“Memes have been part of anti-vaccine messages for centuries and their power to spread harmful health misinformation continues to grow,” according to the text of the article.

The article warns that while memes are often associated with “cute cats and celebrities with funny captions”, they have “a more sinister function”, as they “are part of a very sophisticated distribution and monetization strategy health misinformation”.

Citing the “long history” of anti-vaccination memes, the article features an image from 1802 showing a vaccine monster feeding a basket of infants and “excreting them with horns,” and another from 1892 showing a vaccine snake and a dancing skeleton threatening a mother and her infant.

However, “the most famous anti-vaccination meme,” the article states, “originated from a now-discredited 1998 study that incorrectly linked the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine ( MMR) and autism”.

The article links to a 2010 article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal about The Lancet's retraction of Dr. Andrew Wakefield's article and to a 2011 BMJ editorial calling Wakefield's study fraudulent.

According to the article, Wakefield's study is the origin of the “vaccines cause autism” meme, which appears on billboards and circulates “widely in the media.”

Holocaust survivor Vera Sharav analyzed the Wakefield controversy in a multi-part article, noting that the UK High Court subsequently found “no evidence to support the charge of professional misconduct , and even less the accusation of fraud”.

Citing the Media Manipulation Casebook, the article defines “meme warfare” as the spread of memes for the purposes of “political persuasion or community building, or to strategically disseminate narratives and other messages critical to a campaign media manipulation”.

The authors identified “three recurring themes” in memes encouraging vaccine refusal:

Government and social institutions are corrupt, politically compromised and tyrannical and are using dangerous and ineffective vaccines for surveillance, control and profit.
Unvaccinated people are unfairly stigmatized and persecuted, “subject to Nazi-style sanctions and social exclusion”.
The vaccinated are morally and physically inferior to the unvaccinated, for example, they suffer from reduced fertility and critical thinking skills.

But the most “sinister” element of the meme campaigns, according to the article, was “financially profiting from pandemic-related anxieties,” including by promoting “potentially dangerous” and “unapproved” medical treatments such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.

The authors did not explain how a person could make a living selling inexpensive, off-patent drugs, nor did they compare this claim to the profits made by companies selling remdesivir or Covid-19 vaccines.

In conclusion, “under the cover of humor and satire” which “can escape fact-checkers and content moderators”, meme propagators “grow their online audience, sow distrust in health authorities and profit from the promotion of unapproved medicines”.

People don't buy what they sell

Laura Bono, vice president of Children's Health Defense (CHD), told The Defender: “Clearly, Gavi doesn't see the irony in publishing an article about the spread of 'misinformation' about vaccines, when Gavi is one of the most prolific purveyors of pro-vaccine propaganda in the world”.

Gavi, funded to the tune of $4,1 billion since 2000 by its founding partner, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has a long history of introducing vaccines into developing countries in Africa without adequate informed consent about the risks. .

Gavi recently launched a malaria vaccination campaign for babies across Africa and is targeting millions of young girls in low- and middle-income countries around the world with a human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine.

Ms Bono said Gavi and other pharmaceutical industry-backed organizations are “grappling with parents around the world waking up to the serious risks posed by vaccines, including autism, and a growing number of people are not buying what they are selling”.

“It is ironic that Gavi is being forced to go down this path because it clearly feels threatened,” said CH Klotz, editor of “Canary In a Covid World: How Propaganda and Censorship Changed Our (My) World ” (The canary in a covid world: how propaganda and censorship have changed our (my) world). And continues: “They are far from suspecting that people are not stupid, despite the propaganda.”

According to Klotz, more and more people have become aware of the propaganda thanks to their experience with Covid-19, “where we were told one thing and the opposite happened”. For example, “Get vaccinated to stop transmission and protect yourself against further contamination.”

“It all turned out to be a big lie,” he said.

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