Instead of covering Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial on Tuesday night, the presenter addressed the pandemic, arguing that the orthodoxies around masks and social detachment had evolved without explanation and that any dissent was being immediately silenced.
“What about this vaccine?” He asked. “Why are Americans being discouraged from asking simple, straightforward questions about this? How effective are these drugs? Are they safe? What is the risk of miscarriage for pregnant women, for example? Is there a study on this? Can we see this? And by the way, how much are the pharmaceutical companies earning from this?
“Well, there is nothing from QAnon about questions like that,” he continued. “They are not conspiracy theories, they are the most basic questions. In a democracy, every citizen has the right to know the answer, but instead we receive rumors and propaganda.
“The vaccine’s launch in the media came out as a Diet Pepsi commercial in the Super Bowl. Tons of celebrity endorsements, without much science. “
Mr. Carlson did not openly question the vaccines, agreeing that most Americans supported them having seen the beneficial effects of polio, tetanus and chickenpox treatments, but attacked “the way the authorities handled the coronavirus vaccine,” saying that “did not inspire confidence”.
“If the vaccine was so good, why were all these people lying about it? Honest question. And they were lying. Clearly, they were lying. You know that for sure, because from the moment the Covid vaccine arrived, America’s most powerful people have worked to ensure that no one can criticize it. “
He then began to criticize the vaccine proponent Melinda Gates, the wife of billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates – who was shown in a clip from an interview with CNN in December in which she said that social media has a moral responsibility to deal with antivaxxer conspiracy theories – and pointed to the removal of a Facebook group called “COVID-19 Vaccine Injury Stories”.
The host then contradicted his own anti-censorship argument in some way, alluding to a recent New York Times article reporting that Covid vaccines can trigger blood disorders in certain cases, a story that remains available online, on Facebook and Twitter.
While Tucker Carlson’s argument has more to do with the attack on porters in Silicon Valley than explicitly doubting vaccines – he said he intends to accept the injection for himself and his employer, Rupert Murdoch, already had his – his defense of The right to question medical expertise follows a pattern among conservative American media to please the anti-xxx movement since the beginning of the pandemic.
Most recently, her Fox colleague Laura Ingraham used her Quake Media podcast to interview Robert F Kennedy Jr, son of the murdered presidential candidate and US Attorney General, who took the opportunity to attack the nation’s leading infectious disease specialist. , Dr. Anthony Fauci, calling him “a very sinister guy who turned this country over to the Big Pharma” and “J Edgar Hoover from public health”.
“Tony Fauci provided all of these vaccines to obtain immunity from liability, so no matter how negligent this company is, no matter how toxic the ingredients, no matter how reckless they are, no matter how severe your injury or death, you can’t sue them, “he said.
On the topic of mass vaccination strategies in pursuit of collective immunity, Mr. Kennedy asked: “Do you have to give 300,000 vaccines to prevent a death – how many deaths will you cause in this cohort?”
Another Fox presenter, Sean Hannity, said on his January 26 program that he is “starting to have doubts” about whether he will get the vaccine in person because half of his friends “would not have it in a million years” and he does not “I know who to listen to”.
Evangelical pastors, including Rodney Howard-Browne and Guillermo Maldonado, also expressed similar skepticism online, the first claiming last April that vaccines kill more people than viruses and the last saying in December that vaccines are “preparing the framework for the Antichrist”.
On the pandemic more generally, Fox challenger One America News ran a segment in May 2020 claiming that the coronavirus was a “globalist conspiracy” planned by the elite to ensure that then President of the United States Donald Trump was not re-elected, citing controversial medical researcher Judy Mikovits, who contributed to the widely discredited Plandemic viral video, which made similarly hysterical claims.
While Carlson’s free speech arguments against Big Tech may be reasonable, his charge that medical officials are “lying” to the American public risks further undermining confidence when the pandemic has already claimed 468,000 American lives and continues to increase.
The new president of the United States, Joe Biden and his deputy Kamala Harris, as well as celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger, made a point of receiving their suggestions in public to address public concerns about security, while organizations like International SOS published guidelines fact check to contain the creation of online vaccine myths.