Joseph Mercola is a longtime quack doctor and seller of alleged health supplements who loves promoting bogus conspiracy theories,, so it’s not a surprise that the ConWeb in general, and WorldNetDaily in particular, love the guy. In 2012, for example, we caught WND editor Joseph Farah citing Mercola to scaremonger about HPV vaccines. We’ve already noted that WND columnist Joel Hirschhorn approvingly cited Mercola falsely attacking mRNA coronavirus vaccines as “gene editing.”
But WND has given this quack even more exposure. Bob Unruh dedicated an entire April 9 article to Mercola’s rantings against the use of masks to slow the spread of COVID, calling them an unsafe “ticking time bomb” that also pose a risk to the environment:
“The planet may be facing a new plastic crisis, similar to the one brought on by bottled water, but this time involving discarded face masks,” Mercola wrote. “‘Mass masking’ continues to be recommended by most public health groups during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite research showing masks do not significantly reduce the incidence of infection.”
The microfibers in the masks, discarded into the environment, “are being ingested by fish, plankton and other marine life, as well as the creatures on land that consume them (including humans),” he explained.
He said researchers from the University of Southern Denmark and Princeton University already have warned that masks could quickly become “the next plastic problem.”
Unruh added: “His concerns about the health impact of masks where echoed by Dr. Jane Orient of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.” Orient, of course, is the quack-adjacent head of the fringe-right Association of American Physicians and Surgeonswhose fearmongering about COVID vaccines and promotion of unproven treatments WND has also promoted.
On May 15, WND stole a story from fringe-right activist Steve Bannon’s War Room website featuring more wild claims by Mercola:
Dr. Joseph Mercola, author of The Truth About Covid-19, says no rationale person should take the experimental covid vaccines, which have caused more deaths from all vaccines combined in the last 15 years.
“This is so reprehensible,” Dr. Mercola told War Room, Friday. “The people behind this should be put in jail, permanently.”
Mercola explains these vaccines are categorized as an “unprecedented vaccine” like HIV or malaria, which would typically take 12 to 15 years to produce.
In the War Room article, Mercola went on: “‘So what do we have, operation warp speed, in less than one year,” he said. “That is technically impossible.'”
Mercola is lying. The COVID-19 virus has no resemblance whatsoever to malaria, which is caused by a parasite that can evade the immune system. While COVID-19 and HIV are both viruses — although ones that manifest themselves in completely different ways — the number of upfront resources thrown at creating a COVID vaccine has been exponentially greater than those given to HIV treatments, in no small part because COVID was considered a threat to everyone while HIV was stigmatized because it first surfaced among LGBT people and drug users.
Mercola is quoted in the War Room article as saying that “We have over 4,000 people who have died to date, that is more than any vaccine combined in deaths for the last 15 years,” which is another lie. As we noted when Hirschhorn said it, reports of adverse effects to the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System does not equal indisputable proof that the vaccine cause the adverse effect.
Despite his atrocious track record, WND has presented Mercola’s claims credulously and without fact-checking. That just adds to the pile of lies and misinformation WND has fed readers about COVID.