Disinformation Dozen
Deadly Liars
Many Americans continue to refuse to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and many are dying because they have listened to the “Disinformation Dozen,” anti-vaccine activists who are making a lot of money by spreading misinformation on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter to more than 59 million followers, making them the largest and most important social media platforms for anti-vaxxers.
“Living in full view of the public on the Internet are a small group of individuals who do not have relevant medical expertise and have their own pockets to line, who are abusing social media platforms to misrepresent the threat of Covid and spread misinformation about the safety of vaccines,” according to a report issued in March by “The Center for Countering Digital Hate,” a not-for-profit NGO “that seeks to disrupt the architecture of online hate and misinformation.”
The report identifies the most influential and worst purveyors of lies about the vaccine as “The Disinformation Dozen” and it includes, in order of their amount of influence:
1. Joseph Mercola
2. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
3. Ty and Charlene Bollinger
4. Sherri Tenpenny
5. Rizza Islam
6. Rashid Buttar
7. Erin Elizabeth
8. Sayer Ji
9. Kelly Brogan
10. Christiane Northrup
11. Ben Tapper
12. Kevin Jenkins
Key organizations that are linked to the Disinformation Dozen include:
• Children’s Health Defense (Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.)
• Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) (Del Bigtree)
• National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) (Barbara Loe Fisher, Joseph Mercola)
• Organic Consumers Association (OCA) (Joseph Mercola)
• Millions Against Medical Mandates
The report determined that anti-vaxxers are using social media platforms to target Black Americans, “exploiting higher rates of vaccine hesitancy in that community to spread conspiracies and lies about the safety of Covid vaccines.”
According to the report, Facebook, Google and Twitter have put policies into place to prevent the spread of vaccine misinformation but they all have failed to remove the accounts of prominent anti-vaxxers who have repeatedly violated their terms of service.
The report analyzed anti-vaccine content that was shared or posted on Facebook and Twitter a total of 812,000 times between Feb. 1 and March 16 and found that 65 percent of anti-vaccine content is attributable to the Disinformation Dozen.
The Disinformation Dozen were profiled in the report, including:
Joseph Mercola, a successful anti-vaccine entrepreneur, peddling dietary supplements and false cures as alternatives to vaccines. Mercola’s combined personal social media accounts have around 3.6 million followers.
“Forced vaccination is part of the plan to ‘reset’ the global economic system,” Mercola posted. “Now, global vaccine passports are being introduced and it’s only a matter of time before vaccination status will be a prerequisite for travel.”
Mercola also posted false claims that “hydrogen peroxide treatment can successfully treat most viral respiratory illnesses, including coronavirus” and he promotes his hydrogen peroxide nebulization product.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his Children’s Health Defense (CHD) were banned from Instagram on Feb. 8 but his Facebook page remains active as does the CHD Instagram page.
Kennedy and Children’s Health Defense released a film in mid-March targeting members of the Black and Latino communities with anti- vaccine messages, including the false report that COVID-19 has led to miscarriages and advises pregnant women not to be vaccinated. The anti-vaxxers also claim that baseball legend Hank Aaron’s death was “part of a wave of suspicious deaths among elderly closely following administration of COVID vaccines.”
“Tip of the iceberg? Thousands of COVID vaccines injuries and 13 deaths reported in December alone” the CHD and Kennedy claimed.
Ty and Charlene Bollinger are anti-vax entrepreneurs who sell books and DVDs about vaccines, cancer and COVID- 19. The Bollingers have promoted the conspiracy theory that Bill Gates plans to inject everyone with microchips as part of a vaccination program.
Sherri Tenpenny is an osteopath physician who spreads anti-vaccine sentiment and false claims about the safety and efficacy of masks. Her Facebook account was removed, but Twitter and Instagram sites still operate.
In June 2020 Tenpenny tweeted that the “longer you wear a mask, the more unhealthy you get” and that masks suppress the immune system.
“Stop getting tested. If you are getting tested you are part of the problem,” Tenpenny claimed.
Rizza Islam’s anti-vaccine posts aim to spread vaccine hesitancy among African Americans. Facebook removed Islam’s Page but he continues to post anti-vaccine messages from his Instagram and Twitter accounts.
Islam promoted the false conspiracy theory in June that COVID vaccines make women infertile. He also promoted a diet that he claims he used to recover from COVID in 48 hours. He posted that “Satan” is behind the COVID vaccine.
Rashid Buttar is an osteopath physician and conspiracist known for videos posted to his YouTube channel. Buttar also claimed that COVID vaccines cause infertility.
Erin Elizabeth, a partner with Joseph Mercola, runs “Health Nut News,” a website that claimed that vaccines are part of a medical industry plan to create “a chronically-ill population.” She also has posted an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about how the Jewish Rothschild international banking family are responsible for the pandemic.
Sayer Ji runs GreenMedInfo.com and is affiliated with social media accounts that promote pseudoscience and anti-vaccine misinformation. His accounts were removed by Twitter and Instagram, but are still available on Facebook.
“The FDA knows that rushed-to-market COVID-19 vaccines may cause a wide range of life-threatening side effects, including death,” according to a posting on GreenMedInfo.com.
Kelly Brogan, a partner with Ji, claims to practice “holistic psychiatry” and sells a range of books and courses from her website. She has encouraged Instagram users not to wear masks and claimed in a March 2020 video that “there is potentially no such thing as the coronavirus” because “it’s not possible to prove that any given pathogen has induced death.”
Christiane Northrup is an obstetrics and gynecology physician who has used social media to spread disinformation and falsely recommends that HCQ and Ivermectin can cure COVID.
Ben Tapper, a chiropractor, has spoken out against masking and said, again, falsely, “there is a total lack of evidence that viruses can live outside the body.”
Kevin Jenkins has appeared at public events with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and claimed that vaccines are part of a “conspiracy” to “wipe out” Black people. He is a co-founder of the Freedom Airway & Freedom Travel Alliance, a company that helps members travel around the world without observing any masking, quarantining, vaccination, or other pandemic control measures.
A White House briefing last week focused on the Disinformation Dozen and efforts by the White House to halt misinformation that has led to deaths among people who have chosen not to be vaccinated. The briefing also was a dramatic demonstration of the Fox News agenda
White House press secretary Jen Psaki held the briefing and among the reporters was Fox News’s Peter Doocy. But Doocy did not question what is being done to halt the misinformation but rather Doocy shifted to a subject near and dear to the conspiracists at Fox and around the nation: Government spying.
Doocy accused the government of “spying” on people’s Facebook profiles and compared the effort to “Big Brother.” Doocy referred several times to the mysterious, 12 anti-vaxers as if they were secretly monitored by the government when in fact they were the subject of the Center for Digital Hate study, which was available to the public and easily located on the Internet. The study was reported in May by NPR and other news outlets.
In the bad old days, press secretaries like Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephanie Grisham, and Kayleigh McEnany would have jumped at Doocy’s queries as a springboard to harangue the dark forces that allegedly were conspiring to destroy ex-president trump.
But fortunately, Psaki did not take the bait, did not lose her cool despite Doocy’s insistence and she redirected the discussion back to where it belonged, how to stop the vaccine misinformation.