A global pandemic is a frightening phenomenon by any standard, but as the coronavirus gets ready to go on into yet another year, 2022, the most horrific thing about it is that it has acted as a Rorschach test for the psyche. In the United States the coronavirus is far more than a deadly malady, it is a cultural call to arms. The battle lines are drawn. On one side is the scientific community advocating vaccination and on the other side are the right-wing nut jobs, claiming that to become vaccinated is to do everything from give up your status as a human being to inviting strange parasitical creatures (some of extraterrestrial origin, we might add) into your blood stream.

Here is “Dr.” Sherri Tenpenny’s two cents, and even at that price, this advice is overpaid.

And if that’s not weird enough, there’s this.

You may recall that Tenpenny also told people the vaccine could magnetize their bodies. Why does she do this? It’s got five letters and starts with an “M” and it’s not “moral.” Tenpenny found herself half a million dollars in debt to the IRS and she found out that her $245 premium podcast fees and $165 webinars began to chip away at that debt quite nicely, not to mention that it kept those pesky revenuers from thinking about criminal action. You know how they can be.

Earlier this year, Tenpenny was named one of the worst known spreaders of falsehoods, myths and misleading statements about vaccines — a group the non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate dubbed the “Disinformation Dozen.”

A separate study put her in the cadre of America’s biggest anti-vaccine profiteers.

But in comments to AFP, Tenpenny stood by her claims, maintaining that she is not spreading misinformation and is simply making “a living.”

Her business is an alchemy fueled by social media and mistrust of public health officials, two factors blamed for more than 25 percent of eligible American adults declining to be vaccinated.

While US President Joe Biden’s administration pleads with the vaccine-hesitant to take the shot, Tenpenny brands Covid-19 a manufactured crisis and a means of government control.

In an address to Ohio lawmakers in June, the osteopath pointed to online images purporting to show people who were “magnetized” after receiving a Covid-19 vaccine.

“They put a key on their forehead, it sticks. They can put spoons and forks all over them, and they can stick,” she said in remarks that were soon debunked, but only after gaining a national audience.

YouTube removed that footage of Tenpenny, saying it broke the platform’s rules on information likely to cause harm. Many of Tenpenny’s other videos have been fact-checked as misleading or false, and several of her social media accounts were suspended or removed.

But much of her prolific output remains accessible — illustrating the whack-a-mole problem of weeding out dangerous online content, which Big Tech has yet to solve.

And here is something to ponder: this is the story of a woman who contracted long haul COVID and she is particularly horrified by Tenpenny.

– ‘Rabbit hole’ –

Rachelle Eaton, who lives a half-hour drive from Tenpenny in the Cleveland area, watched the doctor’s remarks to lawmakers in horror.

“No one wants this life,” said Eaton, who suffered heart and lung damage, has to take oxygen intermittently, and is incapable of remembering simple things because of Covid-19.

“This doctor pulled a lot of people down this rabbit hole of misinformation,” said the 52-year-old, who eight months later is struggling with what is known as “long Covid,” after contracting the disease despite doing “everything right” — wearing a mask and leaving home only to work.

Eaton — who later quit her job as an accountant due to her illness — cut herself off from neighbors and co-workers who did not take the pandemic seriously. She saw people in her community succumb to the “insanity” of Tenpenny’s ideas about vaccines.

What Tenpenny is doing is horrifically immoral. She’s a clone of Alex Jones, she’s in it for the money, the big grift, and she doesn’t care who gets destroyed as long as her pockets are lined.

The big question to be answered is, why are so many people willing to believe that science isn’t reliable or that the medical community would launch a vast conspiracy to dupe them? Because if you had the answer to that, that is the sickness that is really killing people in this country. COVID is merely a virus. Willful ignorance and stupidity are far more toxic.

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2 COMMENTS

  1. Maybe if the social-media companies paid more attention to what people are using them for, and less to their profits (and the obscene amounts their executives are getting), they could do something.

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