A Food Pandemic Infects America ~~ L. ALI KHAN

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/09/02/a-food-pandemic-infects-america/

~~ posted for collectivist ~~

A food pandemic means the abundance of disease-causing foods (pathogenic foods) people consume regularly and consequently develop life-threatening morbidities. The U.S. has been infected with a food pandemic for many years, now spreading to other countries.

In 2020, the U.S. life expectancy dropped by 1.5 years from 78.8 to 77.3 years, which is facially attributable to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the backstory points to a previously bursting food pandemic that covertly joined forces with the invading virus. For example, the Covid-19 patients with type-2 diabetes, a food disease, have been much more vulnerable to severe effects of the virus. With the number of deaths exceeding 616,000, the food plus virus pandemics have hit the U.S. hard. Even if the virus goes away, the food pandemic will continue to exact harm in the foreseeable future. Sadly, the pandemics deniers remain bountifully ignorant.

Public health is much more complicated than the mere availability of low-cost food. Food pandemics hit nations where food scarcity is infrequent, food production is high, distributions systems are efficient, but a massive amount of affordable food is pathogenic. Nutritional ignorance, overeating, Information perplexity, and food industry-sponsored smokescreens extend the reach and duration of the pandemic.

One may argue that even unhealthy food is better than prolonged starvation. The recent famines in history killed millions of people worldwide. In the 18^th century, due to drought, crop failure, and poverty, Mughal India faced two famines that killed 21 million people, nearly ten percent of the population. In the 20^th century, China faced two major famines, one in 1907 due to high rains that prevented crop production, another during 1959-61 primarily due to flawed government policy. These two famines wiped out at least 70 million people, mostly in rural areas. In 1921, amid a civil war and railroad disruptions, Russia suffered from a catastrophic famine that killed nearly 10 million people, breeding episodic cannibalism.

Ironically, in their effect on human life, food famines and food pandemics are distressingly similar. A famine emaciates the human body, causing mental distress, poor mobility, vulnerability to pathogens, multiple diseases, and premature death. A food pandemic fattens up the human body, causing the same morbidities as famine, including mental distress, compromised mobility, susceptibility to pathogens, numerous diseases, and early death. Sorrowfully, food pandemics are deadlier as they persist for decades, way longer than famines. Famine deaths are swift and dramatic. By contrast, food pandemics cause slow grinding but lethal diseases.

This study analyzes the four intertwined elements that precipitate a food pandemic: (1) a significant range of foods contain pathogenic ingredients; (2) pathogenic foods are readily available and affordable; (3) food consumption stimulates quantitative overloading (overeating) by altering biochemistry and generating food addiction; (4) foods cause life-threatening morbidities, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, vision loss, and cancer.

Pathogenic Ingredients

Research singles out two primary pathogenic ingredients found in most packaged foods, restaurant foods, and home-cooked foods: seed oils (corn oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, canola oil, and others) and added sugars (fructose, corn syrup, maple syrup, and others). Of these two ingredients, added sugars come out on top as the main villain in producing type 2 diabetes and the associated cardiovascular disease, pancreatic malfunction, and kidney failure. “The people of the U.S. consume more sugar than any other country in the world. On average, Americans consume 126.4 grams of sugar daily.” The recommended dose varies from a lower limit of 11 grams to a higher limit of 25 grams. No nutrition expert contends that added sugars benefit human health.

Seed oils (vegetable oils) offer an alternative to animal fats, such as butter and lard. However, the debate over seed oils is confusing and controversial. The critics of seed oils contend that these oils disturb the balance between omega-6 and omega-3 fats. Excessive ingestion of omega-6 fats through seed oils produces chronic inflammation in the human body, leading to numerous diseases. Animal fats, too, remain controversial, but influential experts recommend “cutting back” on these fats.

On the factual level, the use of seed oils has dramatically increased in the past fifty years (1970-2020). According to the data that the Economic Research Service (ERS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture collects, American consumers are ingesting more than 400 average daily calories per capita from vegetable oils in recent years. In contrast, in 1970, they drew 115 average daily calories per capita from salad and cooking oils. This increase is nearly four-fold. (see graph) Over these fifty years, the average daily calories from butter, lard, and dairy fats have varied small amounts. However, as good news, the average daily calories from margarine (trans fats) have plummeted from 58 to less than 15 per capita.

In addition to seed oils and sugars, pathogenic foods also contain pesticides, growth hormones, and heavy metals. Furthermore, regardless of antibiotics and steroid injections, all meat contains sex steroid hormones, and all chicken contains drug-resistant bacteria. (A more health-conscious European Union (E.U.) permits only hormone-free U.S. beef. The U.S. exports poultry products (chicken and turkey) to more than 120 countries around the world. The E.U. refuses to accept U.S. poultry washed with chlorine and antimicrobial chemicals.) In recent years, chemicals in agriculture increased from below 3 billion in 1970 to over 15 billion. (see graph).

The distinction between organic and inorganic foods has created a new pricey market for organic foods beyond the pocketbook reach of most Americans. Non-organic foods–whether fruits, vegetables, dairy, and meat–are produced with synthetic chemicals to boost growth. By contrast, organic foods face less exposure to pesticides and antibiotics. Yet, cross-contamination between organic and non-organic foods weakens the distinction.

According to ERS, in 2018, on average, people in the U.S. consumed more meat, eggs, nuts, grains, and refined sugars than the recommended amounts. Chicken consumption has doubled since 1970. The consumption of vegetables and fruits falls short of 2020-2025 dietary guidelines. For the most part, Americans are eating a nutritionally deficient diet infected with pesticides, hormones, and numerous chemicals used in preservation, processing, packaging, coloring, and canning. It is no relief that the food is affordable.

Affordability

The food pandemic sets in motion when the pathogenic food is readily available and affordable. Affordable food consists of grains, sugars, vegetables, fruits, and meat, mainly carrying pathogenic ingredients. In most states, the lowest average food cost per month for one person ranges from $200 to $233.

From time immemorial, the food available to the rich has been of much higher quality than the food available to the poor. This dichotomy continues to bedevil many nations worldwide, including the U.S. The disadvantaged communities invariably have insufficient food of lower grade, not conducive to good health. There are historical examples of famine when food was available, but it was too expensive for poor people to buy. While food affordability is a desirable social objective, the question remains whether affordable food is healthy.

Food available to most U.S. inhabitants is affordable, though some families struggle with meager incomes. In 2019, around 34 million people, 10.5 percent of the U.S. population, lived in poverty. However, the poverty rate for Black communities stood at nearly 19%, for Hispanics at 16%, exceeding the national poverty rate. The poverty rate for minors under the age of 18 was over 14%.

In sum, Black communities, Hispanics, and children face food insecurity. In addition to the 34 million under the poverty level, millions of Americans above the poverty line have little choice but to consume affordable foods of questionable quality. Whether these numbers and communities have improved or worsened in the past two Covid-19 years remains to be seen.

The invasion of Covid-19 has complicated social dynamics and food ingestion. For decades, people are eating pathogenic foods far too much and far too often for many reasons, including physical immobility, mental distress, and loneliness. Unfortunately, quantitative overloading of the body breeds numerous diseases.

Quantitative Overloading

“Eat as much as your heart desires” is the siren song of American Argonautica.

Under evolutionary constraints, the human body has evolved to bear periods of starvation. For centuries, humans did not eat every day, certainly not three or more times a day. Food was scarce. Animals were challenging to hunt. Seasons, mainly winters, complicated the availability of fruits and plants. Food preservation was elementary. Consequently, early humans mostly remained in a fasted rather than fed state.

The 21^st-century humans face a different challenge: quantitative overloading of the digestive system with unhealthy foods.  Americans are in a fed state for nearly 16 to 18 hours a day and do not allow the pancreas to take a break from releasing insulin and digestive enzymes. The stomach carries a Sisyphean boulder. Obesity is the inevitable consequence of quantitative overloading. In 2017-2018, U.S. obesity hit 42.4%. This figure is a nearly four-fold increase from 1970 (see graph). Furthermore, millions more are overweight. This increase in obesity varies little across income, gender, and racial groups

For decades, the U.S. has been at the cutting edge of accelerating the plentiful availability of food. Thanks to scientific agriculture, farming, food processing, food preservation, refrigeration, storage, packaging, canning, faster transportation, the U.S. has solved almost all problems related to food availability. Furthermore, the ready-to-eat food, fast food, restaurant food, and the food available at grocery stores in cities, towns, and gas stations on highways have revolutionized the convenience at which food is available any time of any day, 24/7. Some urban communities are “food deserts” where the food is available only at convenience stores.

The food industry stimulates quantitative overloading with aggressive marketing, deceptive labeling, and faulty research. Kids and teens are susceptible to food advertising. For example, Black-targeted TV shows overwhelmingly advertise “fast food, candy, sugary drinks, and unhealthy snacks.” The food labeling confuses rather than informs the consumers as food manufacturers hide pathogenic ingredients with unfamiliar technical names. For example, dextrose and treacle are sugars. Even organic sugar is sugar.

The most controversial feature of the food pandemic is the industry-sponsored research that promotes dairy, eggs, meat, cereals, and seed oils. For example, because of conflicting research findings, the consumers do not know how many eggs they should consume per week. Keto and carnivore diets promote animal sources of protein as weight loss strategies. Even some internet physicians enter the scene with podcasts promoting their books and supplements to further confuse the consumers about healthy foods.

Research controversies are a godsend for advertising all sorts of foods, as confusion benefits the food industry rather than the public. Frustrated with conflicting mantras, “fat is bad,” “fat is good,” most consumers give up on guidance and decide to eat what they like without regard to health consequences. This eating crisis mired in utter uncertainty obliterates the distinction between good food and bad food.

Furthermore, the food industry engages in manipulative research to find chemicals that promote the overeating of products, a concept like an addiction. Select chemicals included in processed foods release dopamine, a neurotransmitter that furnishes pleasure and yearning for more. Studies demonstrate that foods with added sweeteners and fats have “the greatest addictive potential.  Much like the tobacco industry, the food industry emphasizes “personal responsibility” in craving pathogenic foods.

Food Pathologies

Contaminating consumer products with pathogenic ingredients is dishonorable. Willfully doing so is a crime. The pathogenic seed oils, sugars, and foods infected with pesticides, hormones, and chemicals kneaded into food introduce the invisible, even delicious, poisons in mainstream staples. Sodas, donuts, chips, cookies, and ice creams (rightfully) get the bad rap. However, even relatively healthier foods contain overt and covert pathogenic ingredients.

There is a near consensus among nutrition experts that refined carbohydrates and sugar consumption leads to type 2 diabetes. This mother disease gives birth to obesity, cardiovascular disease, kidney failure, vision loss, and other systems pathologies. Once considered morbidity of mature age, diabetes is now penetrating children and adolescents younger than age 20. Diabetes begins to weaken the immune systems long before it surfaces in blood tests.

The nutrition debate over dietary fat is confusing and controversial, benefitting the food industry. Keto diets emphasizing the replacement of carbohydrates with fats complicate the discussion. However, the critics assert that “Dietary fat induces overconsumption and weight gain through its low satiety properties and high caloric density.” Since ingested fats must first pass through the lymphatic vascular system, quantitative overloading of fats can overwhelm the lymph nodes.

Food processing chemicals aggravate the villainy of foods derived from sugars and seed oils. For example, nitrates and nitrites, extensively used to process food, correlate with various forms of cancer. Bisphenols used in soda cans and food lining interferes with puberty and fertility. Perchlorate, a chemical released from defense and military operations and found in drinking water and surface waters, attacks thyroid function. Artificial food coloring to attract children worsens the symptoms of attention deficit disorder.

Most Americans live in a monster Skinner Box in which no matter which lever you press, the food you get is pathogenic.

Conclusion

The food pandemic has been slowly gaining momentum in the past few decades and will continue to spawn lethal pathologies in the years to come. Humans engage in quantitative overloading of pathogenic foods derived from sugars and seed oils for various personal, social, and economic reasons. The preservatives introduce a toxic chemical load to healthy and unhealthy foods. Obesity and the consequent morbidities are strongly correlated to the food pandemic. The affordability of food is a legitimate social goal. But affordable food must not be toxic. Unfortunately, nutrition research, some sponsored by the food industry, confuses consumers with conflicting findings. Frustrated consumers, not knowing what is good for their health, fall back on what taste buds crave, thus ingesting pleasurable poison. Jack Lalanne (1914-2011), the legendary nutrition maharishi, cautioned people about processed food in a provocative warning: “If it tastes good, spit it out.” Even if the food is entirely healthy, eating less is evolutionary more protective of the human body.

Meet the influencers making millions by dealing doubt about the coronavirus vaccines.~~ Liz Essley Whyte

https://publicintegrity.org/health/coronavirus-and-inequality/spreading-fears-cashing-in-anti-vaccine/

~~ posted for collectivist ~~

Heather Simpson never thought to question vaccines. Her parents vaccinated her when she was a child, and she got tetanus and flu shots as an adult.

But when she and her husband were thinking about starting a family, she saw an ad for the documentary series “The Truth about Vaccines,” and “fear crept in,” she later wrote.

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Simpson paid about $200 for the series, which taught her the tenets of vaccine skepticism. 

“I left that docuseries just thinking this is it. This is how autism happens. This is how allergies happen,” the 30-year-old Texan said. “How else would it happen?”

When her daughter was born in 2017, Simpson decided not to immunize her. She began posting on social media about her vaccine fears. She then went viral in 2019 for uploading a photo of her Halloween costume of, as she put it, “the least scary thing she could think of — the measles.” 

Scientists widely agree vaccines prevent dangerous diseases and do not cause autism or allergies. But in a few years Simpson had gone from accepting that consensus to preaching against it. And it all started with the documentary series made by Tennessee couple Ty and Charlene Bollinger, who got their start by questioning mainstream cancer treatments such as chemotherapy. 

Tennessee couple Ty and Charlene Bollinger‘s films questioning mainstream medicine have raked in millions. The couple, who promote themselves as devoted Christian parents and health researchers, now preach against the coronavirus shots. (thetruthaboutvaccines.com)

More than 450,000 people signed up to view the series the year it debuted, according to figures the Bollingers posted online, and 25,000 bought copies. At the price Simpson paid, the couple would have grossed $5 million in sales. 

For the Bollingers and a network of similar influencers, speaking out against vaccines, including the coronavirus shots, is not just a personal crusade. It’s also a profitable business. 

The Bollingers, for example, sell documentaries and books; other influencers hawk dietary supplements, essential oils or online “bootcamps” designed to train followers in anti-vaccine talking points. They frequently share links to each other’s content and products. Although the total value of anti-vaccine businesses is unknown, records indicate that the top influencers alone make up a multimillion-dollar industry. In 2020, the Bollingers told a court their cancer business had raked in $25 million in transactions since 2014. 

In their videos, the Bollingers speak in earnest, unscripted, Southern-accented tones, as if they were friendly neighbors sharing lawn-care tips. Evangelicals with four children, they pepper their messages with Bible verses. They are among the most influential conduits for anti-vaccine messages online, with more than 1.6 million followers on various social media platforms and 2 million they say subscribe to their emails. The Center for Countering Digital Hate, a U.K.-based organization that fights misinformation, has counted them among the dozen personalities responsible for most of the anti-vaccine misinformation on the intthe internet

“The bottom line is we have such a large following,” Charlene said recently in an interview with conspiracy hub InfoWars. “People are listening to us. They know that we care about them.”

Their latest target: the coronavirus vaccines.

The Bollingers have falsely claimed that the COVID-19 vaccines edit a recipient’s genes. They’ve insinuated that the shots caused an uptick in COVID-19 deaths in Tennessee. They’ve called vaccination “this abominable COVID shot.” 

Anti-vaccine messages from influencers like the Bollingers reach more than their most devoted followers, and are a major reason scientists worry the U.S. will continue to see coronavirus outbreaks.

“The anti-vax and vaccine-hesitant community has been very loud on social media,” said Jessica Malaty Rivera, a science communicator with the COVID Tracking Project who dispels vaccine myths on Instagram. “They’ve had a steady drumbeat of doubt, and we’re just playing catch-up.” 

FINDING FOLLOWERS

Before he became an outspoken vaccine opponent, Ty Bollinger was a Texas accountant and former bodybuilder wondering why so many of his relatives had died of cancer.

A Baylor University graduate, he was five years into his accounting career and newly married when his 52-year-old father doubled over in pain while eating, as Ty has often recounted. Doctors suspected gallstones but instead during surgery found extensive, cancerous stomach tumors. His father died 25 days later. (The Center for Public Integrity reached out multiple times, but the Bollingers did not agree to be interviewed for this story. This account is based on public records and what the couple has shared online.) 

Cancer killed five more of Ty’s relatives, and finally, in 2004, his mother. He began to research the disease at libraries and bookstores. The result was his first book, “Cancer: Step Outside the Box,” which argued that “Mother Nature” could treat cancer better than doctors and medications. 

Ty Bollinger revealed his embrace of numerous conspiracy theories in a 2013 book. (Liz Essley Whyte/Center for Public Integrity)

His next book, “Monumental Myths of the Modern Medical Mafia and the Mainstream Media and Multitude of Lying Liars that Manufactured Them,” recounted how he “woke up” while researching cancer, convinced that federal agencies like the Food and Drug Administration were suppressing information about natural treatments for the disease. A California doctor he’d consulted for his research then sent him a DVD claiming that 9/11 was an inside job. “You’re crazy!” Ty remembered telling the doctor. But he and Charlene watched. “We were sickened by the fact that, for the first time in our lives, we realized that the USA wasn’t what we always thought it was,” he wrote. “Little did we know that many people love being deceived and living in the matrix.”

Bollinger went on in the 2013 book to detail more of his false, conspiratorial beliefs: that HIV tests are meaningless and common AIDS medications are toxic; that planes spew poisonous “chemtrails” across the sky to control the weather; and that everything from the Oklahoma City bombing to the Boston Marathon bombing to 9/11 were inside jobs meant to strengthen government power. Bollinger also alleged that elites were covering up the true extent of the Fukushima nuclear disaster: “I’d bet that by 2020, Tokyo is uninhabitable.” (In 2021, central Tokyo is still inhabited by more than 9 million people.)

Bollinger’s new career skyrocketed with a 2015 docuseries, “The Truth about Cancer.” In addition to raking in millions of dollars in sales, the couple later said all their films had been watched by more than 20 million people combined. A 2016 followup book was a New York Times bestseller. Cancer also became the center of their growing social media empire. More than 1.1 million people now follow The Truth About Cancer on Facebook, and another 500,000 follow the Bollingers via other online pages or social media platforms.

In 2017, the couple launched “The Truth About Vaccines,” the docuseries Simpson, the Texas mom, watched. The Bollingers framed the documentary as an earnest search for truth from both sides of a debate, but really the episodes strung together dozens of interviews with vaccine skeptics. 

Around the same time, the couple began to sell dietary supplements. “[We want to] make sure that you have a reliable source of bioavailable, whole-food-based supplements,” the Bollingers told their customers. But in 2018 the Environmental Research Center, a California environmental group, notified the Bollingers’ supplement company of an impending lawsuit alleging that some of their products contained dangerous amounts of lead, a poison that can cause brain and kidney damage. Shortly after, the Bollingers announced they had parted ways with the supplement business they helped start with a partner and said they couldn’t go into detail due to a non-disclosure agreement. A month later, their former firm agreed to pay $119,500 to settle the California case, without admitting to selling contaminated products. The Bollingers subsequently sealed what they called a “strategic alliance” with a competing supplement brand, Ancient Nutrition, which they still promote.

In a March article on his vaccines website, Ty Bollinger recommended five substances he said would “mitigate damage” in those who had already taken certain coronavirus vaccines. The article contained affiliate links for iodine, zinc and quercetin, which suggests that Bollinger likely received a cut of the sales. But the article did not disclose in close proximity to the links that they were advertisements, as required by Federal Trade Commission regulations. The site contains only this general disclaimer if users scroll to the bottom of the page: “If you purchase anything through this website, you should assume that we have an affiliate relationship with the company providing the product or service that you purchase, and that we will be paid in some way.”

“We’ve already reached millions, but we want to reach billions, because everybody deserves the truth.”

CHARLENE BOLLINGER

The Bollingers’ work has made them wealthy. Their 10,000-square-foot home with a pool and pool house in rural middle Tennessee is valued at more than $1.4 million. “While we have generated income from our documentary films, we find nothing wrong with making a living,” Ty wrote this year.

In recent months, the Bollingers have increasingly discussed vague, right-wing conspiracies via online videos and platforms such as Telegram, though they keep much of that content off their prominent cancer website. “Italy, it goes through the Vatican. We know that [former president Barack] Obama is in on this with [left-leaning billionaire George] Soros,” Charlene said in a video in January. It was unclear what she was referencing. “Something big is happening.”

And in July of last year, the Bollingers set up a political fundraising committee, the United Medical Freedom Super PAC, to support candidates for public office who want to “transform the medical and health systems in America.” To date, they’ve used it to raise more than $60,000, Federal Election Commission records show, but have not donated any funds to candidates or other political campaigns. Instead, the PAC has paid out honorariums to various anti-vaccine or right-wing activists — including more than $11,000 to Roger Stone,  President Donald Trump’s long-time friend and confidant who was convicted of lying to Congress and pardoned by Trump. 

January 6 found the Bollingers outside the U.S. Capitol, speaking at a rally they helped organize, as insurrectionists stormed the building. “We pray for the patriots that are there now inside, they’re trying to get inside that Capitol,” Charlene said on a flag-draped stage in a video that was later aired on CNN. “Lord, use these people to eradicate this evil, these swamp creatures, this cesspool of filth and waste.” (The Bollingers later called the CNN report a “fake news media hit job.”) There’s no indication the Bollingers breached the Capitol building themselves, though vaccine critic and hydroxychloroquine booster Dr. Simone Gold later faced charges for doing so. 

For now, the Bollingers continue to hawk their DVDs, post online and speak at conferences, spreading doubt about the coronavirus vaccines. “Our goal is to reach billions,” said Charlene in an April podcast. “We’ve reached millions, but we want to reach billions, because everybody deserves the truth.”

SOURCES OF MISINFORMATION

The vaccine-skeptical corners of the internet promote the same names again and again: the Bollingers; Dr. Joseph Mercola, who runs a supplement empire while dispatching near-daily anti-vaccine missives; Erin Elizabeth Finn, Mercola’s “better half,” who markets her own line of extracts and serums while airing vaccine doubts on her Health Nut News platforms; Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, who offers a $595, eight-week course in anti-vaccine talking points despite a federal judge having found her “unqualified” to weigh in as an expert witness on a vaccine-related lawsuit (“Television interviews do not an expert make,” he wrote). 

Then there’s Mike Adams, “the Health Ranger,” whose online store offers everything from organic beans to a $439 juicer to a conspiracy-heavy newsletter (a recent headline: “Their real plan: The vaccinated will die; the unvaccinated will be hunted”). And there’s Dr. Rashid Buttar, a popular anti-vaccine evangelist despite being reprimanded twice by his state’s medical board in 2010 and 2019, including for treating autism in a child he had never met with an unproven skin medication. Or Larry Cook, who claims to reach 2 million people every month and whose “Stop Mandatory Vaccination” site sells memberships for up to $299 per month, accepts advertisements and solicits donations that go to pay his personal bills. Or Dr. Christiane Northrup, who rose to fame with her New York Times-bestselling books on women’s health and menopause and in recent months told her newsletter subscribers that “powers” have “suppressed” information on how to prevent coronavirus infection, which should really be done by taking vitamins and cleaning your cell phone. 

The CCDH, the misinformation-fighting nonprofit, earlier this year estimated that about 65% of the social media content containing false claims about coronavirus vaccines could be traced back to a dozen influencers, including the Bollingers. Ten of them also sell products to their followers.

“These are old-fashioned snake-oil salesmen,” said Imran Ahmed, CEO of the CCDH. “They are willing to let people suffer death, disease in order to make profits for themselves.”

Dr. Christiane Northrup’s books on women’s health were bestsellers. She now peddles misinformation about the coronavirus vaccines to her followers while promoting her products. (Eugene Gologursky/WireImage)

Northrup, for example, has more than half a million Facebook followers. She posts frequent videos of herself playing the harp, pausing to share details of her life or tidbits of health misinformation. In one recent video, she said without evidence that women who have “been around” those who have received coronavirus vaccines “suddenly the entire inside of their uterus just you know comes out,” then discussed the “[artificial intelligence] that has been put in the atmosphere by the dark ones” and an alfalfa bath she took that morning. On her website, she sells her books, audio lectures, her own line of dietary supplements and “vaginal moisturizers.” She also advertises products, such as “tea crystals,” for others who pay her for referrals, according to a disclosure on her site. Northrup attended Dartmouth Medical School in the 1970s and continues to introduce herself as a physician. But Maine records show she terminated her medical license in 2015.

Many of the anti-vaccine doctrines that Northrup and others trade in can be traced back to 1998, when British researcher Andrew Wakefield published a now-retracted and repeatedly debunked study linking the measles vaccine to autism. Fears snowballed, notoriously among affluent California parents, but also in other communities, as Somali immigrants in Minnesota and Orthodox Jews in New York began to refuse to immunize their children. Influencers such as the Bollingers and a sprinkling of celebrities embraced the anti-vaccine gospel, and the movement ballooned. A 2019 Gallup poll found that 84% of Americans thought it important to vaccinate children — down from 94% in 2001. Ten percent believed the scientifically discredited claim that vaccines cause autism, and another 46% weren’t sure.

The pandemic helped boost the influence of many of the anti-vaccine movement’s stars. CCDH found that anti-vaccine influencers gained 8 million social media followers in the first half of 2020, bringing their total to nearly 60 million by July. Social media platforms have taken steps in recent months to crack down on some of these personalities, removing certain pages or making them harder to find via searches, but much of their influence remains. 

The coronavirus seems to have been good for business, too. “Warning: Due to Coronavirus (COVID-19), we are seeing record demand for this offer,” read a banner on Tenpenny’s website earlier this year, above an ad for a “hydrated zeolite” spray that promised to “fight back against heavy metals and toxins” ($79.95 for a 30-day supply).

Anti-vaccine influencers often point to pharmaceutical profits as a reason drugmakers can’t be trusted. But their own messaging is also lucrative. Cook once said he had made $40,000 in one week from sending out referral links to the Bollingers’ vaccines documentary, according to an acquaintance who preferred not to be named. He now sells $99 training videos to teach others how to make money from anti-vaccine messages. “People click over, they watch it, I make money,” he said about a link to an online anti-vaccine docuseries. “So it’s a win-win.” 

Mercola, the owner of a major dietary supplement brand who has promoted what he called “nearly magical” alternative treatments for the coronavirus, through a foundation donated more than $2 million over five years to the leading anti-vaccine nonprofit, the National Vaccine Information Center, tax records show. He claimed in 2017 that his net worth exceeded $100 million, according to a Washington Post investigation.

Dr. Joseph Mercola called unproven coronavirus treatments “nearly magical” in a video aimed at his fans. His supplement empire has enabled him to donate millions to anti-vaccine nonprofits. (Screenshot)

Public Integrity reached out for comment to all the anti-vaccine influencers mentioned in this article, but only Finn and Mercola responded. 

“For a matter of years I ran my website without selling one single product or carrying a single product,” Finn wrote in an April email. “I’ve never taken a single penny in donations like most health sites either (that would include most nonprofit and for-profit websites). Eventually I started a small boutique line because I couldn’t pay my team out of pocket forever.” 

“Disagreeing with big pharma and the federal agencies they’ve captured is a detriment to anyone,” Mercola said in a statement. “Placing yourself in the crosshairs of these coordinated attacks is not financially or personally beneficial.”

Northrup did not respond to an email from Public Integrity directly, but posted an online video discussing it and calling the reporter one of “these people” who think “everyone can be bought.” 

“What’s hard for these demons to believe is that there are those of us like you who are in this for humanity, who are in this to be light workers, who are doing God’s work on the earth,” Northrup said. “What’s in it for us? Our souls.”

Public Integrity requested interviews with individuals who know the Bollingers, including a man public records indicate is related to Ty. Adams, a friend of the Bollingers, then wrote on one of his websites that the reporter was using “mafia-style” “journo-terrorism” to promote “genocidal holocaust” by “targeting family members” of those in the anti-vaccine movement. Adams also posted the reporter’s email and cell phone number and requested that readers contact her, resulting in a days-long barrage of spam calls and more than 100 vulgar, insulting or threatening messages. The article was cross-posted on several other domains, including InfoWars. Commenters responded with more personal information about the reporter, as well as ideas on how to harm her family: “I butcher a family as easy as stepping on a roach,” one wrote.

“They HATE the truth because everything they do is rooted in lies,” the Bollingers wrote on their Telegram channel, telling followers to read Adams’ article about the reporter. “Do they not know that they will soon face God?”

Adams’ network of sites has singled out specific journalists on multiple occasions. He once called for a “website listing all the publishers, scientists and journalists who are now Monsanto propaganda collaborators,” compared them to Nazi war criminals and included a quote that suggested killing “those engaged in heinous crimes against humanity.” Even his article walking back his original post and decrying violence called a specific journalist a “shill” and defended the comparison to Nazis.

Anti-vaccine influencers are “a classic example of bad actors who are proficient in digital spaces, at creating outcomes which are bad for us and society,” Ahmed said. “They react the way you would expect them to.”

FALLOUT FROM FALSEHOODS

Early this year Connecticut mental health counselor Renee Rattray was dismayed to learn a close friend didn’t want to get a coronavirus vaccine. Her friend cited common false conspiracy theories — such as that the vaccines alter DNA or were designed by billionaire Bill Gates to track people — then sent her a video of Mercola interviewing another anti-vaccine influencer. 

Rattray eventually gave up on persuasion, even though the friend has a job that requires close proximity to others and has a health condition that makes her more vulnerable to the coronavirus.

“I’m worried about her,” Rattray said. “She doesn’t admit that she’s been influenced by anyone. … The more I push her, the more she pushes back.”

Even when anti-vaccine influencers aren’t able to completely convince listeners, their messages plant seeds of doubt. A March Axios/Ipsos poll showed that a small slice of Americans believe conspiracy theories about the coronavirus vaccines, but between a quarter to half, depending on the question, weren’t sure whether they were true. And those people were less likely to say they would get vaccinated.

Some epidemiologists are optimistic that even if too many people refuse the vaccine for the U.S. to reach full herd immunity, the nation will soon be able to immunize enough people to minimize the disease’s spread.“People trying to reduce confidence through misinformation — that’s unfortunate and it’s something that’s sort of hard to fight,” said Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine who teaches a class to future doctors on conspiracy theories. He urges his students to be compassionate and not condescending, since all of us are vulnerable to misinformation when it seems to confirm our prior beliefs. “It’s all innuendo, but it’s wrong, and it does spread like wildfire.”

“The more immunity we get, the better,” said Dr. Monica Gandhi of the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. 

Half of Americans have received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine so far, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Scientists say it’s still important to reach those reluctant to get a coronavirus vaccine. Pockets of unvaccinated people could still see outbreaks, endangering the immunocompromised and those who are unable to be inoculated for medical reasons, such as those allergic to a vaccine ingredient. And the more chances the virus has to spread, the more opportunities it has to mutate.

Experts say that means they must reach the reluctant from all angles — talking about the safety data behind the vaccines, pushing back against conspiracy theories, emphasizing the years of scientific study behind the shots — while avoiding condescending or strident tones. 

“It requires consistent messaging,” Malaty Rivera said. “It also requires a lot of empathy.”

Simpson is one person who has changed her mind. She reevaluated her distrust of science after she was hospitalized for endometriosis. “The western medicine they gave me helped me so much,” she wrote on Facebook. “I realized many anti-vaxxers are anti-vax based on the theory that scientists and doctors are in on a conspiracy to kill or maim children for money. It dawned on me that I definitely don’t believe that.”

Simpson said she lost three of her best friends since she posted on Facebook about coming around to vaccines. But other friends stuck by her side through her “anti-vax thing” for the past few years, patiently answering her questions and allaying her fears.

“It was people who actually cared about me and my kid,” she said. “That helped me the most.”

In April, she got her first dose of Pfizer’s coronavirus shot. And she’s started taking her daughter to receive her childhood immunizations. 

Voter Suppression

 "The Empire Strikes Back (Part One): The Largest Voter Suppression Campaign in US History Is Underway"

By Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News, 08 February 21

At, < https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/67708-rsn-the-empire-strikes-back-part-one-the-largest-voter-suppression-campaign-in-us-history-is-underway >

"Election Officials Under Attack", Brennan Center for Justice, June 16, 2021

At < https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/policy-solutions/election-officials-under-attack >

"Voting Laws Roundup: January 2021", Brennan Center for Justice, January 26, 2021

After historic turnout and increased mail voting in 2020, state lawmakers across the country are pulling in opposite directions by introducing restrictive and expansive voting legislation.

at, < https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-january-2021 >

~~ posted for dmorista with introduction by dmorista ~~

Introduction:

There is an ongoing campaign to impose draconian extreme right-wing socioeconomic policies; that campaign is primarily centered in the U.S. State Legislatures, Governorships, and other organs of state government, in the various reactionary controlled states. A large number of those states are only controlled by the far-right through the use of pervasive voter suppression, computerized election fraud, voter intimidation, extreme gerrymandering, changes in the laws regulating elections that now allow state legislatures to over ride the counting and the results of elections, and other nefarious measures. Most recently bogus audits, conducted by partisan hit groups are being pushed. The most significant and most completely implemented being the faux audit being conducted by the far-right operatives known as the “Cyber Ninjas” in Phoenix, Arizona. This bogus operation has compromised the election machines of Maricopa County, the largest population county in the state where Phoenix is located. It will cost the governmental entities that maintain the voting equipment something around $20 million to replace these compromised voting machines.

Long time election watchdog and Ohio figure Harvey Wasserman wrote the article, “The Empire Strikes Back (Part One): The Largest Voter Suppression Campaign in US History Is Underway”, which is posted here in February, unfortunately I cannot find “Part 2”. He enumerated 25 ways in which the Republican Party is limiting and restricting the vote; targeted at people they don't like (primarily the poor and the young, especially if they are African-American or Hispanic). The Brennan Center posted the article, “Election Officials Under Attack”, about attacks, legal and physical, against election officials in June. At the top of that article there is a link to a more detailed 38 page report on this issue. Earlier, in January The Brennan Center posted the article, “Voting Laws Roundup: January 2021” that features lists and maps of the country that show where restrictive laws and in contrast laws seeking to make voting easier have been proposed and passed. It is telling that nearly all voter suppression measures have been proposed by Republicans. In the hubub about the recently enforced Texas Vigilante Abortion bill and recently passed Voter Suppression law it is pertinent to discuss how the left should view and act on these issues.

Many of the readers and commenters at Leftist Politics feel, and with some justification, that electoral politics is a dead end and not worth any effort, oftentimes of even bothering to vote. It is worth considering the consequences of allowing extremist right-wingers to take so much political power. Electoral politics alone is indeed a dead end, but when combined with a major mobilization of the Left that does not allow itself to be coopted by the Liberals, it could accomplish a significant amount of good.

Roe v Wade died with barely a whimper. But that’s not all ~~ Laurence Tribe,

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/02/roe-v-wade-texas-abortion-law-us-constitution

~~ posted for dmorista with introduction by dmorista ~~

Introduction:

As the U.S. reels from storms and floods in the East and wildfires in the West; as of midnight of August 31^st a new social assault was launched against the women of America by the ultra-right regime of Greg Abbot and his antediluvian allies in the Texas State Legislature. The American right-wing has long railed against any use of public funds or resources to help the poor of the society and/or to ameliorate the many injustices inflicted upon them. Now, however, as a legal stratagem to avoid court rulings that prevent state governments from enforcing clearly unconsitutional laws, the State of Texas has enacted a law that encourages vigilantes to file lawsuits against anybody who “aids or abets” a woman seeking an abortion after there is a “fetal heartbeat”. This is “privatization” carried out to an extreme never seen in the U.S. before, and inconceivable in most of the developed world.

Some legal analysts do not think that Texas can, or will, enforce the law on people assisting women to leave the state to obtain an abortion in another state. Lawrence Tribe, a law professor at Harvard disagrees. His reasoning on that issue as well as the other negative aspects of this type of social control strategy is discussed in the first article, from The Guardian, posted here. There has already been a 400% increase in women appearing at abortion clinics in neighboring states.

The American right-wing, lavishly supported by the ultra-right rich, has managed to set up a Supreme Court with a 6 – 3 majority that supports reactionary social policies, some of which only have about 15% support among the population, and none of which have majority support. However, the membership of the Supreme Court, that is currently at 9, is not set by the Constitution but is set by Congress by the passage of legislation. Also the Constitution does not mandate life-time terms for the members of either the Supreme Court or the “lower” courts. The number of justices on the Supreme Court has been changed 7 times during the history of the nation. The current situation is dire and certainly crosses the threshold for action of this sort. The Website, Demand Justice, discusses various issues of the U.S. Federal Court system. This post includes some thoughts they have about the Supreme Court.

Some who read and comment here at Leftist Politics might dismiss this as “useless reformism”. I do not agree, while I don't think efforts at these sorts of reforms should be the leading component of the efforts of leftists, we certainly should support these worthy efforts as carried out by the sort of people who concentrate their efforts on such initiatives.

==================

Article:

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For years, as the supreme court’s composition kept tilting right, reproductive rights have been squarely on the chopping block. Now they are on the auction block as well.

Observers have speculated how today’s new ultra-right court would commence the slicing: by chipping away slowly at Roe v Wade? Or by taking the political heat and overruling it outright? Few imagined that the court would let a statute everybody concedes is flagrantly unconstitutional under the legal regime of Roe not only go into effect without being judicially reviewed but become the centerpiece of a totally unique state scheme that puts a bounty of at least $10,000 on the head of every woman who is or might be pregnant.

It wasn’t just Roe that died at midnight on 1 September with barely a whimper, let alone a bang. It was the principle that nobody’s constitutional rights should be put on sale for purchase by anyone who can find an informant or helper to turn in whoever might be trying to exercise those rights.

That, after all, is how the new Texas law works. Its perverse structure, which delegates to private individuals anywhere a power the state of Texas is forbidden to exercise itself until Roe is overruled, punishes even the slightest form of assistance to desperate pregnant women. Doctors, family members, insurance companies, even Uber drivers, are all at risk if they help a woman in need. And the risk is magnified by the offer of a big fat financial reward for whoever successfully nabs a person guilty of facilitating an abortion once a heartbeat can be detected, typically six weeks after a woman’s last period, well before most women even know they are pregnant. There is not even an exception for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. No law remotely like this has ever been allowed to go into effect.

The prospect of hefty bounties will breed a system of profit-seeking, Soviet-style informing on friends and neighbors. These vigilantes will sue medical distributors of IUDs and morning-after pills, as well as insurance companies. These companies, in turn, will stop offering reproductive healthcare in Texas. As of a minute before midnight on 31 August, clinics in Texas were already turning patients away out of fear. Even if the law is eventually struck down, many will probably close anyway.

Worse still, if women try to escape the state to access abortion services, their families will be on the hook for offering even the smallest aid. If friends or family of a woman hoping to terminate her pregnancy drive her across state lines, or help her organize money for a plane or bus ticket, they could be liable for “aiding and abetting” a now-banned abortion, even if the procedure itself takes place outside Texas.

Adding insult to injury, if a young woman asks for money for a bus ticket, or a ride to the airport, friends and parents fearful of liability might vigorously interrogate her about her intentions. This nightmarish state of affairs burdens yet another fundamental constitutional privilege: the right to interstate travel, recognized by the supreme court in 1999 as a core privilege of federal citizenship. Welcome to Gilead!

Many wealthy women will presumably still find ways to access care. But their poor, disproportionately minority sisters will be stuck, forced to face down the barrel of unimaginably cruel choices. Desperate women will still seek abortions but will be forced to do so on the black market and in back alleys. Fewer Samaritans will risk heavy fines or imprisonment to help them. Some will die trying.

What can be done? We can give up on this court and try pressuring Congress to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would enshrine a federal statutory right to provide and receive abortion care free of these sorts of state schemes. But such a bill would die at the hands of Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, in a Senate filibuster.

And what if it were somehow to pass? Odds are that a court majority, despite having held that Congress is empowered to enact a nationwide ban on certain late-term abortions because medical procedures are part of interstate commerce, would suddenly “discover” new limits on the reach of the commerce clause as a source of congressional power and strike the act down. When the court so casually lets a law that flouts its precedents take effect, all bets are off.

Or are they? Maybe even justices deeply hostile to abortion rights can be persuaded to balk specifically at the unprecedented financial incentives this grotesque law creates to put a price on the head of every pregnant woman or girl. Shades of sex slavery and prostitution might put this privatization of law enforcement in a light even conservative jurists find unbearable. What if women chilled by this business model, or those seeking to help them to avoid unwanted motherhood, were to sue the Texas authorities who stand ready to disburse $10,000 bounties for each forbidden abortion detected or prevented?

As Justice Sotomayor said in her dissent – there were four dissents in all – the Texas law “is a breathtaking act of defiance – of the constitution, of this court’s precedents, and of the rights of women seeking abortions throughout Texas”. After a puzzling silence of a day and night, “the court finally [told] the Nation that it declined to act because, in short, the State’s gambit worked.” Even if not a single justice in the 5-4 majority rejects the ability of a state to “evade federal judicial scrutiny by outsourcing the enforcement of unconstitutional laws to its citizenry”, and even if all five of the justices in that majority stand ready to trash Roe v Wade, maybe at least one of those justices would agree that no state can hand out financial rewards to people – not only citizens in Texas but people from anywhere in the country, perhaps the world – shredding the constitution of the United States?

At least it’s worth a try.

• Laurence H Tribe is the Carl M Loeb University professor and professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard University and an accomplished supreme court advocate. Follow him on Twitter @Tribelaw

Various suggestions for action by a reformist website:

Demand Justice at < Reform the Supreme Court: Demand Justice is leading the fight >

Our courts are in crisis

With a 6-3 Republican supermajority, the Supreme Court is too biased in favor of special interests and Republican politicians. Our democracy is at risk from decisions that suppress the right to vote.

Adding four seats is the solution—and we need your help to get it done. Congress can change the number of justices on the Court at any time with a simple piece of legislation, and it has done so many times throughout American history. Now, top Democrats have introduced a bill to add seats and restore balance. We need your help to get enough votes to make this bill a law.

Have questions about what it means to expand the court and why now is the time to get it done?

Frequently Asked Questions:

Why do we need to reform the Supreme Court?

We need to restore balance to the Supreme Court. With a 6-3 Republican supermajority, the Court is deciding cases in a consistently partisan, anti-democracy, pro-corporate direction. We need a Court that better reflects the whole country, not just special interests and the Republican Party.

To see how far tilted in one direction the Court is right now, you just need to look at what it’s been doing to our democracy. The Republican-appointed justices have opened the floodgates to unlimited spending in elections in cases like Citizens United, gutted the Voting Rights Act, and allowed partisan gerrymandering that benefits Republican politicians and special interests. We have to restore balance.

Why is adding seats the right solution?

Adding four seats is the only way to restore balance to the Court immediately. Adding seats to the Court is straight-forward, constitutional, and grounded in history. All it takes is a bill passed through Congress and signed by the president. And there’s nothing new about the idea of adding seats to the Supreme Court. The framers left it to Congress to decide how many justices sit on the Court, and Congress has changed the number of justices six times throughout history.

Where do things stand right now?

Reps. Hank Johnson, Jerry Nadler, and Mondaire Jones and Sen. Ed Markey have introduced a game-changing bill. Now we have to build a grassroots movement to win 218 votes to pass this bill in the House and 51 votes in the Senate. We have a once-in-a-generation, two-year window to pass this bill while Democrats control the House, Senate, and presidency.

We need to pressure every Democratic House member and senator to publicly announce their support for this legislation. We’ll do that by calling their offices, requesting constituent meetings, showing up at public events, writing letters to the editor, and taking other steps to blitz them with proof of how wide and deep the support is for this legislation. We must make these Democrats understand the urgency of cosponsoring this bill.

How does the fight for Court reform relate to other democracy reforms in the news?

As you have probably seen, there is a major effort among Democrats in Congress right now to pass democracy reform bills like HR 1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. We believe all these bills are quite likely to pass in the course of the next year, with growing support for filibuster reform among top Democrats who had previously resisted it.

Our goal is to make the Judiciary Act part of this package of must-pass democracy reforms, and to pass it with 51 votes in the Senate just like we think will eventually happen with HR 1, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and DC statehood. The rationale is clear: unless we reform the Court, all of these other proposals will be gutted by the Republican-appointed justices.

Can we really get this done?

Yes. The work ahead of us will not be easy, but we have the wind at our back. Support for adding seats to the Court has never been higher. The rush by Republicans to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat last year produced a wave of support for this idea, and we picked up support from more than a dozen lawmakers like AOC to Ilhan Omar to Barbara Lee. Former Attorney General Eric Holder has announced his support. Alex Padilla, California’s newest senator who was picked to succeed Kamala Harris, announced he supports Court expansion before he was even sworn in. When Tom Cotton forced a vote in the Senate to try to make it harder to change the Court’s size, all 50 Senate Democrats voted together to keep the option of expanding the Court on the table. President Biden has announced a commission to study reforms, which is a sign that everyone now recognizes something must be done.

Much like the filibuster, Court reform is an idea that meets with initial resistance from people who have spent a lot of time in Washington but that will grow in support as people hear from the grassroots about why we clearly need it to save our democracy.  

To convince Nancy Pelosi to bring this bill up for a vote on the floor, and Chuck Schumer to bring it up in the Senate, we need to show it will have the support of all Democrats. That’s why the first step is pressuring Democratic House members and senators to announce they will co-sponsor the Judiciary Act. That is the task in front of us–and we need all of you to make it happen