The following first ran on CounterPunch at the height of the COVID pandemic in January of 2022.

Are anti-vaccine propagandists really being censored?

That’s the claim RFK Jr. and his raucous admirers make as they point out the lawyer-turned anti-vaccine crusader was kicked off of Instagram and has yet to appear on MSNBC or snag a seat on a late night show. But last I checked his new anti-Fauci book has thus far sold over 500,000 copies. Censorship sells, I guess.

While RFK Jr. may be blacklisted from MSNBC and other outlets (news flash, so are we), he recently dropped in on the Jimmy Dore comedy hour to cook up a stew of gibberish, with a dash of falsehoods that went unchallenged by Dore, who appears to be more than happy to cash in on all of this anti-vax paranoia.

“If you get that vaccine you are 500% more likely to die of a heart attack” six months post-vaccination, RFK flatly told Dore, who smirked and nodded in agreement. RFK Jr. was dishing out his usual dose of panic, but this brand of vaccine hysteria, which is entombed in the depths of RFK Jr.’s silly The Real Anthony Fauci, markets very, very well to the Jimmy Dore demographic.

Dore speaks to RFK Jr., goes full anti-vax.
RFK Jr.: Covid vaccines kill more ppl than they save!
Jimmy: Will America ever wake up to this? pic.twitter.com/6puCuv0vkz

— Venerable Jorge (@Nitzky89) December 18, 2021

Needless to say, like so many of RFK Jr.’s blatant lies, the bogus claim that mRNA vaccines will give you lethal heart trouble, is easily debunked. (Yes mRNA vaccines can cause heart inflammation, known as myocarditis, primarily in younger men, but these incidences are very rare and typically mild. In reality, far more covid infections cause myocarditis, along with a host of other ailments, some lethal, like stroke, arrhythmia and kidney injury. A pre-print study also found that myocarditis is by far more common after covid infection than vaccination in teen boys, 450 cases per million infections vs 67 cases per million vaccinations.)

If people were actually dying of cardiac arrest because they were inoculated with an mRNA vaccine, with over 191 million people having received two doses of the Moderna and Pfizer formulas in the US, we would have witnessed a large jump in heart attack deaths over the past twelve months. There has been no such increase. In fact, the country saw a small peak in deaths due to heart disease prior to the vaccines becoming widely available. In short, either RFK Jr. doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about, or he is flat out lying. I tend to think it’s a mix of both.

Health System Tracker.

In another totally bonkers exchange over at the revamped Gawker, journalist Tarpley Hitt (who, unlike Dore, pushes back on the insanity) asks RFK Jr. about a subheader in his book titled, “Final Solution: Vaccines or Bust.”

Hitt: That’s a pretty pointed choice of words. Did you mean to invoke the Holocaust?

RFK Jr.: It says what it says.

Hitt: Can you elaborate?

RFK Jr.: It says what it says.

Hitt:........

© CounterPunch