Continuing from yesterday's basement deepdig, take a look at this side of the background:
The name on the bullshit board is Brian Shilhavy and he's the editor of something called "Health Impact News."
This would be the same "Health Impact News" that Media Bias Factcheck describes as:
Overall, we rate Health Impact News a Quackery level pseudoscience website for the promotion of anti-vaccination propaganda as well as chemtrails, geoengineering, and false information regarding GMOs.
What sort of quackery does Wendy's expert spread?
Take a look at this from The NY Post:
A new report says three dozen Facebook pages reaching approximately 14.2 million users contained inaccurate and unsubstantiated allegations about the safety and effects of any future COVID-19 vaccine, and vaccines in general.
NewsGuard, which released the report Thursday, labeled the sites “misinformation super spreaders” when it comes to COVID-19.
And:
The Web site HealthImpactNews.com, founded by Brian Shilhavy, has also run numerous stories that said a COVID-19 vaccine will “genetically modify” humans who take it.
And when we go to the NewsGuard report, we find this about Health Impact News:
For example, the page Coconut Health, which is part of the NewsGuard Red-rated pseudoscience Health Impact News network, published a post on May 17, 2020, that falsely claimed that a COVID-19 vaccine would “genetically modify” humans. The post included a fact-check from Reuters explaining that the information was false. However, three months later, the page continued to use this false talking point in its larger anti-vaccine agenda, and did not receive a fact-checking notice.
And they found more examples of anti-vaxx quackery from Coconut Health:
- An Aug. 3, 2020, post linking to an article falsely claiming that a COVID-19 vaccine would alter your DNA, that it will use tracking technology, and that the COVID-19 pandemic is fake.
- An April 15, 2020, post linking to an article falsely claiming that a COVID-19 vaccine would include a “microchip.”
NOTE: Both FB postings have been removed from FB.
NewsGuard adds:
NewsGuard emailed Brian Shilhavy, owner of the Health Impact News network that operates Coconut Health, seeking comment on the above posts, but did not receive a response.
This is the expert Wendy Bell had on her basement broadcast yesterday.
Examples of the Health Impact News quackery:
- the vaccine will alter your DNA. It won't:
There are currently two types of COVID-19 vaccines that have been authorized and recommended for use in the United States: messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines and a viral vector vaccine. Both mRNA and viral vector COVID-19 vaccines deliver instructions (genetic material) to our cells to start building protection against the virus that causes COVID-19. However, the material never enters the nucleus of the cell, which is where our DNA is kept. This means the genetic material in the vaccines cannot affect or interact with our DNA in any way. All COVID-19 vaccines work with the body’s natural defenses to safely develop immunity to disease.- the vaccine will include a microchip. It doesn't:
Lisa Morici, an associate professor at the Tulane University School of Medicine who studies vaccines, emphasized in an email that the “ingredients in the mRNA and adenovirus vaccines are simply RNA/DNA, lipids, proteins, salts, and sugars.” (The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines use modified messenger RNA to provide instructions for cells to make spike proteins, while the J&J vaccine uses an adenovirus modified with DNA for the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.)
“All of these components are found in numerous foods, vaccines, and medicines,” she said.
“The ‘microchip’ is of course a myth being spread on social media,” she said. “‘Micro’ refers to the size of the chip = microns in size, whereas the mRNA and adenovirus vaccines are nanoparticles, meaning nanometers in size. The vaccines are therefore 1000x smaller than a microchip and a microchip couldn’t fit in the vaccine.”
- the pandemic is fake. There are now about 585,000 reasons why this is dangerously wrong.
Wendy Bell, you are now a Covid anti-vaxx misinformation superspreader. Congratulations!
How many more people will get sick because of you, Wendy?