The Misinformation Business

The COVID pandemic provided an opportunity for anti-vaccine activists to expand their misinformation campaign. Who funds them?

On February 13, 2024, National Geographic published a book I wrote called, TELL ME WHEN IT’S OVER: AN INSIDER’S GUIDE TO DECIPHERING COVID MYTHS AND NAVIGATING OUR POST-PANDEMIC WORLD. For the next few months, I will be writing about various issues discussed in that book.

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At the start of the COVID pandemic, by embracing the power and influence of social media, the anti-vaccine movement was thriving, spreading misinformation at an alarming rate. By mid-September 2021, the United States was the least vaccinated member of the G7, the world’s seven most populous and wealthy democracies. In response to the growing problem, the Center for Countering Digital Hate investigated those who were most responsible for misinforming the public about vaccines. They found that only twelve people or groups, called the “disinformation dozen”, accounted for 70 percent of all vaccine misinformation. They also found something else. Most of the money that supported these groups came from a rather surprising source: dietary supplement makers. A few of these misinformation entrepreneurs are listed below:

1. Joe Mercola

*(this video was ultimately removed from YouTube)

Joe Mercola, a physician in Coral Gables, Florida, runs the most popular alternative health and dietary supplement website in the world: Mercola.com. Mercola distributes his misinformation to 1.7 million followers on Facebook, 300,000 on Twitter, and 400,000 on YouTube. Early in the crisis, Mercola promoted his website “Stop Covid Cold,” which offered hydrogen peroxide and a plant pigment called quercetin as treatments for COVID. He has also claimed that COVID vaccines were “a medical fraud” because they don’t prevent infections, provide immunity, or stop the spread of disease. The COVID vaccine, argued Mercola, “alters your genetic coding, turning you into a viral protein factory that has no off switch.”

 2. Sherri Tenpenny

Sherri Tenpenny is a physician and alternative health entrepreneur who offers boot camps on anti-vaccine activism. “My job is to teach 400 of you in the class,” she said, “so, each one of you can go out and teach 1,000.” For one training session on Zoom, titled “How COVID-19 Injections Can Make You Sick…Even Kill You,” participants paid $199 to attend. For another, Tenpenny had more than 2,000 attendees, which netted her a profit of more than $350,000. Attendees at Tennpenny’s boot camps learn that the COVID pandemic is a scam, that masks suppress the immune system, and that COVID vaccines are “a genocidal, DNA-manipulating, infertility-causing, dementia-causing machine.” Like all anti-vaccine activists, Tenpenny regularly hawks dietary supplements.

3.  Charlene and Ty Bollinger

Charlene and Ty Bollinger, a Tennessee couple who market books and videos about cancer, vaccines, and COVID, exemplify the synergy and coordination among anti-vaccine activists. They created a series called The Truth About Vaccines that includes “The Coronavirus Field Guide,” featuring a cavalcade of anti-vaccine stars such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Joe Mercola. The guide, which costs about $500, promotes intravenous vitamin C to cure COVID.

4.     Sayer Ji

Sayer Ji runs a popular alternative health website called GreenMedInfo.com, which is full of natural remedies and vaccine misinformation. Ji claims that he no longer “critically accepts the basic tenets of classical germ theory.” (The germ theory states that specific germs cause specific diseases. For example, SARS-CoV-2 causes COVID. Presumably, Sayer Ji doesn’t believe this.) Ji prefers dietary supplements and avoidance of 5G networks. He has 500,000 Facebook followers and 15,000 YouTube subscribers.   

1.     Mike Adams

Mike Adams is the founder of Natural News. First registered in 2005, Natural News is the second largest alternative medicine website behind Mercola.com, garnering about 3.7 million visits per year. Links to Adam’s “Health Ranger Store” are featured throughout his site, which sells dietary supplements and preparedness supplies. Adams believes that mRNA vaccines are “extermination machines,” that the pandemic vaccine rollout was a “leftwing suicide cult,” and that people sickened by vaccines will be replaced by “obedient third world illegals,” while those refusing vaccines will be “hunted for extermination.”

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Anti-vaccine activists are quick to call anyone who promotes the science of vaccines and vaccine safety as shills for the pharmaceutical industry. But who is really doing the shilling?