Reporting for the Wall Street Journal this norming, Arian Campo-Flores wrote that "Florida is recording more Covid-19 cases than any other U.S. state, as hospitalizations in some areas increase at the fastest rate since the start of the pandemic. The state accounts for one in five new infections in the U.S... Driving the rise are the Delta variant, large numbers of unvaccinated, relaxation of preventive measures..." The state's Gov., GOP crackpot Ron DeSantis, could hardly make matters worse if he was purposely trying to do so.
And yet, I get several e-mails a week insisting that there is no pandemic, that COVID-19 is fake, that the Deep State is using it as an excuse to control us, that there is medical, scientific proof that it's all, as Trump announced right from the beginning, that it's all "a hoax." Most of these junk e-mails that come to my box, aren't coming from some right-wing QAnon idiots; they're coming from an old friend-- a successful attorney who I met through a progressive member of Congress a decade ago. He's clearly lost his mind and I have no doubt believes every word of nonsense he sends me, sometimes everyday. I stop opening his e-mails months ago but before I did, he offered a character named Dr. Mercola as proof I've been taken in by the establishment. As it turns out, I was already well aware of Dr. Mercola.
WebMD.com has a page on Uniquinol, a supplement I take everyday. "Coenzyme Q10 has been used for heart problems (e.g., heart failure, angina), high blood pressure, Parkinson's disease, gum disease, and certain diseases passed down through families (Huntington's disease, muscular dystrophy). It has also been used for reducing the number of migraine headaches and for reducing cell damage that may occur after surgery or treatment with certain anti-cancer drugs. If you have or think you have any of the conditions listed above, consult your doctor for advice on proper care and treatment. Coenzyme Q10 is a substance that your body normally makes. Your body uses it to help keep in good health. Some herbal/diet supplement products have been found to contain possibly harmful impurities/additives. Check with your pharmacist for more details about the brand you use.The FDA has not reviewed this product for safety or effectiveness. Consult your doctor or pharmacist for more details."
A bottle costs around $40 for 90. Or you can buy it on Amazon, or directly, from Dr. Mercola, as I did several years ago-- for double that-- before I figured out Dr. Mercola is a fraud, a charlatan and a hustler... and not just because of the cost.
Yesterday, the NY Times labeled Dr. Mercola The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online. Reporter Sheera Frenkel wrote about Dr. Mercola's persistent campaign to undermine science by out-sciencing legitimate scientists, declaring that, among other things, "coronavirus vaccines were 'a medical fraud' and said the injections did not prevent infections, provide immunity or stop transmission of the disease." Dr. Mercola claimed that instead "the shots 'alter your genetic coding, turning you into a viral protein factory that has no off-switch.' Its assertions were easily disprovable. No matter. Over the next few hours, the article was translated from English into Spanish and Polish. It appeared on dozens of blogs and was picked up by anti-vaccination activists, who repeated the false claims online. The article also made its way to Facebook, where it reached 400,000 people, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool."
Dr. Mercola, 67, an osteopathic [a pseudo-science] physician in Cape Coral, Fla., has long been a subject of criticism and government regulatory actions for his promotion of unproven or unapproved treatments. But most recently, he has become the chief spreader of coronavirus misinformation online, according to researchers.
An internet-savvy entrepreneur who employs dozens, Dr. 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. His claims have been widely echoed on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
The activity has earned Dr. 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. Others on the list include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist, and Erin Elizabeth, the founder of the website Health Nut News, who is also Dr. Mercola’s girlfriend.
“Mercola is the pioneer of the anti-vaccine movement,” said Kolina Koltai, a researcher at the University of Washington who studies online conspiracy theories. “He’s a master of capitalizing on periods of uncertainty, like the pandemic, to grow his movement.”
Some high-profile media figures have promoted skepticism of the vaccines, notably Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham of Fox News, though other Fox personalities have urged viewers to get the shots. Now, Dr. Mercola and others in the “Disinformation Dozen” are in the spotlight as vaccinations in the United States slow, just as the highly infectious Delta variant has fueled a resurgence in coronavirus cases. More than 97 percent of people hospitalized for Covid-19 are unvaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
...Over the last decade, Dr. Mercola has built a vast operation to push natural health cures, disseminate anti-vaccination content and profit from all of it, said researchers who have studied his network. In 2017, he filed an affidavit claiming his net worth was “in excess of $100 million.”
And rather than directly stating online that vaccines don’t work, Dr. Mercola’s posts often ask pointed questions about their safety and discuss studies that other doctors have refuted. Facebook and Twitter have allowed some of his posts to remain up with caution labels, and the companies have struggled to create rules to pull down posts that have nuance.
“He has been given new life by social media, which he exploits skillfully and ruthlessly to bring people into his thrall,” said Imran Ahmed, director of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which studies misinformation and hate speech. Its “Disinformation Dozen” report has been cited in congressional hearings and by the White House.
In an email, Dr. Mercola said it was “quite peculiar to me that I am named as the #1 superspreader of misinformation.” Some of his Facebook posts were only liked by hundreds of people, he said, so he didn’t understand “how the relatively small number of shares could possibly cause such calamity to Biden’s multibillion dollar vaccination campaign.”
The efforts against him are political, Dr. Mercola added, and he accused the White House of “illegal censorship by colluding with social media companies.”
He did not address whether his coronavirus claims were factual. “I am the lead author of a peer reviewed publication regarding vitamin D and the risk of Covid-19 and I have every right to inform the public by sharing my medical research,” he said. He did not identify the publication, and The Times was unable to verify his claim.
...As his popularity grew, Dr. Mercola began a cycle. It starts with making unproven and sometimes far-fetched health claims, such as that spring mattresses amplify harmful radiation, and then selling products online-- from vitamin supplements to organic yogurt-- that he promotes as alternative treatments.
To buttress the operation, he set up companies like Mercola.com Health Resources and Mercola Consulting Services. These entities have offices in Florida and the Philippines with teams of employees. Using this infrastructure, Dr. Mercola has seized on news moments to rapidly publish blog posts, newsletters and videos in nearly a dozen languages to a network of websites and social media.
His audience is substantial. Dr. Mercola’s official English-language Facebook page has over 1.7 million followers, while his Spanish-language page has 1 million followers. The Times also found 17 other Facebook pages that appeared to be run by him or were closely connected to his businesses. On Twitter, he has nearly 300,000 followers, plus nearly 400,000 on YouTube.
Dr. Mercola has a keen understanding of what makes something go viral online, said two former employees, who declined to be identified because they had signed nondisclosure agreements. He routinely does A/B testing, they said, in which many versions of the same content are published to see what spreads fastest online.
In his email, Dr. Mercola said, “Translation and a variety of media positions are standard for most content oriented websites.”
Facebook said it has labeled many of Dr. Mercola’s posts as false, banned advertising on his main page and removed some of his pages after they violated its policies. Twitter said it has also taken down some of Dr. Mercola’s posts and labeled others. YouTube said Dr. Mercola was not part of a program from which he can make money from ads on his videos.
In 2012, Dr. Mercola began writing about the virtues of tanning beds. He argued that they reduced the chances of getting cancer, while also selling tanning beds with names like Vitality and D-lite for $1,200 to $4,000 each. Many of the articles were based on discredited studies.
The Federal Trade Commission brought false-advertising claims against Dr. Mercola in 2017 based on the health claims about tanning beds. He settled and sent $2.95 million in refunds to customers who bought the tanning beds.
The Food and Drug Administration has also issued warning letters to Dr. Mercola for selling unapproved health products in 2005, 2006 and 2011 and has fined him millions of dollars.
Many of Dr. Mercola’s claims have been amplified by other vaccine skeptics, including Ms. Elizabeth. She worked for Mercola.com from 2009 to 2011, according to her LinkedIn page.
But while Ms. Elizabeth and others are overtly anti-vaccine, Dr. Mercola has appeared more approachable because he takes less radical positions than his peers, Ms. Koltai said. “He takes away from the idea that an anti-vaccination activist is a fringe person,” she said.
In an email, Ms. Elizabeth said she was “shocked to have been targeted as one of the 12” in the “Disinformation Dozen” and called it a “witch hunt.”
When the coronavirus hit last year, Dr. Mercola jumped on the news, with posts questioning the origins of the disease. In December, he used a study that examined mask-wearing by doctors to argue that masks did not stop the spread of the virus.
He also began promoting vitamin supplements as a way to ward off the coronavirus. In a warning letter on Feb. 18, the F.D.A. said Dr. Mercola had “misleadingly represented” what were “unapproved and misbranded products” on Mercola.com as established Covid-19 treatments.
Ron DeSantis is lying about the pandemic as part of a political gamble that he thinks will propel his reelection campaign and a shot at the White House. Dr. Mercola is trying to make himself richer and should have been stopped by the FDA years ago, long before there was a coronavirus pandemic. As for my friend who sends me this kind of crackpot stuff... I know he means well; I know he believes everything he's sending out. From what I can tell, he's just completely lost his mind and I feel badly about that. And he thinks I have for ignoring his warnings.
Dr. Mercola is like many sources you can find on the internet; you have to use your own common sense and fact check him. I don't buy anything from him because he does charge a lot more for supplements. I do subscribe to his daily newsletter BUT I read everything he says with caution. For instance, he continually rails against masks and says they have no preventive use what so ever. Well, anyone with common sense knows that a mask is going to filter out some material you breathe, out or in, the amount being dependent on the quality of the mask. He is against mercury in dental fillings. Well so am I and the research has come to show…
people lie for many reasons. in this case, mostly because they can.
what you SHOULD be asking is why so many idiots actually believe those lies, even though they are OBVIOUS lies.
You can lead an idiot to the truth, but you cannot make him believe it.
But you can lead an idiot to a fallacy AND, clearly, you can easily make him believe it.
All religion has always been dependent upon this.