‘She probably chose Maderna because she knew she couldn’t spell Fizur’: Fake vaccine card sparks memes https://www.dailydot.com/debug/maderna-fake-vaccine-card-memes/ A 24-year-old woman was arrested in Hawaii after she tried to use a fake vaccination card that said she received the “Maderna” COVID-19 shot, misspelling the name of the actual vaccine. Chloe Mrozak, of Illinois, was arrested after an administrator for Hawaii’s Safe Travels Program, which requires vaccination to enter the state, noticed a possible fraudulent vaccination card. The news was first reported by KHON2, a local news outlet. Hawaii requires that anyone traveling to the state self-quarantine for 10 days after arriving. However, they can bypass the quarantine if they are fully vaccinated. A vaccination card must be uploaded to the Safe Travels website and the traveler needs to have a hard copy of one when they arrive in the state, according to the state’s COVID website. When officials reviewed Mrozak’s vaccination card, it was discovered that the card misspelled “Moderna” as “Maderna.” They also could not verify that she was staying at the hotel she listed on her Safe Travels form, KHON reported. On Wednesday, “Maderna” was trending online, with many people cracking jokes about the misspelled vaccine name on the fake card. “See what that Funky, cold Maderna makes you do,” one person tweeted. “Maderna is literally what my Grandma Dorothy called Madonna in the 80s,” another person wrote. “Well… she probably chose Maderna because she knew she couldn’t spell Fizur,” one user joked. But they were far from the only people online who decided to make a joke about the “Maderna” vaccine. (More at above url)
Licenses of doctors who spread harmful COVID-19 information should be at risk https://thehill.com/opinion/healthc...ead-harmful-covid-19-information-should-be-at
As a virologist I’m shocked my work has been hijacked by anti-vaxxers A news interview I did was re-edited and misquoted by online conspiracy theorists. My advice is: get the vaccine. David LV Bauer is head of the RNA virus replication laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute in London. As a virologist, I’ve spent the past year or more studying the novel coronavirus that has upended all our lives. Communicating our work to the public and speaking to the media is an important part of my job, and I’ve always tried to be clear and accurate about the science: I believe the available vaccines against Covid-19 are safe,and they are our best route back to a more normal way of living. I’ve been concerned about the anti-vaccination movement since before the pandemic.But I never imagined that my own work could actually be part of their misinformation arsenal. So I was shocked to discover that a recent TV interview I did for ITV London Newshad been seized on by anti-vax and conspiracy activists and now has thousands of likes, shares and retweets across social media. The original interview was about our research on the Pfizer vaccine, which found that the antibody levels it generates are not as good at neutralising the Delta variant than against the original Wuhan strain – a simple update on likely vaccine protection. But the widely shared versions of the video were often edited, or taken out of context, to make me out to be some sort of supervillain, or the unlikely hero of the anti-vax world. In some videos, I’m shown playing the part of the brave dissenter inside the establishment, blowing the whistle against some imagined harm of the vaccine. In another, I’m introduced as the head of the “UK bioweapons programme”, being caught admitting that the Covid vaccine could somehow destroy your immune system. Like the virus itself, the videos seemed to be mutating and spreading, with new, more virulent variants catching on online. One of the most widely viewed videos created a convoluted and conspiratorial narrative involving vaccines, alien DNA and abortion which was repeated over and over – and featured the same clip of me replayed over and over at various points. Judging by the messages coming into my inbox, there are a lot of people taken in by this. I get tens of notifications a week (even three months later) from people still citing these videos as proof that vaccines don’t work. And I still get direct inquiries from people genuinely worried about the impact of these videos. I’ve heard from a nurse for a prison in New Zealand, wanting to reassure prisonersunder her care who were fearful of being vaccinated. I’ve heard from a woman in the United StatesS, fearful for her clinically vulnerable brother, who she said was taken in by online conspiracies. I’ve heard from a couple in Canada trying to decide whether to accept the vaccine, who wanted to understand exactly where these videos adhered to the truth, and where they had departed from it. When I’ve replied to them, the response has always been grateful. I hope I’ve been able to persuade people to get the protection vaccination offers. But the hundreds of thousands of social media accounts sharing this distortion of my words are a different matter, forcing me to reflect on what makes anti-vaxxers share their misguided views so energetically. A clever aspect of the videos is that they start with a trace of plausibility before veering into the implausible. In our research we did find that antibodies generated by the vaccine neutralise the Delta variant six times less well than they did the original strain in the lab. But it’s far better to have some antibodies than none at all – a fact borne out by the vaccine’s continued success in preventing severe disease and death worldwide. And the idea that the vaccines destroy your immune system is just plain false: antibody levels in vaccinated people are still far higher than they are in unvaccinated people. Obscuring this fact has obvious tragic consequences, as unvaccinated patients continue to fill intensive care units around the world. Another part of the appeal of such misinformation is that it restores a sense of agency to people who lack a sense of control over their own lives. It makes people feel part of a “tribe” of those in the know. Every time Twitter or YouTube blocked one of these videos, people commenting on it took it as proof that its misinformation was therefore true. And the fact that these claims are obviously ridiculous and widely condemned by doctors and scientists serves its own purpose. The people most involved in spreading misinformation can claim they and their followers are being oppressed – further isolating those who are susceptible, and creating an online echo chamber. It may seem contradictory for a scientist to discourage scepticism: after all, the first thing I teach my students is to be critical of data and to think of alternative interpretations. But in this case, it is scepticism built on a foundation of deep theoretical and practical knowledge and an understanding of the field in which they work – something that vaccine critics lack, no matter how knowledgable they may be in other areas. It would be as if I, as a scientist, refused to drive a car fitted with airbags because I heard they had explosives in them, no matter how many times qualified engineers explained to me that airbags would save my life. Everyone, no matter how clever, relies on the judgment of experts to shape parts of their worldview and make decisions. Even the people spreading dangerous conspiracies know this, and that is why I ended up in the anti-vax vortex: I was used as an expert voice against vaccines. On Twitter, one person exasperatedly argued against people sharing one of the conspiracy videos in which I am the unwilling star, saying: “Come on people, can’t you see he’s a nobody?” Without trivialising the accomplishments of myself and my colleagues, that person is correct. I haven’t invented a vaccine. I don’t have a role in government and I don’t run a hospital. But I do have an official title as a scientist, and a large body of scientific work proving my relevant expertise. And the anti-vax movement has almost no one with those things willing to take their side – the overwhelming majority of scientists correctly believe in vaccines. So when I appeared in a video that could be easily misrepresented, they jumped at the chance to “recruit” me. So if you were somehow swayed by the claims that I appeared to make in those videos, please take the advice I actually believe: the vaccine will protect you from Covid. Get vaccinated.
Anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers now present a real threat of violence Across the country, more anti-vaccine extremists are turning violent. It's time to take the threat seriously https://www.salon.com/2021/09/08/an...axxers-now-present-a-real-threat-of-violence/
Meanwhile the establishment is working to exclude millions of Africian-Americans , Orthodox Jews, Christians, White rurals and young people out of society....a subtle violent act
Unhinged anti-vaxxers are a worldwide problem... French doctors demand protection from death threats at work https://nypost.com/2021/09/08/french-doctors-demand-protection-from-death-threats-at-work/ PARIS — French doctors and scientists on Tuesday called on authorities to take action against the insults and threats— including death threats — that they have frequently received during the coronavirus pandemic. The doctors said they fear that someone from the world of conspiracy theories will take action, not just against them but against other medical professionals and condemned the silence of authorities. “It’s months that some of us are receiving, regularly, death threats. Be it via social networks … Twitter, email, by telephone, or by the post. We are targets,” said Jerome Marty, a physician who heads a union for doctors in private practice, UFMLS. Some doctors like himself receive threats “several times a day,” he said and some now have bodyguards. “What we fear is not so much the threats to us personally,” Marty said. Their biggest fear is that “an anonymous doctor, an anonymous nurse, an anonymous scientist, the people fighting today in the face of the (COVID-19) crisis … will be assaulted by someone who takes action.” Those in the group included medical professionals who often appear on TV to explain the current state of the pandemic to French residents. Verbal threats were played, one from an anonymous man in Toulouse who said, “Listen, buddy. The population is starting to get angry … So shut your big trap. It’s like you’re looking for it.” Tougher was a threat on social media to one doctor, not present: “And the bullet in your head that I’m going to plant, how are you going to stop it?” Vulgar insults were scrawled on a note to Karine Lacombe, head of infectious diseases at a Paris’ Saint Antoine Hospital and once a regular on news shows. “We’ve been following you for a while: car, house, route, garbage is destroyed,” it read in part. “What shocks me is the impunity that the people who lit the fuse on purpose benefit from, to disturb an established order, to disturb what scientists say and make the population waver,” Lacombe said. She also expressed shock that the messages are relayed on social media and at weekly anti-health pass demonstrations. Tens of thousands of people opposed to health passes needed to access restaurants, cafes and other gathering spots, including some opposed to COVID-19 vaccinations, march in cities around France each weekend. Marty and others claimed the threats come from individuals who are being “manipulated.” He said there are perhaps a dozen to 20 people propelling the threats, but . “We aren’t detectives.” Damien Barraud, an anesthetist in Metz, who denounces conspiracy theories linked to the virus on Twitter, said in a Zoom call at the news conference that he received his first threat in April 2020. But “It’s amplifying now … getting more serious.” Concerns about the threats grew with the publication last month in France Soir, a daily that has given voice to COVID-19 doubters, of an unsigned commentary taking down the medical establishment over the issue and naming names of doctors and scientists. The commentary, since revised, concluded with a cryptic reference to “La Veuve” (The Widow), a word once used to denote the guillotine. It was the last straw for the collective of doctors and scientists. Lacombe stressed the need for the political class to “take a stance at some stage and not believe that freedom of speech, which of course must be protected in France, means accepting that there may be some verbal and physical violence.”
Infamous anti-vax pastor throws tantrum after Twitter ban -- and claims he was kicked off for 'gospel bombs https://www.rawstory.com/anti-vax-pastor-2655027309/ On Tuesday The Tennessean reported that infamous anti-vaccine Pastor Greg Locke has been permanently suspended from Twitter for spreading COVID-19 disinformation — and that he posted a lengthy tantrum on Facebook in response. "I was just finally permanently banned from Twitter," said Locke, who claimed he has immediately filed suit against the "censorship Nazis" at the social network and that he was kicked off for dropping "gospel, political, and biblical bombs." "Guess who is still on Twitter. The Taliban," he continued. "Are you awake yet sheep? Wake up." Locke has been one of the most prolific purveyors of false claims about the COVID-19 pandemic, claiming that the delta variant is "nonsense" and that those trying to promote vaccinations are "wicked fools." "Locke's church has held in-person services, including in a tent, since 2020 amid the pandemic. He has been vocal in his opposition to COVID-19 protocols, even declaring his church a mask-free area," noted reporter Natalie Neysa Alund. "Early in the pandemic, he held services at the church even against warnings from Gov. Bill Lee."