Amazon Finances and Spreads Anti-Vax Disinformation

 

If you're like me and millions of other people you have recently bought something from Amazon. You're also probably not aware that they are a major supporter and enabler of the anti-vax movement.

According to the blog Popular Information, Amazon directly donated more than $40,000 to one of the nation's leading sources of vaccine misinformation, the so-called National Vaccine Information Center. The amount donated has increased each of the last three quarters.

According to an article in the The Guardian, in addition to endorsing and legitimizing the anti-vax movement with these donations, Amazon supports the movement by selling books by anti-vaxxers. It then uses its recommendation algorithm to push more anti-vax books to people who have bought them. 

In September of this year NPR reported that a book by Joseph Mercola was the number one recommendation when they did a search on "COVID-19." In the spring of 2019 the American Medical Association sent a letter to Amazon asking them to stop these practices. I can find no evidence of a response.

But wait, there's more.  Amazon also pays "influencer" anti-vaxxers a commission on products they recommend. So for example, if a COVIDiot like Robert Kennedy Jr. recommends that people take ivermectin horse paste from Amazon instead of getting vaccinated and they buy the stuff,* he gets a cut. 

This looks to me like it could be a main way these grifters support themselves—and support themselves they do. It also means decision makers at Amazon are partly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people who refused to get vaccinated. 

I knew anti-vaxxers write books and I knew Amazon sells books, but I had no I idea they were in bed together like they are. I like buying stuff from Amazon, but I'm going to think twice next time I have a choice to buy something from them that I can get somewhere else.

*In case you were wondering whether Amazon sells ivermectin the answer is yes. Search for ivermectin on their site and you get six pages of results.


Popular posts from this blog

Looks Like Immune Responses are Enduring After All

Image
 For some time, public health officials have fretted about whether immunity to COVID-19, acquired via infection or vaccination would stick.  Studies showed rapid declines in antibodies during recovery from infection and thereafter . It turns out that this concern was overblown. A study just released says bone marrow plasma cells are a persistent source of protective antibodies, and that "circulating resting memory B cells directed against the S protein were detected in the convalescent individuals."   Another study , yet to be reviewed, suggests that vaccines boost this effect. In fact, some are suggesting this situation this could actually mean  lifetime immunity .   Whether the same thing happens with vaccination is not clear. Most estimates suggest that vaccine immunity will last about a year . More pessimistic estimates putting the protection period at six months .  The possible shorter time frame, plus the appearance of the new variants, have the vaccine makers working
Read more

Another One Bites the Dust

Image
Hi all. Stepping out of retirement for a moment to say that the day has finally arrived. After four years of successfully avoiding COVID-19 infection I had a positive test yesterday. Symptoms are very mild—I've had worse colds. The provider at urgent care said almost all the cases they are seeing are the same. Mild symptoms may also be due to the fact that I had the original vaccine then the two boosters. All this time I thought I might be a NOVID —one of those people who never get the bug. But no, it must have been my assiduous mask wearing and avoidance of high-risk situations when things were bad. So here's double middle fingers to all the kooks who think masks don't work (I've not been wearing masks for months now). I don't know what variant I have but it's likely JN.1. It is said to be extraordinarily contagious and accounts for 60% of cases worldwide . It also tends to produce mild infections like the one I have.  This article claims that right now every
Read more

AZ Pandemic Numbers Summary for the Seven Days Ending November 9: Everything is Going South

Image
Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Well this isn't good. The lull seems to be over. Virtually every number is up, both over a week and over four weeks. The most worrisome is hospital beds, which have been steadily trending up over the last several weeks.  Wastewater signals are all up except Tempe (dashboard is up again) which after going up last week (from 41 to 100) decreased by about 10%. The increases are worrisome because the latest data from ASU's Lim Lab (last updated October 31), where they sequence PCR samples to identify variants, shows that only about 46% of sequences showed BA.5. That is one of the Omicron variants the new bivalent vaccine was designed to protect against.  All the rest of the samples are BA.2.75 (7.7%), which I flagged several weeks ago, and BQ,1.1 (15.4%), and BQ.1 (30.8%), both of which I blogged about a couple weeks ago.  Those, new research confirms , are much more lik
Read more