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In February 2021, as the new vaccines that would tame the Covid pandemic were being released to the general public, an article sourced to an osteopath in Cape Coral, Florida, claimed that the vaccines were “a medical fraud” and did not counter the disease. The shots, it said, “alter your genetic coding, turning you into a viral protein factory that has no off-switch.”
The man pushing these false statements was Joseph Mercola, a pioneer of the anti-vaccination movement, who had a history of Covid denialism, having asserted that there was no pandemic and that Covid was a “scam.” As he pushed falsehoods about the vaccines, the FDA sent him a warning letter for promoting unapproved and unproven treatments for Covid—such as a vitamin C, vitamin D, and other products—in possible violation of federal law. In a report released in March 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate assigned Mercola the top spot on its “Disinformation Dozen” list of people “responsible for the bulk of anti-vaxx content shared or posted on Facebook and Twitter.” A few months later, the New York Times cited the center’s report and dubbed Mercola the “most influential spreader of coronavirus misinformation online,” noting he had posted over 600 articles on Facebook “that cast doubt on Covid-19 vaccines” and had reached “a far larger audience than other vaccine skeptics,” with his claims echoing...
Vadodara/Surat. A special CBI court has convicted four individuals in a 23-year-old fire insurance fraud case in Gujarat and sentenced each of them to three years of rigorous imprisonment. The cou...