this week, prompting Dr. Alexa Mieses Malchuk of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine to call it a “threat to public health.” CBS 17 made numerous attempts to contact Pittman after obtaining the email in question, emailing him twice since last week, calling both phone numbers listed for him on his official NCGA website and stopping by his office at the legislative building Monday afternoon. No one answered, and CBS 17 did not receive a response. Pittman was at the General Assembly on Thursday for the convening of the session. When CBS 17 asked him for an interview, he said “I don’t do interviews” three times while walking away — pointedly punctuating every word during his third answer— before heading down a hallway and a staircase. In the email, Pittman wrote that vaccines are killing “a lot (of) people” but that it is being downplayed, that masks can’t stop the virus from getting through, that air escapes around the mask, that the RNA in the vaccines causes recipients’ bodies to “create the ‘virus,’” and that it is not a vaccine after all. The CBS 17 Fact Check found none of those claims to be true. Misinformation about COVID-19 continues to be a problem. According to reports Thursday, police accused a Maryland man of killing his brother, a pharmacist who administered the vaccine, of “killing people with the COVID shot.” “I think what we’re seeing here is that the COVID vaccine is highly, highly politicized, and therefore very polarizing,” Malchuk said. “This is something that I’ve personally never seen in my lifetime. Speaking with older colleagues, even older community members, they’ve never seen something like this in their lifetime, where protecting somebody’s health is such a political issue. “When will it end? When will the misinformation stop being spread?” She asked. “I mean, truthfully, I don’t know. I think the evidence is there that shows that these vaccines are not only safe, but they’re effective. And they really are saving lives. So I’m not sure what other proof other people may need.”
And then there is this set of idiots in Louisiana... Louisiana lawmakers wrongly say a name change for Pfizer’s vaccine scuttles the FDA’s approval The FDA approved Pfizer's vaccine on Aug. 23, under the brand name Comirnaty. There's no physical difference between the Pfizer vaccine and Comirnaty. https://www.poynter.org/fact-checki...r-pfizers-vaccine-scuttles-the-fdas-approval/ In August, the Food and Drug Administration gave full and final approval to the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer for people 16 and older. But 10 Republican Louisiana lawmakers allege “there is no FDA approval for the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine for COVID-19.” The state representatives put that in bold at the top of a Sept. 29 letter to Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards. No, it’s not like those lawmakers didn’t get the memo on FDA approval. They saw it, but they tried to make the argument that it didn’t count. One of their main arguments focuses on the new name for the vaccine. The drug that had gone by the prosaic name of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine is now called Comirnaty. The initial vaccine has been used for months under an emergency use authorization, or EUA. Going forward, the final approval applies to Comirnaty. For the Louisiana lawmakers, this changes everything. As they see it, the FDA approved Comirnaty, not the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine. “These two drugs are legally distinct,” they wrote. Aaron Lottes at Purdue University spent many years as an FDA regulator. Lottes told us the lawmakers didn’t read the fine print. “This is an interesting legal argument, but from a scientific basis, the EUA-version and the Comirnaty version are identical,” Lottes said. The FDA’s notice of final approval did include the words, “the products are legally distinct,” but then immediately noted that the differences “do not impact safety or effectiveness.” “The differences include things such as labeling,” Lottes said. “The EUA vaccines obviously have a different label and accompanying information than the approved version will have.” The Pfizer press office told us that the vaccine’s contents and the way it is made remain the same, but the manufacturing site and the sourcing of some raw materials might vary, subject to FDA oversight and approval. The lawmakers’ letter correctly stated that the FDA said the original version and Comirnaty could be used interchangeably, but then the letter went on to incorrectly state “the FDA labeling on Comirnaty contradicts this statement: ‘There are no data available on the interchangeability of Comirnaty with other Covid-19 vaccines to complete the vaccination series.’” Let’s parse what the FDA actually has said. The plain meaning of its guidance is that it doesn’t know about mixing Comirnaty with other vaccines, like getting one shot of Moderna, followed by a second shot of Comirnaty. The FDA did not, however, say it lacked data on swapping Comirnaty with the Pfizer vaccine in a two-shot series; in fact, it plainly said you can. Because so far as your body is concerned, the drugs are the same. The lawmakers’ letter makes another point: “The approved drug Comirnaty is unavailable for distribution in the U.S.,” it says. “Drugs are experimental under EUA and cannot be legally mandated.” The lawmakers oppose vaccine mandates, and one of their arguments is that governments can mandate only those vaccines that have final approval. Unless clinics are stocked with a drug labeled Comirnaty, they say, no mandate is valid. But, as the lawmakers acknowledge, the FDA says that Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine and Comirnaty can be used interchangeably. According to Pfizer, when the country works through the current stockpiles of vaccine, boxes bearing the label Comirnaty will start arriving. Until then, the vaccines produced under the emergency use authorization remain in use. “If the EUA were revoked, then this product, which is identical in formulation to the approved product, would be legally unusable,” Lotte said. “I would expect this is easily on the order of tens of millions of doses.” The lawmakers’ letter also references the health warnings that come with the approved vaccine, saying approval was premature. Lotte said the FDA approves many drugs with guidance on when they should not be used. The vaccine approval is no different. We reached out to Louisiana State Rep. Kathy Edmonston, a key author of the letter, and did not hear back. The lawmakers that signed their name to the letter include: Reps. Beryl Amedee, R-Houma; Raymond Crews, R-Bossier City; Kathy Edmonston, R-Gonzales; Larry Frieman, R-Abita Springs; Valerie Hodges, R-Denham Springs; Dodie Horton, R-Haughton; Sherman Mack, R-Albany; Danny McCormick, R-Oil City; Chuck Owen, R-Rosepine; and Rodney Schamerhorn, R-Hornbeck. Christina Stephens, a spokesperson for Edwards, dismissed the letter. “This letter is ridiculous,” Stephens said. “The governor hasn’t read it and he doesn’t intend to. It’s rife with disinformation, which is particularly dangerous to share during a pandemic and could result in immense and irreparable harm to families across this state.” Our ruling Ten Louisiana lawmakers said, “There is no FDA approval for the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine for COVID-19.” This is wrong. The FDA approved that vaccine. The only change was in the vaccine’s name, but chemically and biologically, the vaccine called Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine and the newly named Comirnaty are identical. We rate this claim False.
Today's idiot politician... Oregon politician says ‘ask God’ about COVID-19 vaccination, ‘you can’t trust doctors’ https://www.oregonlive.com/coronavi...id-19-vaccination-you-cant-trust-doctors.html
Does the Q in GQP stand for Quack? Cause this guy thinks it does... GOP doc dispenses sketchy medical advice on virus immunity https://apnews.com/article/coronavi...ics-congress-7466507d8f33fbc94a4c5bf0f329f6a2 Roger Marshall won’t let people forget he’s a doctor, putting “Doc” in the letterhead of his U.S. Senate office’s news releases. But when he talks about COVID-19 vaccines, some doctors and experts say the Kansas Republican sounds far more like a politician than a physician. He’s made statements about vaccines and immunity that defy both medical consensus and official U.S. government guidance. He’s aggressively fighting President Joe Biden’s vaccine requirements, arguing they’ll infringe on people’s liberties and wreck the economy. He’s acknowledged experimenting on himself with an unproven treatment for warding off the coronavirus. Marshall’s positions are pushing the first-term senator and obstetrician closer to the medical fringe. But he has company in other GOP doctors, dentists and pharmacists in Congress, several of whom have also spread sketchy medical advice when it comes to the pandemic. Critics say the lawmakers’ statements are dangerous and unethical, and that Marshall’s medical degree confers a perception of expertise that carries weight with constituents and other members of Congress. “He has an enormous role to play here because he’s a doctor and a senator,” said Arthur Caplan, founder of New York University’s medical ethics division and director of a vaccine ethics program. “He bears a very powerful responsibility to get it right.” Marshall says he is fully vaccinated and has said he’s urged his parents recently to get booster shots. He and other GOP doctors in Congress appeared in a public service campaign in April to encourage people to get vaccinated. But that was before Biden’s vaccine mandates fired up the party’s conservative base and had activists predicting that grassroots opposition could help drive Republicans into power in Congress in 2022. It also was before schools reopened for the fall and angry parents flocked to school board meetings to protest mask mandates. But perhaps crucially for Marshall and other Republicans, the polling also showed people are deeply split based on their political party. About 6 in 10 Republicans opposed the mandate for workers, according to the survey by The Associated Press and NORC-Center for Public Affairs Research. Marshall positioned himself as a stalwart Trump supporter in winning his Senate seat last year. The two-term congressman from western Kansas ran against a Democrat and retired Kansas City-area anesthesiologist hewing to public health orthodoxy on COVID-19. Marshall regularly went unmasked at campaign events and said he took a weekly dose of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychoroquine promoted by Trump. That was despite the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s warning against using it to prevent a COVID-19 infection. Marshall has since tried unsuccessfully to pass legislation that would ban vaccine mandates and bar dishonorable discharges from the military for not getting vaccinated. He argues that mandates for workers will cause them to quit or be fired, worsen supply chain problems and drive up inflation. “Without even touching on the constitutionality of a federal mandate, I want people to realize the impact it’s going to have on the economy,” he said during a recent interview. Late last month, he joined lawmakers pushing unsupported theories about COVID-19 immunity. He and 14 other GOP doctors, dentists and pharmacists in Congress sent a letter to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, urging the agency, when setting vaccination policies, to consider natural immunity in people who have had the virus. The signers included Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, an ophthalmologist, and Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, who served as doctor and medical adviser to Trump. Most are from states or districts that Trump carried by wide margins last year. Experts agree that natural immunity arises after an infection, but the general medical consensus is that the degree of protection varies from person to person and is likely to wane over time. That’s why the CDC currently urges even those who’ve had the virus to get vaccinated. A CDC report released in August found the vaccine did boost protection among those who’ve recovered from the infection. Studies released in September showed that unvaccinated people were 11 times more likely to die than the vaccinated. The August CDC report cited a study of Kentucky residents and said, “The findings from this study suggest that among previously infected persons, full vaccination is associated with reduced likelihood of reinfection, and, conversely, being unvaccinated is associated with higher likelihood of being reinfected.” Marshall disputes the guidance that people who’ve had COVID-19 should get vaccinated. In a recent AP interview, he noted his adult children have had COVID-19 and, “I don’t think they need the vaccine on top of it.” He argued that the issue requires more investigation: “We could get 20 scientists in here and have a two-hour discussion about it.” Keller, the GOP consultant, said he sees a political incentive for Marshall and other lawmakers to focus on the issue of natural immunity. That challenges the Biden administration policies without attacking vaccines, Keller said. “Smart Republicans realize that there’s a certain amount of trust in the wider electorate in the vaccine,” Keller said. Marshall says that as a practicing obstetrician and as a local health department director, he followed the CDC’s guidance on issues such as flu shots not harming pregnant women. But he says he’s lost trust in the CDC because of mixed messages early in the pandemic about masks: “It was a tough time for the CDC. It was a tough time for all of us.” Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and former Baltimore health commissioner, said vaccine mandates “clearly work” in containing COVID-19. “Vaccination is what we have because the price of getting immunity through natural infection is much too high,” Wen said, adding that she fears people doing something akin to the “chicken pox parties” some parents have had for their children. “We certainly would not want a policy that could lead people to choose to be infected.” Sabrina Pass, who lives in a small town northwest of Fort Riley, Kansas, said she supports Marshall’s positions and said a candidate’s willingness to actively fight vaccine mandates will be important to her. She is a 37-year-old U.S. Department of Defense employee, the mother of two teenagers and a registered Republican. She sees protests against school mask mandates as “awesome.” But Dr. Beth Oller, a family physician in Rooks County in northwest Kansas, said she’s frustrated because Marshall’s medical degree is one reason patients who normally trust her about everything else resist her advice to get vaccinated. Musing that “I really don’t think he’s that stupid,” she said he knows how immunity works and why people need flu shots and tetanus boosters. “He should just be ashamed of himself,” Oller said. “Off-year elections are all about turning out your base,” said Gregg Keller, a St. Louis-area GOP strategist who’s worked for conservative groups and U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. “Republicans are fired up.” Recent polling shows about half of Americans — just enough for a majority — favor requiring workers in large companies to get vaccinated or tested weekly. Biden also is requiring the military, government contractors and health care workers to get vaccinated.
Here's a fun story. I got the stupid COVID in Feb 2020. It sucked. I lived. Went through the masking rules and washing hands bit for a year. Then got vaccinated in May of this year with the Pfizer. Have not needed a mask since. I occasionally use the sanitizing spritz if I feel gross, but it is not often. I'm still here! And I have underlying conditions, like smoking, drinking, and hypertension! HELLO?!? Folks, the vaccine works. I live in New England, where most of the smart people in this country live, except Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. GET THE VACCINE! IT WILL NOT HURT YOU, AND WILL HELP THE COUNTRY GET BACK TO NORMAL! If you do not, you are a stupid asshole who will most likely die from COVID, or rabies when you get bit by a rabid fisher. Why would you get vaccinated against rabies, when you KNOW your immune system will protect you, but not get vaccinated against COVID, when you KNOW you immune system will protect you? What is the difference? Assholes. All of you.
The cure for Covid is a vibrator according to this Alaskan Republican. ‘Buy a vibrator.’ Far-right Republicans keep playing doctor with covid-19. https://midnightsunak.com/2021/10/1...epublicans-keep-playing-doctor-with-covid-19/ Update: Reinbold has announced she has contracted covid-19. Eagle River Republican Sen. Lora Reinbold, who’s on Alaska Airlines’ no-fly list after making a scene over masking (and therefore unable to attend the current special session in Juneau), has been a seemingly inexhaustible well of misinformation, vaccine conspiracy theories and fringe medical advice throughout the course of the pandemic. She’s railed against the Legislature’s efforts to limit the spread of covid-19 within its buildings, arguing that legislators and staff were in no place to be offering medical advice. It’s apparently a problem that she doesn’t see when it comes to her own actions. In a Facebook post from Monday night, Reinbold posted a list of supplies to have on hand “before covid strikes.” The list includes the sort of things anyone might use to combat the flu or cold like a thermometer, Vic’s, cough medicine and fruit popsicles. It also suggests that people buy a vibrator. (More insanity at above url)
Let's take a look at the cesspool of Covid misinformation known as Alaska GOP... Several Republican Alaska lawmakers push for easier access to ivermectin to ward off COVID https://www.adn.com/politics/alaska...asier-access-to-ivermectin-to-ward-off-covid/ Anti-Masker Alaska Pol Gets COVID, Boasts About Taking Unproven Meds https://www.thedailybeast.com/anti-...-gets-covid-boasts-about-taking-unproven-meds And let's see the results.... Alaska Has the Nation’s Highest COVID-19 Case Rate: What’s Behind the Surge https://www.healthline.com/health-n...est-covid-19-case-rate-whats-behind-the-surge
All previously discussed in the "Latest Vaccine News" thread.... https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/latest-vaccine-news.343809/page-143#post-5443757
Well Covid held this idiot accountable... but he still hasn't learned the lesson... State Senator who had been a vocal opponent of mask and vaccine mandates now using a walker after catching Covid https://www.twincities.com/2021/10/...e-using-walker-after-covid-says-life-is-good/