Fake News At WND: Coronavirus Edition, Part 12
In order to perpetuate its bogus COVID narratives, WorldNetDaily continues to reprint false stories from discredited far-right websites, and it touted a study that got retracted (again).
(Previously: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11)
WorldNetDaily continues to go to the same tainted well of discredited websites and so-called “researchers” to peddle falsehoods and conspiracy theories about COVID vaccines.
Last year, Bob Unruh ranted that “A new study, conducted by respected medical researchers and published in The Lancet, a renowned medical journal, indicated that the COVID shots themselves actually killed people – and the study now has been killed”; that study wildly claimed that COVID vaccines “directly caused or significantly contributed to up to 74% of those deaths” in a group of 325 people whose autopsies were reviewed. In fact, that study was not published in The Lancet — it appeared on a preprint server of a Lancet-linked publication where studies can be posted prior to peer review, and it was never accepted for publication. Further, those who conducted the study are not “respected medical researchers” — they include notorious COVID misinformers like Peter McCullough, Harvey Risch, Roger Hodkinson, William Makis and Paul Alexander. But having gotten that misinformation out there, one actual researcher lamented that the claims in this “zombie paper” will become part of the discourse despite its having been discredited and retracted.
Indeed, this zombie paper has risen from the dead, and another journal was somehow talked into actually publishing it. This time, WND farmed out the misinformation to highly discredited Gateway Pundit writer Jim Hoft — who had recently been busted for filing a sham bankruptcy to avoid being held accountable for his election fraud lies — for a June 24 article:
A previously censored paper from The Lancet has now undergone peer review and is available online.
The study, titled “A Systematic Review of Autopsy Findings in Deaths After COVID-19 Vaccination,” analyzed 325 autopsy cases and found that a staggering 73.9% of deaths were either directly due to or significantly contributed to by the COVID-19 vaccination.
The paper’s lead author, Dr. Nicolas Hulscher, faced significant opposition in bringing these findings to light. After initially being downloaded over 100,000 times, The Lancet removed the paper within 24 hours, according to Dr. William Makis.
Hoft gave Makis plenty of space to play victim:
In a post on X Friday, Dr. William Makis shared the exciting news.
“BREAKING NEWS: Our LANCET CENSORED Paper is now peer reviewed and available online!” Makis wrote on X.
“Incredible perseverence [sic] by first author Nicolas Hulscher who didn’t give up after LANCET pulled our paper within 24 hours after 100,000s of downloads for no legitimate reason. Big pharma put the squeeze on The Lancet but has failed to stop us.”
“Our paper was delayed by one year, and those actions of CENSORSHIP and CANCELLATION led to many deaths that could have been prevented. This paper could be a game changer,” Makis added.
Yeah, not so much. Critics originally found that the study did not factor in other medical conditions as possible contributors to death; one critic pointed out that the paper is “an astoundingly ridiculous analysis and conclusion and I believe one does not have to be a scientific or medical expert to find the major flaws.”
It’s not clear what, if anything, was changed in the paper to get it published in a different publication, or how that supposed peer review for the current version of the paper was conducted. It’s likely not much changed, given that it has given the same fate. Forensic Science International, the journal that published the current version of the study, retracted it earlier this month:
Members of the scientific community raised concerns about this Article-in-Press following its posting online. The concerns encompassed.
• Inappropriate citation of references.
• Inappropriate design of methodology.
• Errors, misrepresentation, and lack of factual support for the conclusions.
• Failure to recognise and cite disconfirming evidence.
The concerns were shared with the authors, who prepared a response and submitted a revised manuscript for consideration by the journal. In consideration of the extent of the concerns raised and the responses from the authors, the journal sent the revised manuscript to two independent peer-reviewers. The peer-reviewers concluded that the revised manuscript did not sufficiently address the concerns raised by the community and that it was not suitable for publication in the journal. The authors disagree with this withdrawal and dispute the grounds for it.
WND is now 0-for-2 on this bogus paper, and it has not reported on the second retraction. Still, the zombie paper lives on.
WND gets Slayed again
An anonymously written June 14 article claimed:
A new study has suggested COVID shots, which already are known to cause serious side effects including heart ailments that can be fatal, also triggered a decline in male fertility.
A study done by researchers in Denmark analyzed fertility levels from thousands of men ages 18-45, with half in the 18-24 age group, and revealed COVID mRNA shots “have caused widespread harm to fertility rates.”
“During the study, the researchers examined the quality of semen in potential donors in Denmark between 2017 and 2022,” explained a report in Slay News.
Of those accepted as donors, about one-third of the total, “The study revealed that motile sperm concentration dropped by 16 percent,” a drop seen only during 2019-2022 when mRNA shots were being delivered.
[…]
Study authors said, “Such a sharp decline in sperm motility to occur over a relatively short length of time suggests that external factors were likely to have played a role. In this context, we note that the observed decline in sperm motility roughly corresponds to the onset of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic.”
WND’s big mistake here is to once again uncritically repeat something from the far-right Slay News; as ConWebWatch noted the last time WND stole a story from that operation, Slay News has been rated unreliable due to its “conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, right-wing propaganda, poor sourcing, lack of transparency, failed fact checks, and blatant plagiarism.” Another obvious sign that the Slay article is filled with misinformation is the statement — uncritically repeated by WND — that the drop in motile sperm was “seen only during 2019-2022 when mRNA shots were being delivered.” In fact, COVID vaccines weren’t approved until December 2020 and weren’t widely available until well into 2021, showing that Slay News (and, thus, WND) are fudging numbers in an attempt to make the vaccines look bad and falsely implicate them as the main culprit.
Which, as it turns out, was not even a finding from the study, despite the WND headline “Disturbing study: COVID shots destroyed young men’s fertility.” A more reliable news operation reported that the study — contrary to Slay News’ and WND’s assertions, “revealed no significant changes over a six-year period,” with “no clear patterns” found. It continued:
The team suggested the Covid pandemic might have played a role in the decline, noting lockdowns might have led to changes in working patterns, diet and levels of physical activity – factors that can affect sperm motility.
But Pacey said the decline was unlikely to be down to the virus itself as infection rates were not high in Denmark and Covid only affects sperm quality temporarily.
WND did hint at that finding, admitting that the researchers “noted lifestyle changes, including the now-proven ineffective lockdowns, also may have played a role in the changes,” but it buried that revelation in the second-to-last paragraph of the article.
The final paragraph contained more bogus fearmongering, stating that the discredited Slay News report noted that “a separate study ‘found alarming changes in motility which were closely correlated to the COVID mRNA injections.'” Again, credible news media were once again Slay’s and WND’s downfall; the 2022 study in question actually found that while sperm count dropped by 15 percent among 37 sperm donors in Israel after receiving the vaccine, they returned to pre-vaccine levels after 145 days.
Misinfo on “turbo cancers,” mpox
The fact that ConWebWatch keep proving WND’s CoVID reporting wrong has not dissuaded it from publishing even more bogus information. Bob Unruh contributed more to the fake-news canon in a Sept. 5 article:
A team of researchers that included a number of medical experts as well as individuals with creditable science backgrounds has uncovered what is believed to be an “off switch” that could be used by those who were given the COVID-19 mRNA treatments, and now face that possibility of “turbo cancers, heart failure, strokes, blood clots, and damaged immune systems,” according to a new report.
It is Slay News that revealed the “historic discovery” that now “offers hope to the billions of people around the world who have been injected with the ‘vaccines.'”
The report cites a preprint study called, “Strategic Deactivation of mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines: New Applications for RIBOTACs and siRNA Therapy.”
The promoters of the experimental treatment originally said the “vaccine” injection would stay in a person’s arm but tests show it spreads, which has prompted health experts to express concern about the safety.
The report confirmed the “spike protein triggered by the mRNA from the shots has been linked to multiple deadly diseases and sudden death.”
The study, led by renowned American cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough, uncovered a novel approach using “small interfering messenger RNA (siRNA) and ribonuclease targeting chimeras (RIBOTACs) to bind and deactivate the mRNA from these vaccines.”
The fact that 1) the lead author is McCullough, one of the most prolific spreaders of COVID misinformation out there, and 2) Unruh stole the article from Slay News, whom we’ve repeatedlycaught spreading COVID fake news, should be reason enough to dismiss all of this. Further, as actual medical experts point out, COVID vaccines don’t create toxic levels of spike proteins in the body, so “detox” protocols aren’t necessary.
Unruh returned with another bogus claim in an Oct. 11 article, again taken from the unreliable Slay News:
COVID-19, that modified bat virus first spotted near a Chinese research institute that was toying around with those dangerous pathogens, undoubtedly was and remains a threat to many people.
But the shots that the world’s pharmaceuticals created to battle it also have been found to be related to heart diseases and failures as well as a multitude of other health threats.
Now even the World Health Organization, that bureaucracy that worked with China first to conceal the threat, then demanded entire populations be forced to take the experimental COVID shots, has admitted that they are problematic.
To the point they now are being blamed for creating a side effect: “Monkeypox.”
It is Slay News that revealed the admission by the WHO, a part of the United Nations.
The report confirmed the “admission” is buried deep on the WHO’s Vigiaccess web page.
Unfortunately for Unruh, Reuters has specifically debunked the article he rewrote:
The article by Slay News, a website Reuters has previously fact-checked, is headlined: “WHO Admits Monkeypox Is ‘Side Effect’ of Covid ‘Vaccine’” and was shared on Facebook.
The piece, dated Oct. 11, points to monkeypox, smallpox and cowpox being listed on the WHO’s VigiAccess website under the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine as evidence that the WHO has admitted these infections are side effects of the product.
However, VigiAccess is a portal for accessing reports of events that followed taking a drug or vaccine submitted by individuals to voluntary national databases and it does not confirm that the product caused any of the observed symptoms, according to a WHO spokesperson and the VigiAccess website.
No cases of smallpox have been documented in the world for decades and no cases of mpox or cow pox have been documented to have been caused by any vaccine.
[…]
The data reflect possible reported side effects, not a confirmed link between a product and a side effect, according to a WHO spokesperson.
“Information in VigiAccess on potential side effects should not be interpreted as evidence that the medicinal product or its active substance either caused the observed effect or is unsafe for use,” the spokesperson told Reuters via email.
“The information on this website does not reflect any confirmed link between a medicinal product and a side effect,” the spokesperson said, adding that confirming a causal link is a complex process that requires a thorough assessment and detailed evaluation of all the data.
Does WND ever get tired of being proven wrong so often? If it does, perhaps it should consider not spreading lies.
WND really should know better than to republish COVID-related items from the discredited far-right website Slay News — yet it frequently does so anyway, even though the studies it touts tend to get retracted. It did so again in an Aug. 20 article by WND’s chief stenographer of misinformation, Bob Unruh:
Those mRNA COVID-19 shots, turned out in double time by an industry in the pay of the federal government at the time, are “far more” dangerous to those who took them, including those forced by government officials to take them, than getting COVID, a new report explains.
The report at Slay News said a study has shown that the “overall risks” of the shots “greatly outweigh theoretical benefits.”
The study results appeared in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research.
The researchers included M. Nathaniel Mead of the McCullough Foundation, MIT’s Stephanie Seneff, independent researcher Jessica Rose, Research Triangle Park’s Russ Wolfinger, Nicolas Hulscher and Dr. Peter A. McCullough, an M.D. practicing in internal medicine, cardiology, epidemiology and more.
The report said, “They found that the modmRNA injections carry such a high risk of dangerous adverse events, that it would be safer to catch the virus without being vaccinated than to take one of the shots.”
Beyond the Slay News connection, there are other warning signs that Unruh and WND ignored. The first is the presence of McCullough, who has been repeatedly busted spreading COVID misinformation. Another author, Seneff, is a known spreader of anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories, and she also has no medical credentials.
Another red flag is the study appearing in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research. As one observer pointed out, it “appears to be a journal recently set up specifically to launder COVID-19 anti-vaccine speculation. Its editor-in-chief has a doctorate in general linguistics, and associate editors include noted anti-vaxxers like Seneff and Brian Hooker.”
Finally, there’s the track record of the (non-McCullough) researchers. Earlier this year, a paper co-authored by McCullough, Seneff, Mead, Rose and Wolfinger was retracted due to “concerns with the validity of some of the cited references that support the conclusions and a misrepresentation of the cited references and available data.” WND actually gave McCullough space to whine about that paper getting retracted. Meanwhile, another COVID-related people co-authored by McCullough was also retracted — for the second time.
Despite this history of shoddy research and forced retraction of same, Unruh made no effort whatsoever to engage in any outside verification of the results — indeed, this is yet another one of his lazy bits of stenography designed to create content than genuinely inform readers. Most people who claim to be a reporter would be embarrassed to put out such deficient work from taken from untrustworthy sources, but Unruh has clearly internalized the shamelessness of his boss, Joseph Farah.
False reporting on Bill Gates
The COVID misinformation at WorldNetDaily just never stops. Bob Unruh wrote in an Oct. 23 article:
A ruling from a Dutch court means that American Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, a major influence in world organizations and a big supporter of the so-called COVID-19 “vaccines,” will go to trial in a case brought by seven people hurt by that agenda.
He repeatedly promoted the vaccines, which have since proven probably to be just about as damaging as COVID-19 itself, with side effects including fatal heart conditions and more.
[…]
It is the Gateway Pundit that reported on the judicial decision, and even posted that document online.
The report said Gates will be on trial in the Netherlands “over his involvement in misleading the public about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines.”
The seven plaintiffs all described the vaccine injuries they sustained, and they brought the lawsuit last year. Recent court time has been consumed by court consideration of the Gates motion to dismiss the case, based on his claim he was not subject to Dutch courts.
It’s a Gateway Pundit product that Unruh is slavishly and uncritically repeating, so you know there will be factual issues — and that is the case here. As an credible news operation reported, this is a civil action, not a criminal one, and Gates will not “go to trial” — the case is merely appearing on the docket, which is not an indication of merit, and Gates does not need to appear. Further, the case is being brought by a group of conspiracy theorists particularly obsessed with the “Great Reset” theory.
Unruh touted a right-wing congressman’s plan to criminalize vaccine mandates in an Oct. 29 article:
When COVID-19 came out of its Chinese home, probably a lab where technicians were working to make bat viruses more transmissible and more deadly, it quickly started killing people.
Shots, although more a treatment than an actual vaccine, were developed and approved for emergency use because they still were considered experimental.
Millions of people took the shots, many voluntarily. But millions more were ordered to take them, and one of those populations now may be in line for relief from the sometimes lethal side effects of those injections.
It is the Washington Examiner that has reported on a proposal by U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., for the University Forced Vaccination Student Injury Mitigation Act.
It would order colleges and universities that ordered their students to take part in the medical experiment to pay for injuries caused by the shots.
It would require the compensation under penalty of those schools losing federal funds from the Education Department.
“If you are not prepared to face the consequences, you should have never committed the act,” Rosendale announced in a statement about his plan.
“Colleges and universities forced students to inject themselves with an experimental vaccine knowing it was not going to prevent COVID-19 while potentially simultaneously causing life-threatening health defects like Guillian-Barre Syndrome and myocarditis. It is now time for schools to be held accountable for their brazen disregard for students’ health and pay for the issues they are responsible for causing.”
Rosendale is lying by calling the vaccine “experimental.” Further, the side effects he cites are rareand no worse than with other vaccines.
Unruh served up even more false fearmongering in a Dec. 2 article:
A state court ruling regarding a forced COVID treatment on a young child at his school is being denounced as something that “threatens every child in America.”
The comment is from John Klar, a lawyer, pastor and writer who has written at the Federalist about the case involving the 6-year-old Vermont boy.
He was “vaccinated with an experimental COVID-19 intervention against the family’s wishes, and now the Vermont Supreme Court has endorsed the actions by the state actors,” he reported.
“The Vermont court had ruled that the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP) prohibits such claims, granting immunity to school and government personnel when they mandate vaccinations,” he explained, as the case now is being forwarded to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Stunningly, the Vermont Supreme Court did not even pay lip service to the constitutional liberties implicated, ruling against traditional protections of parental rights and informed consent. But the PREP Act is not above the Constitution’s supremacy clause; it’s the other way around,” Klar explained.
He said it’s part of a move to erase parental rights.
“In Vermont, minor children may obtain transgender hormones and birth control without parental consent, and a 2024 law bars parents from seeing which library books are checked out by their children 12 years and older. Yet these are examples where the child wants something against his parents’ wishes. In Vermont’s COVID-19 vaccination case, the child protested and was forced to be jabbed anyway,” he said.
In fact, the ruling in question does not “threaten every child in America.” As a much more credible news operation found, a legal expert stated that the ruling “merely holds that the federal statute at issue, the PREP Act, preempts state lawsuits in cases in which officials mistakenly administer a vaccination without consent,” adding that “Nothing in the Vermont Supreme Court opinion states that school officials can vaccinate a child against the instructions of the parent.”