It would be impossible to draw up a more stereotypical antivaxxer argument than the one being outlined by Aaron Rodgers today.
For someone who believes he's a "critical thinker," he sounds identical to every old lady in my Ivermectin Facebook groups and Q Telegram channels.
The only real difference between Aaron Rodgers and the Ivermectin Facebook groups is that he sounds... behind.
The IVM groups have largely moved on, adding a litany of other "cures" because Ivermectin, to them, doesn't fully "work" on Delta. The Joe Rogan Battery is old now.
Also, the "vaccines will make you infertile" thing is not new, but it has kicked up recently, in part because people aren't dropping dead en masse as they projected.
Most people have the shot, and there hasn't been a mass death event.
It’s hard to explain just how radicalized ivermectin and antivax Facebook groups have become in the last few weeks.
They’re now telling people who get COVID to avoid the ICU and treat themselves, often by nebulizing hydrogen peroxide.
So, how did we get here?
Facebook bans explicit antivaxx groups, but they don't ban groups for quack "cures" that antivaxxers push instead.
So in the last couple of months, Ivermectin groups have become the new hubs for antivaxx messaging.
But there's a problem: Ivermectin, by itself, isn’t working.
The number of people in these ivermectin groups have exploded.
So has the number of people in the groups who have contracted COVID, since the groups are largely filled with unvaccinated people seeking "alternative therapies."
Here's the deal about this much hyped Saturday's "Justice for January 6" rally.
Users on the extremist forums that hyped the rally-turned-riot on January 6 are not so hot on this one.
They're telling each other not to go, fearing it's a honeypot from the feds.
In the days before January 6th, sites like TheDonald and 4chan were littered with pictures of people boarding planes, posting pictures of guns, their hotel rooms, even maps of the tunnels beneath the Capitol.
They're calling 9/18 an "FBI rally." You mostly see posts like this:
Pro-Trump extremist boards have basically conspiracy theory'd themselves into inactivity.
Everything is "glowing," their word for a setup. Everything's a "false flag" or "honeypot."
They realize now their own rhetoric has put them in a bit of a bind.
Can't stress how wild the ivermectin Facebook groups have become. So many people insisting to each other to never go to an ER, in part because they might not get ivermectin, but sometimes because they fear nurses are killing them on purpose "for the insurance money."
The ivermectin Facebook groups are becoming fully anti-western medicine spaces, replete with the concept that ERs are killing you, maybe intentionally.
It's just a constant stream of DIY vitamin therapies and new, seemingly random antiviral drugs every day — but not the vaccine.
The ivermectin Facebook groups also offer a window into how pervasive antivaxx COVID "treatment" videos are on TikTok.
The groups serve as a de facto aggregator for antivaxx TikTok, a space that is enormous but inherently unquantifiable to researchers.