A biotech professor breaks down just how bogus the story of the “Japanese ivermectin miracle” really was, as well as how to spot pseudoscience and quackery in COVID reporting.
What really gets me in all of this was how the disinformation got its start with a failed film writer turned noted fascist and white supremacist propagandist, namely Steve Bannon. You may remember him for his “Camp of the Saints” racist lies and border hysteria, and the fact that he was, for a time, very tight with Donnie Drumpf in the White House. So of course, someone with bad beliefs in general is a pretty unsurprising source for crapaganda about COVID. And he’s not at all averse to joining forces to propagate the disinformation with a wealthy but disreputable Chinese émigré, either.
What’s more disturbing, however, is how the believers in “alternative health facts” didn’t even bat an eye at this bad sourcing. In fact, most of them probably had no idea who was behind it, and hadn’t a clue that they were spreading fascist lies. All they “knew” was that they needed justification for their needle phobia, and they were quick to embrace anything that provided it. And if that meant swallowing a literal poison pill — or horse paste — then so be it.
Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui have the blood of over a million dead US citizens on their hands, as well as countless other dupes around the world. Both of them should be rotting in jail for their part in this, but I’m not holding my breath. I don’t want to join the ranks of the prematurely dead, myself.
