Russian bots to blame for anti-vaccine propaganda!

Ever wondered why you keep seeing posts speaking of the dangers posed by vaccines? Well, wonder no more - it’s the Russian bots spewing lies to promote discord in Western society. The same bots who meddled in the US elections to help elect Donald Trump or in the 2017 general elections in the UK, where they favored Jeremy Corbyn.

The Russian bots claim was concocted by a group of researchers at George Washington University who published their findings in the 'American Journal of Public Health'. According to the ‘study’, dutifully quoted in 'The Daily Mail', out of 1,8 million tweets about vaccines a staggering 3% were posted by ‘bots’ traced back to some Internet firm in Sankt Petersburg. What about the other 97%? Oh, well, rest assured ‘many’ of those also come from fake Russian account. As an ex-journalist, I can tell you that ‘many’ is such a nice and useful word, as it can mean anything - even 10 or 100 can be considered many, you’re not even lying. Not that I do believe this Russian bots claim. Anybody can say it’s Russian bots saying this or that because no one is going to ask for proof. The only aim of such study is to produce bombastic headlines like the one below.

Few people actually click on an article, but they scan the headlines and the ‘information’ is stuck in their heads for future reference. Next time they see another post questioning vaccines, they’ll know it’s the Russian bots at work so they’ll dismiss what they read, if they read.
To strengthen the message the first picture chosen to illustrate the article is one with Vladimir Putin, with a smile that’s supposed to an evil grin on his face. Quite subtle!

The study provides samples of claims about vaccines, which are of course Russian lies:

Vaccines can cause serious and sometimes fatal side effects.

Actually they do. It says so on the vaccine inserts, only people don’t bother to read them and doctors don’t mention anything but a rash and a fever. In fact, death is mentioned as a potential, if extremely rare, side-effect on many drug inserts, not only vaccines.

Did you know there was a secret government database of vaccine-damaged children?

There must be a database since the US government has paid billions of dollars in compensation to vaccine-damaged children.

Chicken pox and measles are temporary, autism is forever, as far as we know.

Well, yes, measles takes about a week to go away, autism has no cure.

Pharmacy companies want to develop vaccines for cash, not to prevent deaths.

Random drug company googled - Merck : 'Total revenue increased 1.3 percent to $9.43 billion in the first quarter of 2018, beating analysts' average estimate of $9.25 billion'. That is a lot of cash.

Natural infection almost always causes better immunity than vaccines.

Well, vaccines do require several booster shots, whereas I only had mumps once!

Most diseases that vaccines target are relatively harmless in many cases, thus making vaccines unnecessary.

As I was born at a time when there were just a couple of vaccines, I’ve had most of the above mentioned childhood diseases. For a generally healthy child with a good diet, yes, most are harmless.

Vaccines contain mercury! Deadly poison!

I don’t know, but as a child I remember my mother repeatedly warning me not to fool around with the thermometer as the mercury inside might kill me!

As befitting, the article mentioned ends with a dire warning: ‘They erode public trust in vaccination, exposing us all to the risk of infectious diseases.’
You’re all going to die because of the lies spread by Russian bots.
Some time ago I wrote a post about a French father with a boy severely-damaged by vaccines. I follow him on Facebook, where he posts many pictures and videos of the child. Do you think it would be inappropriate to ask him whether he’s a Russian bot?

Side-question - with so many Russians busy meddling in Western affaris, I wonder if there's anyone left to do some actual work in that country!?

Thanks for reading