U.S. Officials Demand Ban on Dr. Mercola’s Book

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

• Since the publication of my book, “The Truth About COVID-19: Exposing The Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports, and the New Normal,” which became an instant best seller on Amazon.com, there’s been a significant increase in censorship
• September 7, 2021, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to the chief executive officer of Amazon.com, demanding an “immediate review” of Amazon’s algorithms to weed out books peddling “COVID misinformation”
• Warren specifically singled out “The Truth About COVID-19” as a prime example of “highly-ranked and favorably-tagged books based on falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines and cures” that she wants to see banned from sale
• September 9, 2021, U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff sent letters to Facebook and Amazon, also calling for more prolific censorship of vaccine information
• Warren based her call to ban my book on a report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, despite Facebook having discredited that report three weeks earlier, stating the CCDH manufactured a faulty narrative without evidence against the 12 individuals targeted in its report

Since the publication of my book, “The Truth About COVID-19: Exposing The Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports, and the New Normal,” which became an instant best seller on Amazon.com, there’s been a significant increase in censorship and ruthless attacks.

Sadly, many of these attacks have been levied by the very people elected to safeguard democracy and our Constitutional rights. Most recently, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., sent a letter¹ to Andy Jassy, chief executive officer of Amazon.com, demanding an “immediate review” of Amazon’s algorithms to weed out books peddling “COVID misinformation.”^2,3,4

Warren specifically singled out “The Truth About COVID-19” as a prime example of “highly-ranked and favorably-tagged books based on falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines and cures” that she wants to see banned from sale.

“Dr. Mercola has been described as ‘the most influential spreader of coronavirus misinformation online,” Warren writes,⁵ adding: “Not only was this book the top result when searching either ‘COVID-19’ or ‘vaccine’ in the categories of ‘All Departments’ and ‘Books’; it was tagged as a ‘Best Seller’ by Amazon and the ‘#1 Best Seller’ in the ‘Political Freedom’ category. 

The book perpetuates dangerous conspiracies about COVID-19 and false and misleading information about vaccines. It asserts that vitamin C, vitamin D and quercetin … can prevent COVID-19 infection … And the book contends that vaccines cannot be trusted, when study after study has demonstrated the overwhelming effectiveness and safety of COVID-19 vaccines.

It should come as no surprise that the book is rife with misinformation. One of the authors, Dr. Mercola, is one of the ‘Disinformation Dozen,’ a group responsible for 65% of anti-vaccine content on Facebook and Twitter …”

Two days later, September 9, 2021, U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., followed in Warren’s footsteps, sending letters⁶ to Facebook and Amazon, calling for more prolific censorship of vaccine information.⁷

Modern-Day Book Burning

Essentially, what Warren is calling for is modern-day book burning. “The Truth About COVID-19” exposes the hidden agenda behind the pandemic, showing the countermeasures have nothing to do with public health and everything to do with ushering in a new social and economic system based on totalitarian technocracy-led control. So, it’s not misinformation they fear. It’s the truth they want to prevent from spreading.

To make her case, Warren leans on a discredited report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). In that report, “The Disinformation Dozen,”⁸ the CCDH founder Imran Ahmed claims to have identified the top most influential “anti-vaxxers” in the U.S. The problem is Ahmed made that up.

[The ‘Disinformation Dozen’] are responsible for about just 0.05% of all views of vaccine-related content on Facebook. This includes all vaccine-related posts they’ve shared, whether true or false, as well as URLs associated with these people. ~ Monika Bickert, VP Facebook Content Policy

CCDH ‘Manufactured Narrative Without Evidence’ Facebook Says

August 18, 2021 — nearly three weeks before Warren sent that letter to Amazon — Facebook actually called out the CCDH for having manufactured a faulty narrative without evidence against the 12 individuals targeted in its reports.⁹ Monika Bickert, vice president of Facebook content policy, set the record straight, stating:¹⁰

“In recent weeks, there has been a debate about whether the global problem of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation can be solved simply by removing 12 people from social media platforms. People who have advanced this narrative contend that these 12 people are responsible for 73% of online vaccine misinformation on Facebook. There isn’t any evidence to support this claim …

That said, any amount of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation that violates our policies is too much by our standards — and we have removed over three dozen Pages, groups and Facebook or Instagram accounts linked to these 12 people, including at least one linked to each of the 12 people, for violating our policies.

We have also imposed penalties on nearly two dozen additional Pages, groups or accounts linked to these 12 people, like moving their posts lower in News Feed so fewer people see them or not recommending them to others. We’ve applied penalties to some of their website domains as well so any posts including their website content are moved lower in News Feed.

The remaining accounts associated with these individuals are not posting content that breaks our rules, have only posted a small amount of violating content, which we’ve removed, or are simply inactive.

In fact, these 12 people are responsible for about just 0.05% of all views of vaccine-related content on Facebook. This includes all vaccine-related posts they’ve shared, whether true or false, as well as URLs associated with these people.

The report¹¹ upon which the faulty narrative is based analyzed only a narrow set of 483 pieces of content over six weeks from only 30 groups, some of which are as small as 2,500 users. They are in no way representative of the hundreds of millions of posts that people have shared about COVID-19 vaccines in the past months on Facebook.

Further, there is no explanation for how the organization behind the report identified the content they describe as ‘anti-vax’ or how they chose the 30 groups they included in their analysis. There is no justification for their claim that their data constitute a ‘representative sample’ of the content shared across our apps.”

‘Disinfo Dozen’ Barely Register on the Social Media Radar

In its report, the CCDH claims 12 people, including me, are responsible for 65% of anti-vaccine content on social media. I’m not sure where Bickert got the 73% figure from. Either way, we’re not responsible for anywhere near either 65% or 73%.

According to Facebook’s own investigation, we account for a minuscule 0.05% of vaccine-related content — 1,460 times lower than the CCDH’s outrageous claim. Still, Warren and myriad other government officials are using the CCDH as some sort of ultimate authority.

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, White House press secretary Jen Psaki and President Biden have all used the CCDH as the sole source for their wild assertions. Now, Warren wants to use the CCDH’s fraudulent report to ban the sale of certain books, and she does so even after Facebook itself has refuted the CCDH report as being baseless!

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