Covidiots

Politico reports: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to continue wielding his political influence in school board races across the state after his campaign helped two dozen conservative candidates win during this year’s midterm elections. The Republican governor this week said he intends to flip more local seats from liberal to conservative-leaning education officials, taking aim at boards in areas such …

Vice News reports: People who refused to get the COVID vaccine are far more likely to get into a traffic crash requiring hospitalization, a recently published study found, adding evidence to the theory that anti-vaxxers often demonstrate other kinds of dangerous antisocial behavior. The study, published in the American Journal of Medicine, looked at data from more than 11.2 million …

The Daily Beast reports: With a dystopian backdrop of Zoom attendees and surrounded by anti-vax academics and state health officials, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis used a Tuesday roundtable discussion to call on Florida’s Supreme Court to impanel a grand jury to investigate alleged vaccine “misconduct” in the state. “Today, I’m announcing a petition with the Supreme Court of Florida to …

ProPublica reports: In a victory for public health advocates, a federal judge in Montana has blocked the state from implementing a law that would make it illegal for hospitals to ask employees if they are vaccinated. The measure, which passed last year, was the country’s most extreme anti-vaccination law. Health care providers in Montana had sued the state over the …

The Hill reports: Anthony Fauci in an interview with the BBC blasted the “cowardly” internet trolls who harass his wife and children, saying it’s a part of the backlash he’s experienced over the COVID-19 pandemic. “These people who troll about, they harass my wife and my children because they can figure out where they live and what their phone number …

The Napa Valley Register reports: A Napa naturopath will spend nearly three years in federal prison for faking hundreds of COVID-19 vaccination cards and selling a purported remedy against the virus, federal prosecutors announced. Juli Mazi was sentenced to 33 months during a hearing in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The sentence capped her arrest in what authorities called …

Vice News reports: Anti-vaxxers are trying to create a new global infrastructure for the supply of unvaccinated blood, driven by conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific beliefs about the dangers of mRNA COVID vaccines. SafeBlood Donation was founded by a Swiss naturopath, George Della Pietra. He and his supporters believe, wrongly, that mRNA coronavirus vaccines “contaminate” the blood and destroy the immune …

Los Angeles’s ABC affiliate reports: Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva on Tuesday afternoon conceded to former Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna in Luna’s bid to succeed him as head of one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the U.S. “I want to wish the incoming sheriff well,” Villanueva said at a press conference. During news conference, Villanueva …

The New York Post reports: A group of anti-vax protesters chanted “F–k Joe Biden” as they marched through the streets of Manhattan Monday night in the city’s annual Halloween parade. The brash language aimed at the president was repeated by a reveler dressed as a priest who was holding a sign that read “COVID 19 is a tool of control.” …

Agence France-Presse reports: Italian doctors and nurses suspended over their refusal to be vaccinated against Covid-19 can now return to work, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Monday. Italy was the first European country to be hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020, and has since registered nearly 180,000 deaths. Meloni’s post-fascist Brothers of Italy railed against many …

The Minnesota Reformer reports: Scott Jensen has downplayed the virus’ severity and decried measures to contain it, like universal mask wearing. Jensen likened public health measures to Nazism and last year signed onto a lawsuit to block vaccines for children. Jensen defended his past remarks and mentioned a new culprit: ventilators. “The ventilator was a deadly problem,” Jensen said. “We …

ABC News reports: A March 2021 report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate identified Sherri Tenpenny as one of the 12 most prominent purveyors of vaccine misinformation on social media. A report later that year from the De Beaumont Foundation cited Tenpenny while demanding that state medical boards crack down on the “small but vocal minority of physicians” who …

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports: A Cleveland area physician who told an Ohio House committee in the summer of 2021 that coronavirus vaccines could “interface” with cell towers and magnetize recipients now is in danger of losing her license to practice medicine in Ohio. A state board that licenses doctors notified Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, a Cleveland area osteopathic physician, that …

Fox News reports: The premier of Alberta, Canada, said she is working on a plan to pardon residents who were fined or arrested over breaking coronavirus protocols, and apologized to unvaccinated Canadians who faced “discrimination.” “It was a political decision to throw out the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to put those fines in place in the first place, and …

Bloomberg News reports: Anti-vaxxers, whose activity is limited on many platforms, have started using elaborate quotes and phrases to spread cloaked misinformation about the drugs that help fight Covid-19. In Facebook groups with names like “Died Suddenly,” users claim to be mourning friends and family members who have “eaten the cake,” which is code for taking vaccines. Sometimes, users claim …

The Daily Beast reports: An attempt to make a right-wing superhero movie has ended in disaster, with $1 million missing in China and a participant facing a federal indictment. “I wouldn’t count on us getting the money back,” Theodore Beale, a far-right blogger known as “Vox Day,” admitted to his fans and investors in a video last week. This isn’t …

From the Miami Herald editorial board: Armed only with a skimpy “analysis” done by the state Department of Health — an analysis that is not peer-reviewed, has no named authors and has been blasted by the medical community — he warned last week that men ages 18-39 shouldn’t get the Moderna or Pfizer COVID shots, citing a higher risk of …

Florida Politics reports: Twitter temporarily took down a post by Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo on guidance against COVID-19 vaccines for those under 40. The move comes as medical experts and scientists criticize the Florida Department of Health recommendations for being based on weak data that never saw peer review. Ladapo on Friday issued new guidance recommending against mRNA vaccinations for …

Vox reports: As the weather starts to turn cold and as officials push for more people to get their new booster shot before an expected winter coronavirus surge, public health leaders are battling skepticism and apathy toward the vaccines. Worse, experts fear the politicized backlash to the Covid-19 vaccines is already fostering skepticism about routine vaccinations generally, from childhood immunizations …

The Arizona Mirror reports: It’s already known that hundreds of thousands of Americans would still be alive if every eligible person had gotten vaccinated against COVID-19. Now new research strongly suggests that many more of those “excess deaths” in Ohio and Florida were among people with Republican voter registrations. It’s perhaps unsurprising that Republicans were more reluctant to get vaccinated …