AP: The super spreaders behind top COVID-19 conspiracy theories

hanimmal said:

The problem is the vast amount of spammed propaganda drowns out the actual information from getting to people.

Especially when it is constantly bumping a propaganda title aimed at tricking vulnerable into acting dangerous.

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CANON_Grow said:

Good point, not sure why I never thought of it that way. Will do my best to avoid poking that wasp nest moving forward, thanks.

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CLAIM: The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that COVID-19 vaccines are not vaccines and that they cause “irreparable damage.”

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The Supreme Court has issued no such ruling. Posts on social media are reviving a long debunked claim, while some social media users are misrepresenting an unrelated October ruling by a New York state Supreme Court judge. That judge said New York City sanitation workers fired for not getting COVID-19 shots should be reinstated and given back pay, but did not rule on the efficacy of the vaccines themselves.

THE FACTS: Claims that the Supreme Court has declared COVID-19 vaccines dangerous, or banned them altogether, have become a fixture of online conspiracy theories. In recent days, the claims have reemerged, with some on social media misrepresenting a real court ruling from New York to bolster the bogus narrative.

One Instagram post shared a screenshot of a headline reading, “The Supreme Court In The US Has Ruled That The Covid Pathogen is Not A Vaccine, Is Unsafe, And Must Be Avoided At All Costs — Supreme Court Has Canceled Universal Vax.”

A Twitter user, meanwhile, shared a tweet stating: “US Supreme Court ruling: Covid vaccines are not vaccines. In its decision, the Supreme Court confirms that the damage caused by Covid’s mRNA gene therapies is irreparable. Because the Supreme Court is the highest court in the United States, there are no further appeals.”

The tweet had received more than 8,000 likes and more than 5,000 shares as of Friday.

But the Supreme Court has made no such ruling. The case cannot be found in the court’s online docket, which contains the status of cases filed since the beginning of the court’s 2001 term, both pending and decided.

Jamal Greene, a professor at Columbia University’s law school who is an expert on constitutional law, confirmed this assessment, telling The Associated Press in an email that “there is no such ruling.”

Instead, social media users are sharing baseless articles and an unrelated ruling from a lower court in New York City.

The headline in the Instagram post comes from a conspiracy website called American Media Group. The post itself revives the false claim that the court made such an order in response to a lawsuit filed by anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and “a group of scientists” against billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci and “Big Pharma.” It also refers to Kennedy as “Senator Kennedy,” though it was his father, also named Robert F. Kennedy, who served as a senator before he was assassinated in 1968.

Similar claims have spread on conspiracy sites in the past, and have been debunked by the younger Kennedy himself. “The article about the Supreme Court is misinformation,” he told the AP in 2021. “The quote is fabricated. Clearly somebody made it up and is promoting it because the same quote keeps coming back no matter how many times I deny it. The same article keeps reappearing.”

Meanwhile, the court ruling shared by some users also does not show the U.S. Supreme Court saying “vaccines are not vaccines” or that they cause “irreparable damage.”

It is actually an Oct. 24 ruling from New York state Supreme Court Justice Ralph Porzio, whose court is on Staten Island in New York City. Porzio ruled that 16 New York City sanitation workers who were fired in February after not complying with vaccination requirements for city workers should be reinstated and given back pay, the AP reported.

The ruling never says COVID-19 vaccines are not vaccines, nor that they cause irreparable damage.

He notes that we have learned through the pandemic that the vaccine “is not absolute” and breakthrough cases occur “even from those who have been vaccinated and boosted.” But he also writes that his ruling “is not a commentary on the efficacy of vaccination, but about how we are treating our first responders, the ones who worked day-to-day through the height of the pandemic.” The city appealed the ruling the day after it was issued.

New York City still mandates that all city employees, including those in the Department of Sanitation, must be vaccinated against COVID-19. Exemptions are given only for documented medical or religious reasons.

American Media Group did not respond to a request for comment.

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hanimmal said:

https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-supreme-court-covid-vaccine-ruling-714280442487
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HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A person’s choice to decline vaccinations does not outweigh public health and safety requirements in medical settings, a federal judge ruled in a Montana case.

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy last week permanently blocked a section of law the state said was meant to prevent employers — including many health care facilities — from discriminating against workers by requiring them to be vaccinated against communicable diseases, including COVID-19.

“The public interest in protecting the general populace against vaccine-preventable diseases in health care settings using safe, effective vaccines is not outweighed by the hardships experienced to accomplish that interest,” Molloy concluded in his Dec. 9 ruling.

The Montana Legislature passed the first-in-the-nation law in 2021, about a year into the pandemic as some people, businesses and Republican lawmakers were pushing back on health care measures enacted to prevent the spread of the virus that has now killed more than 1 million people in the United States. Just over 3,600 Montana residents have died from COVID-19, state officials say.

The Montana law made it illegal for a person to be denied services, goods or employment based on their vaccine status. The law did not change vaccine requirements at schools or daycare facilities or eliminate a person’s right to seek a religious or medical exemption.

Republican lawmakers who supported the bill said it was needed in response to employers threatening to fire workers who would not get vaccinated.

Before signing the bill, Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte asked lawmakers to amend it to allow long-term care facilities to require workers to receive COVID-19 vaccines if failing to do so meant the facility could lose funding under a federal directive.

The federal directive was recently challenged by attorneys general in 22 states including Montana.

The Montana Medical Association, clinics and immunocompromised patients filed a lawsuit against the state in September 2021 and were later joined by the Montana Nurses Association. They argued, and Molloy agreed, that treating clinics and hospitals differently from long-term care facilities made no sense for a law that the state said was meant to prevent discrimination and protect private health care information.

The plaintiffs argued that in some cases, the same people can work in all three types of facilities on the same day.

The plaintiffs successfully argued that the law violates the Americans With Disabilities Act, which requires public facilities to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities. An immunosuppressed patient would be vulnerable if they were treated at a health care facility where the employees were not vaccinated, Molloy found.

The law also violated the federal Occupational Health and Safety Act by failing to keep the workplace free from recognized hazards, he said. The plaintiffs proved that vaccine-preventable diseases constitute recognized hazards in health care settings, Molloy wrote.

“The Court’s order is a win for all Montanans — young or old, healthy or sick — who no longer need to worry about government interference with the safety of their healthcare in Montana,” Vicky Byrd, CEO of the Montana Nurses Association, said in a statement.

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen is studying the opinion to determine his next steps, spokeswoman Emilee Cantrell said in a statement.

In the meantime, Knudsen is leading a group of attorneys general challenging the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services mandate that health care workers in long-term care facilities be vaccinated against COVID-19. The challenge argues the vaccine does not prevent the spread of the virus, breakthrough infections are common and that the vaccines themselves are not entirely risk-free.

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Rob Roy said:

Joe Biden said "the virus is over" (paraphrasing) and Rachel Maddow, said, "if you take the jab, you can't get virus and can't pass it on" (again paraphrasing) are they super spreaders of of covid -19 conspiracy theories?

What is the definition of a super spreader ? Is it limited to some people of a particular political persuasion? I'm confused.

I looked for the videos of both Biden and Maddow, but it looks like they aren't as easy to find online as they had been, hence the paraphrasing...isn't that odd?

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Drop That Sound said:

The jabs are only authorized for 6 month olds and up now, as of a week ago. So basically all newly born "people" are super spreaders. Most kids have been the whole time then, right?

Except for the awesome parents that lied about their kids age and managed to get them full adult doses somehow. Those kids weren't super spreaders after that..

Parents are lying to vaccinate their kids against COVID-19. Pediatricians say that's a bad idea.

Pediatricians are urging parents to follow CDC guidelines and not lie about their children's age to get them vaccinated against COVID ahead of time.

www.insider.com

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hanimmal said:

You cherry picking words that came out in a particular order at one point in time where the context actually matters to show why it is bullshit, doesn't make your right wing regurgitated argument (aimed at triggering a bunch of death cultists into nodding like you got me good), a valid example of the Democrats being knowingly (and dangerously) irresponsible during the pandemic.

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Rob Roy said:

That's alot of words to say "nuh uh" .

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CANON_Grow said:

Why are you so triggered that vaccines saved lives? It's hard to understand why you would rather grasp on to very obscure shit instead of providing any respectable evidence to support your position. At some point you are going to realize that you were sold 95% bullshit by con artists grifters. Why do you expect anyone that supports saving lives with vaccines to be 100% correct with every statement when using hindsight, but somehow can totally ignore all the bullshit those con artists and grifters have said and done that was proven to be false? Deliberately ignorant? Or do you just get off on trying to stir the pot?

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CANON_Grow said:

Why are you so triggered that vaccines saved lives?

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Rob Roy said:

I'm a pro-choice person. No forcible objection to you making choices about which substances you will or will not ingest. You reap the benefits and / or suffer the consequences. Your choice.

I'm free to think you made the wrong choice if it goes against my preferences, but I'm not free to force my preferences on you and vice versa.
I DO think people that took an experimental gene altering jab were too hasty, and didn't consider all the potential drawbacks.

When you ask if I like to stir things up, YES, if it leads to people being more respecting of others choices, I like to stir that pot.

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Rob Roy said:

I'm a pro-choice person. No forcible objection to you making choices about which substances you will or will not ingest. You reap the benefits and / or suffer the consequences. Your choice.

I'm free to think you made the wrong choice if it goes against my preferences, but I'm not free to force my preferences on you and vice versa.
I DO think people that took an experimental gene altering jab were too hasty, and didn't consider all the potential drawbacks.

When you ask if I like to stir things up, YES, if it leads to people being more respecting of others choices, I like to stir that pot.

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CANON_Grow said:

I don't have an issue with anyone that decided against getting vaccinated, and you are certainly entitled to your own opinion. My issue is when someone starts saying things that have been proven false to support their argument against vaccination, like what you just did. There was no gene altering from mRNA vaccines, so what you just did is the literal definition of spread conspiracy theories.

The way you are stirring things up does NOT lead to people being more respectful of others choices, quite the opposite in fact. When your argument is "look at those dummies promoting vaccines that are not 100% as protective as they thought they were", and complete silence regarding the vast amount of bullshit the anti-vax crowd pushed and that has proven to be false, you come across as a disingenuous and dangerous troll, or a moron.

If you simply stated that you were too scared to get the vaccine or were afraid that you may have a bad reaction to the vaccine, most would understand. I'm not gonna lie, my main reason for getting vaccinated was fear of being hospitalized and having to think "why didn't I just listen to all the experts in the medical community", far more than the fear of covid. Every one of those hospital beds are valuable, don't need my dumb ass taking one up unnecessarily.

Anyway, hope you learn to stir the pot in a way that at least provides a chance for some reasonable discussion.

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CANON_Grow said:

My issue is when someone starts saying things that have been proven false to support their argument against vaccination, like what you just did. There was no gene altering from mRNA vaccines, so what you just did is the literal definition of spread conspiracy theories.

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