Mercola, a natural health proponent with an Everyman demeanor, the dubious distinction of the top spot in the “Disinformation Dozen,” a list of 12 people responsible for sharing 65 percent of all anti-vaccine messaging on social media, said the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate. His claims have been widely echoed on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. Mercola has published over 600 articles on Facebook that cast doubt on Covid-19 vaccines since the pandemic began, reaching a far larger audience than other vaccine skeptics, an analysis by The New York Times found. But most recently, he has become the chief spreader of coronavirus misinformation online, according to researchers.Īn internet-savvy entrepreneur who employs dozens, Dr. Mercola, 67, an osteopathic physician in Cape Coral, Fla., has long been a subject of criticism and government regulatory actions for his promotion of unproven or unapproved treatments. The entire effort traced back to one person: Joseph Mercola.ĭr.
The article also made its way to Facebook, where it reached 400,000 people, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool.
It appeared on dozens of blogs and was picked up by anti-vaccination activists, who repeated the false claims online. Over the next few hours, the article was translated from English into Spanish and Polish. Instead, the article claimed, the shots “alter your genetic coding, turning you into a viral protein factory that has no off-switch.” Then over its next 3,400 words, it declared coronavirus vaccines were “a medical fraud” and said the injections did not prevent infections, provide immunity or stop transmission of the disease. 9 began with a seemingly innocuous question about the legal definition of vaccines. SAN FRANCISCO - The article that appeared online on Feb.
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