merelygifted:

Many of us who maintain a social media presence have at least one acquaintance, “Facebook friend” or real-life, actual friend who has in the past year shared some type of official-sounding, medical jargon-laden post questioning the value of the COVID-19 vaccines — or worse, directly asserting or implying that such vaccines are ineffective, harmful, deadly, or will lead to untold health problems.

According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a US/UK non-profit dedicated to fighting online disinformation and hate, nearly two-thirds of the anti-vaccine propaganda peddled in online forums and social media can be traced to exactly twelve individuals, colloquially labelled the “Disinformation Dozen.” If you are someone who spends a significant time in social media forums, the chances are high that you have seen, scrolled through or otherwise had some awareness of their activity online, be it in your local school board’s Facebook feed or other community sounding boards where supposedly informed individuals trade opinions and information.

According to the New York Times, and as confirmed in the CCDH’s comprehensive report profiling these individuals, the number one purveyor of this vaccine misinformation is a gentleman named Joseph Mercola, described by the Times as an osteopathic physician. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he currently headquarters his company in the state of Florida, which, as USA Today’s Nada Hassanein illustrates, is rapidly emerging as the nation’s predominant “hotspot” for spiking COVID-19 infections, almost entirely among those who have refused to be vaccinated against the virus.

On Saturday the Times’ Sheera Frankel profiled Dr. Mercola and cited multiple examples of his work, beginning with an article he published that appeared on Facebook in February. As Frankel reports, that article, clocking in at 3400 words, “declared coronavirus vaccines were “a medical fraud” and said the injections did not prevent infections, provide immunity or stop transmission of the disease.” The article (now deleted by Facebook) purportedly claimed that COVID-19 vaccines “alter[ed] your genetic coding, turning you into a viral protein factory that has no off-switch.” Spread by other anti-vaccine activists and translated into multiple languages, these assertions eventually reached 400,000 Facebook viewers.

Mercola, described as an “internet-savvy entrepreneur who employs dozens,” has, according to Frankel’s reporting, published approximately 600 articles on Facebook since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. …