Covid vaccine misinformation: These doctors are part of the problem

On Oct 20, 2021

She was a media darling, and in 2013 made Reader’s Digest’s annual list of 100 most trusted people in America. If you go to Dr. Christiane Northrup’s Facebook page, her posts dispensing advice on health and aging to her 558,000 followers seem consistent with that persona of several years ago.

But Northrup also uses her Facebook page to direct followers to Telegram, where another side of her is apparent. Here, on this platform with lax moderation, lies a miasma of misinformation and conspiracy theories.

“Best Explanation I’ve Seen About Why the Covid Jabs Are Killer Shots,” reads one post that she shared.

“Me realising I don’t have to take revenge on my enemies as they’ve all had the jab,” says a meme she posted in late August that shows a sly-faced Morticia from the Addams Family.

“Another hero emerges,” Northrup writes of a doctor who refused to see vaccinated patients.

Northrup is among a small group of doctors who have emerged as a huge source of misinformation — whether as social-media influencers or family doctors meeting with patients in person — about Covid-19 vaccines, which have thus far proven the most effective weapon against the deadliest pandemic in 100 years.

The physicians are fueling the fire at a time when Covid-19 deaths in the United States have surpassed 724,000, and as the casualties increasingly come from the ranks of the unvaccinated.

For the most part, they do so with impunity.

In late July, the board of directors at the Federation of State Medical Boards released a statement notifying physicians that promoting dangerous falsehoods about the Covid-19 vaccines could put their medical licenses at risk. But while several state medical boards told CNN that complaints about misinformation are piling up, only a handful of low-profile doctors have been formally punished to date. And the high-profile doctors spreading misinformation to millions of followers have faced no such regulatory scrutiny.

“These doctors are taking advantage of the trust in them,” said David Lazer, a political science and computer sciences professor at Northeastern University. He cites a monthly survey by the Covid States Project showing how, when it comes to trusted professions and groups, doctors rank at the very top for Democrats and Republicans alike. “They are using the prestige of that term ‘doctor’ to convey misinformation,” said Lazer, who co-leads the Covid States Project.

‘The best thing that could happen is you get Covid’

Dr. Rashid Buttar often appears on his promotional materials donning scrubs or a white coat.

The bio in his 2010 book, “The 9 Steps to Keep the Doctor Away” — which landed on USA Today’s best-seller list — is a three-page compendium of credentials: double major in biology and theology from the prestigious Washington University in St. Louis; doctor-of-osteopathic-medicine degree at the University of Osteopathic Medicine and Health Sciences, College of Medicine and Surgery in Iowa; visiting scientist and nutritional scientist at North Carolina State University.

His website adds another: “MOST CENSORED Doctor.”

Buttar has shared all manner of outrageous claims and misleading statements about the pandemic: Most…

Covid vaccine misinformation: These doctors are part of the problem

‘The best thing that could happen is you get Covid’

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