WorldNetDaily really should know better than to republish COVID-related items from the far-right website Slay News, a website that has been rated unreliable due to its “conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, right-wing propaganda, poor sourcing, lack of transparency, failed fact checks, and blatant plagiarism.” Yet it frequently does so anyway, even though the studies it touts tend to get retracted. It did so again in an Aug. 20 article by WND’s chief stenographer of misinformation, Bob Unruh:
Those mRNA COVID-19 shots, turned out in double time by an industry in the pay of the federal government at the time, are “far more” dangerous to those who took them, including those forced by government officials to take them, than getting COVID, a new report explains.
The report at Slay News said a study has shown that the “overall risks” of the shots “greatly outweigh theoretical benefits.”
The study results appeared in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research.
The researchers included M. Nathaniel Mead of the McCullough Foundation, MIT’s Stephanie Seneff, independent researcher Jessica Rose, Research Triangle Park’s Russ Wolfinger, Nicolas Hulscher and Dr. Peter A. McCullough, an M.D. practicing in internal medicine, cardiology, epidemiology and more.
The report said, “They found that the modmRNA injections carry such a high risk of dangerous adverse events, that it would be safer to catch the virus without being vaccinated than to take one of the shots.”
Beyond the Slay News connection, there are other warning signs that Unruh and WND ignored. The first is the presence of McCullough, who has been repeatedly busted spreading COVID misinformation. Another author, Seneff, is a known spreader of anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories, and she also has no medical credentials.
Another red flag is the study appearing in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research. As one observer pointed out, it “appears to be a journal recently set up specifically to launder COVID-19 anti-vaccine speculation. Its editor-in-chief has a doctorate in general linguistics, and associate editors include noted anti-vaxxers like Seneff and Brian Hooker.”
Finally, there’s the track record of the (non-McCullough) researchers. Earlier this year, a paper co-authored by McCullough, Seneff, Mead, Rose and Wolfinger was retracted due to “concerns with the validity of some of the cited references that support the conclusions and a misrepresentation of the cited references and available data.” WND actually gave McCullough space to whine about that paper getting retracted. Meanwhile, another COVID-related people co-authored by McCullough was also retracted — for the second time.
Despite this history of shoddy research and forced retraction of same, Unruh made no effort whatsoever to engage in any outside verification of the results — indeed, this is yet another one of his lazy bits of stenography designed to create content than genuinely inform readers. Most people who claim to be a reporter would be embarrassed to put out such deficient work from taken from untrustworthy sources, but Unruh has clearly internalized the shamelessness of his boss, Joseph Farah.