‘Absolutely Stupid’: Scientists Take a Flamethrower to Alex Berenson’s Vaccine ‘Fearmongering’

Leia IdlibyApr 1st, 2021, 10:20 am
 

Alex Berenson

The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson penned a brutal article torching former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson for “serving up Covid-19 hot takes for the past year” —  even recruiting several medical experts to debunk his many unfounded claims.

Thompson faulted Berenson for pushing baseless theories regarding the coronavirus vaccine on both Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson’s Fox News primetime shows. He specifically downplayed vaccines and predicted that they would actually cause a surge in Covid-19 related deaths in the United States.

“For the past few weeks on Twitter, Berenson has mischaracterized just about every detail regarding the vaccines to make the dubious case that most people would be better off avoiding them. As his conspiratorial nonsense accelerates toward the pandemic’s finish line, he has proved himself the Secretariat of being wrong,” Thompson continued in his article The Pandemic’s Wrongest Man.

Thompson explained that he usually would not validate opinions so “blatantly incorrect” by taking the time to correct them, yet roughly 30 percent of the general population, and 40 percent of Republicans, have said they will not take the vaccine.

“Debunking vaccine skepticism, particularly in right-wing circles, is a matter of life and death,” said the reporter before fact checking several of Berenson’s claims.

Thompson reached out to medical experts, including lead authors of studies Berenson disparaged and falsely debunked.

When Berenson took to Twitter to claim that an “excellent” Denmark study showed a 40 percent rise in infections immediately after nursing-home residents received their first vaccine shot, Thompson contacted Ida Rask Moustsen-Helms, the study’s lead author,

Unsurprisingly, Berenson “mischaracterized her findings,” as Mousten-Helms explained that “the Danish nursing homes in question were already experiencing a significant Covid-19 outbreak when vaccinations began.”

“His point is absolutely stupid, and I would know because I enrolled participants in the Pfizer-BioNTech trial,” Kawsar Talaat, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, told Thompson of another Berenson claim.

Berenson — a frequent guest across the Fox News lineup throughout the pandemic — claimed that “Pfizer-BioNTech’s clinical-trial data prove that the companies are being shady about vaccine efficacy,” because they reported “suspected but unconfirmed” coronavirus cases.

“He’s talking about people who call in and say, ‘I have a runny nose.’ So we mark them as ‘suspected,'” Talaat continued.”Then we ask them to take a PCR test, and we test their swab, and if the test comes back negative, the FDA says it’s ‘unconfirmed.’ That’s what suspected but unconfirmed means.”

Berenson also claimed in an email that “the first dose of the mRNA vaccine temporarily suppresses the immune system,” adding on Twitter that the mRNA vaccines “transiently suppress lymphocytes,” suggesting that this could lead to “post-vaccination deaths.”

“The claim he is making is simply fearmongering, connecting a simple physiological event with bogus claims of deaths,” Shane Crotty, a researcher at the Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, told Thompson. “The observation of lymphocyte numbers temporarily dropping in blood is actually a common phenomenon in immune responses.”

Thompson later detailed Berenson’s many false statements regarding Israel and their vaccine rollout plan. While the former Times writer claimed vaccines in Israel have been causing a rise in deaths and hospitalizations, Thompson clarified, “Israel is a world leader in vaccinations. Its COVID-19 cases have plunged, and its economy is roaring back to life.”

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