#covid conspiracy

[greenwichtraders]

This agenda must be stopped!

[blindedbythedarkness]

"Haha look at these conspiracy theorists saying Covid isn't real and to stop being so afraid! What dumbassery!"

Okay but you're not wearing a mask. You understand how that's exactly what these people want right? You're giving them exactly what they want. For everyone to pretend there's no Covid anymore. Functionally, you are the same as this conspiracy theorist. Do better.

[greenwichtraders]

I remember all too well.

[liberalsarecool]

Trace all the x/Twitter accounts and Facebook placements to Russia. #ActiveMeasures

[sjw-irritant]

[seriouslycromulent]

Another one I want to save for prosperity.

[cynicalclassicist]

Zachary Levi has gone down the route of craziness through anti-vaxx crap. He is not to be listened to!

Another MAGAt Qanon.

🤮

[eugenedebs1920]

Someone needs to enlighten me as the the reasoning behind the demonization of this lifelong defender of humanity. A man who has, time and time again, put himself in immense danger studying and working with the most mysterious, deadly pathogens ever to threaten our species.

There are outlandish conspiracy theories about Fauci, Covid, and the pandemic, and it’s about time to exit the world of fantasy land and get back to the plane reality exists in.

The entire right wing media apparatus is steeped in these far out conspiracy theories. This is rooted in deception. These conspiracy theories are the vehicle in which to distract and confuse half the population into believing in myths.

So please. Can someone explain to me how this scientist, this doctor, this civil servant is deemed as an enemy? Without absurd conspiracy theories.

This is not a Tom Clancy novel. This is not a stroll through the pages of the internet. This is the real world, with real problems, real people, and real consequences.

Above all else, now the protection Fauci had from these conspiracy theory, child minded cult members can now target and harass, or worse, a man who dedicated his life to the study of infectious diseases as to better humanity.

The petty, unpresidential behavior to revoke his security is disgusting! Why?! Because he wouldn’t lie for Trump? Because he gave the facts as he knew them? Because we had to wear masks!? What a joke! What has f*cking happened to this country?!

It’s appalling, it’s insane, it’s ridiculous to think that Fauci is the bad guy, but a failed businessman turned fake businessman through reality tv, a guy who had to file 6 different companies into bankruptcy, a guy who cheated on his wife with a porn star just after his wife had a child, who had an affair on his other wife prior to that, a man adjudicated for rape, a man who schemed to cheat the vote with fake electors then incited an insurrection against the capitol, a diminishing, deranged, hateful, lying, prick of a conman has your complete and utter allegiance but the scientists, experts and civil servants are the enemy.

Get back to reality, get your head out your ass and grow up.

[bookwormstarwarsfan]

I wonder how the people feel today, who were screaming through 2020-2021 that this is just the start, and in a few years, government poisoned masks will be mandatory 24/7 even in your own home, and people will be legally shot down if they break this rule.

I know that conspiracy believers always find a way to avoid controversies in their theories, but the way every government almost tripped over to lift bans sometimes too soon is so extremely against all those 'covid dictatorship' ideas, that I don't know how did they resolved this in their heads lol.

[dosesofcommonsense]

[greenwichtraders]

Oh Hell No. 😷

[bellaciao-ciao-ciao]

I’m not the biggest conspiracy theorist (or maybe it’s more accurate to say I wasn’t, I definitely have a lot of conspiracy theories about this government) but some days it really feels like living in a sims game where some things were done wrong, now everything is on fire, the player has given up and is now just observing us hurtling towards the bad end just to wait for everything to end so that the game can be restarted.

[covid-safer-hotties]

How covid conspiracy theories led to an alarming resurgence in AIDS denialism - Published Aug 7, 2024

Widespread distrust of our public health system is reviving long-debunked ideas on HIV and AIDS—and energizing a broad movement that questions the foundations of disease prevention.

Several million people were listening in February when Joe Rogan falsely declared that “party drugs” were an “important factor in AIDS.” His guest on The Joe Rogan Experience, the former evolutionary biology professor turned contrarian podcaster Bret Weinstein, agreed with him: The “evidence” that AIDS is not caused by HIV is, he said, “surprisingly compelling.”

During the show, Rogan also asserted that AZT, the earliest drug used in the treatment of AIDS, killed people “quicker” than the disease itself—another claim that’s been widely repeated even though it is just as untrue.

Speaking to the biggest podcast audience in the world, the two men were promoting dangerous and false ideas—ideas that were in fact debunked and thoroughly disproved decades ago.

But it wasn’t just them. A few months later, the New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, four-time winner of the NFL’s MVP award, alleged that Anthony Fauci, who led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years, had orchestrated the government's response to the AIDS crisis for personal gain and to promote AZT, which Rodgers also depicted as “killing people.” Though he was speaking to a much smaller audience, on a podcast hosted by a jujitsu fighter turned conspiracy theorist, a clip of the interview was re-shared on X, where it’s been viewed more than 13 million times.

Rodgers was repeating claims that appear in The Real Anthony Fauci, a 2021 book by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—a work that has renewed relevance as the anti-vaccine activist makes a long-shot but far-from-inconsequential run for the White House. The book, which depicts the elderly immunologist as a Machiavellian figure who used both the AIDS and covid pandemics for his own ends, has reportedly sold 1.3 million copies across all formats.

“When I hear [misinformation] like that, I just hope it doesn’t get traction,” says Seth Kalichman, a professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut and the author of Denying AIDS: Conspiracy Theories, Pseudoscience, and Human Tragedy.

But it already has. These comments and others like them add up to a small but unmistakable resurgence in AIDS denialism—a false collection of theories arguing either that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS or that there’s no such thing as HIV at all.

The ideas here were initially promoted by a cadre of scientists from unrelated fields, as well as many science-adjacent figures and self-proclaimed investigative journalists, back in the 1980s and ’90s. But as more and more evidence stacked up against them, and as more people with HIV and AIDS started living longer lives thanks to effective new treatments, their claims largely fell out of favor.

At least until the coronavirus arrived.

Read the full article at either link! (the covidsafehotties archive is always free of annoying in-line ads, jsky!)

[tomorrowusa]

Dr. Anthony Fauci voluntarily testified before a House committee and debunked MAGA Republican conspiracy theories regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

While Donald Trump and his lickspittles were telling Americans to drink bleach, take useless malaria pills, stick ultraviolet lights up their butts, and eat horse paste, Dr. Fauci headed an effort to develop vaccines for COVID-19.

A reminder to people with short memories who view the Trump administration as some sort of bucolic paradise: The last quarter of that administration included the worst government response to an infectious disease outbreak since 1920. Trumpsters who want us to ignore Trump's horribly botched response to the pandemic are like cruise-liner enthusiasts who want us to ignore the last 2% of the voyage of the Titanic.

Economic activity ground to a halt in 2020 as the US slid into a recession. I took this picture of a sign at a dollar store which had been completely closed for almost two months.

The whole Trump clan was disdainful of the sacrifices hundreds of millions of Americans were making.

Why has the U.S. COVID-19 response been so bad? Jared Kushner, Vanity Fair suggests.

At Times Square Jared and Ivanka's contemptuousness was made into an ad before Election Day.

If you are looking for the Original Sin of Trump's pandemic response, it was on January 22nd when he basically told CNBC's Joe Kernen that COVID-19 was nothing to worry about.

Of course it wasn't "just fine".

Trump did not declare a state of emergency for seven weeks. That gave the virus plenty of time for it to spread throughout the US.

Republicans know that their Dear Leader totally mishandled the pandemic response. That's why they repeatedly try to make Dr. Fauci a type of scapegoat for Trump's horrendous incompetence. Dr. Fauci has spent his entire career fighting disease. Donald Trump has spent his entire career narcissistically promoting himself.

Harry Truman had a sign on his desk saying: "The Buck Stops Here!" If Trump had a sign on his Oval Office desk (which he seldom used except for photo ops) it would be: "It's Everybody's Fault But Mine!"

Don't be hesitant to remind people of how awful 2020 was. And point the finger of blame at the orange blob who was responsible for the catastrophe.

[cherryblossomshadow]

Ivermectin

Transcript:

The bizarre thing about people shouting either "IVERMECTIN IS HORSE DEWORMER" or "THE ELITES ARE HIDING THIS FROM US" is that both of those things are just obviously wrong.

We've looked at Ivermectin for a bunch of potential uses and it seems like there is a small chance that, at very high doses, it might help some people with certain cancers, but if it does help (which is unlikely) it probably won't help much. There's one trial recruiting patients to test it in combination with an immunotherapy drug right now.

The thing about ivermectin is that it isn't well-absorbed by mammals. This makes it very useful as an anti-parasitic because worms absorb it readily. So it poisons parasitic worms but not people.

But it is absorbed a bit and at high enough doses, it has a bunch of other effects on the human body, many of them negative.

Early in the pandemic, there were some studies in individual cells (rather than whole bodies) that showed it might help control the virus. When the "health influencer" space glommed onto that, we actually didn't know for sure whether it would be helpful or not. But because it was cheap and available, some people (lots, actually) really did started dosing themselves with veterinary ivermectin. By the time studies on the efficacy were published (which showed it wasn't at all effective) the damage had been done.

And so we ended up with ivermectin (a drug that real people take for real diseases) becoming a culture war signifier, which is FUCKING STUPID.

Now, Mel Gibson has friends who are in remission from cancer after taking ivermectin (and probably also the treatments recommended by their oncologists, as that is almost always how these stories go). And he and Joe Rogan, during their conversation, seem ASTOUNDED that people in cancer research are ignoring it. They seem to think that every elite knows that, if they so much as GLANCE at ivermectin, they're getting fucking fired.

Except that researchers have done tons of studies on whether ivermectin could possibly be useful in cancer treatment because, if it is, that would be really great! People seem to think that pharmaceutical companies are the only ones who do cancer research but actually they mostly just bring drugs to market. Most cancer research is funded by the government or done by universities.

As much as we've looked, it doesn't seem likely that ivermectin is a good cancer drug because, at the doses where it might have an effect on a cancer, it'll have all kinds of other nasty effects on the human body, like damage to the nervous system and brain.

But, despite that, we're looking, because for some people who are dying, it's worth checking to see if it would be useful in combination with other therapies.

Cancers are very hard to treat because cancer cells are very similar to /our/ cells. Trying to kill a parasite is relatively easy because worms are very different from people. Cancer cells are descended from us, they are human cells gone rogue, so it's hard to attack them without attacking the rest of the body. That's the whole reason why it's so much easier to kill parasites than it is to kill cancer cells.

Fenbendazole is an even weirder thing to get all excited about as an "alternative treatment" because we've studied it for cancer treatment because it acts on the microtubules that control cell replication. That's how a lot of chemotherapy drugs work (including one I took), targeting cells that replicate a lot. So fenbendazole's whole thing is that it might have been a good cancer treatment because it would be another option as a toxic cell-killing chemo drug.

But, because fenbendazole is (again) not very well absorbed by mammals, it is (again) a great drug for killing parasites and not a great drug for treating cancers.

I just…I kinda can't believe we are this incapable of just leaving cancer research to cancer researchers. Ivermectin is a medicine for humans. It's not a panacea. At low doses, it basically does nothing because it isn't easily absorbed by humans and, when it is, it hangs out almost entirely with fatty tissues.

It would be amazing if a cheap, well-understood drug were broadly useful in cancer treatment. Ivermectin just /isn't/.

I have a private theory that fenbendazole and ivermectin are so present in these conversations 100% because they are known to cure real diseases (parasitic infections) and they are easy to purchase extremely cheaply because they are available for animals.

That means people can actually take them, which creates both government warnings to NOT TAKE ANIMAL MEDICINES and many stories of people taking the animal medicines and (mostly) being just fine. That's just a tremendous mix for creating discourse and turning it into a culture war thing.

And look, if people are taking ivermectin WHILE taking the treatments their doctor recommends, that's stupid but unlikely to kill anyone.

But the way it was discussed on the JRE, it makes me think some people will ONLY take these medicines, and they will not take their drugs their doctors recommend, and those people will die. And that's fucked.

[angelsdean]

it’s as if ppl have forgotten others will lie for money and attention lol like sorry but I don’t believe a word some random tour guide says (even if it’s confirming my ship!) esp when it’s literally just reiterating what we already have heard misha say about the pre-covid heaven reunion but with random added embellishments to act like there’s “new” info on top of what we already know. also idk why anyone is celebrating that ending, it’s still so shitty like dean only able to “accept” his sexuality once he’s DEAD in heaven ??? When he’s been bisexual on our screens openly flirting with men and doing dudes since the 90s??? Get out of here with that bullshit lmao