What Was the Most Insane Piece of Vaccine Propaganda You've Seen?

Recapping two very strange years and the brighter future that awaits

Cultures periodically find themselves in collective psychoses. Some like Tulip mania (where tulip flowers became the most valuable commodity in existence) in retrospect are rather comical, while others like the Salem witch trials and the earlier medieval witch hunts are quite horrifying.

The idea of burning of witches alive has permeated quite deeply into the collective consciousness of our culture. My medical practice tends to draw critical thinkers who question narratives, and quite a few female patients have told me they remember (e.g., due to a past life regression) that they had been a witch who was burned at the stake for their heretical beliefs.

The subject of witch hunts has been on my mind recently after I discovered one of the world’s leading vaccine proponents who advocates for campaigns for censoring any questions of the narrative is a fan of a priest who oversaw the Salem Witch Trials. This admiration was a result of that priest also being one of the first (and hated) proponents of mandatory variolation (the predecessor to vaccination).

I have a friend who had a spiritual awakening that allowed him to survive the Rwandan Genocide (one of the best contemporary examples of how bloodthirsty humans can become) while everyone around him died. Another colleague who has been fighting the mandates recently spoke with a survivor of the Rwandan genocide who left him with a very powerful message: the killing didn’t really start until the government got behind it and let everyone know it was ok to butcher their neighbors.

One of the things that has been so concerning about the pandemic has been the government stepping across that critical line to encourage violence against its own citizens (which the mainstream media has been all too happy to egg on).

Most recently, we had the World Health Organization put this out:

World Health Organization (WHO) @WHO

“Anti-vaccine activism, which I actually call anti-science aggression, has now become a major killing force globally." - @PeterHotez, Professor and Dean @BCM_TropMed, on the devastating impact of #misinformation and disinformation.

These types of actions are completely unacceptable in any type of Democratic society. A few of us were inspired to spend the holidays crafting responses to it, since if these lies go unchecked, they can lead to very bad things very quickly, like those observed in the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century.

Who is the real mass murderer: Peter Hotez or Steve Kirsch?

One of the best ways to combat evil is through comedy. Fortunately, when societies become sufficiently insane, you don’t have to do anything besides highlight is already being said (one well-known Twitter account came to prominence for doing just that), and the insanity is often widely recognized after it has passed.

One of my favorite examples where this is now widely recognized was the medical professions attitudes towards smoking, which has gone from something they aggressively promoted for their sponsors to something they resolutely oppose.

Tess shared a few other classic examples here.

There were a few red flags with COVID-19 that informed me the vaccines would turn into a disaster. One was that their publicity campaign was the most aggressive public relations effort I had seen in my lifetime—every single stop that could be pulled out to sell a product was. This suggested that widespread public resistance would mount against their use once the adverse reactions became apparent, that mandates would be necessary to vaccinate the rest of the population, and that those mandates would be justified by the percentage of the population which had already been vaccinated due to falling for the previous PR campaign.

Because of this, I decided to collect some of the most memorable pieces of propaganda, so that once the gross malfeasance that allowed the vaccines to be approved became known, like the previous smoking example, they could serve as a lesson to future generations being targeted by similar predatory business practices.

Trashy Advertisements

Because the government spent at least a billion dollars to promote these vaccines across every media platform, it was inevitable some pretty trashy promotions would occur. One of the most well known examples was from this late night talk show.

Stephen Colbert sadly was not the only one to create trashy musicals to promote these poisons:

As you would imagine, music videos were also created:

“This ain’t eugenics, uh uh, no way”….I don’t even know what to say here.

There were also a few more professionally made produced music videos aimed at marketing the vaccines as the miraculous solution to everything we had just been put through.

The entertainment industry did everything they could to promote the vaccines, so not surprisingly, celebrities also got on the bandwagon:

Benefit concerts to help vaccinate the world were also conducted.

Some of the most trashy campaigns (which fortunately raised more concerns about the vaccines than it persuaded to take them) were the vaccine lotteries seen across the country.

Another trashy campaign came from the Mayor of Chicago:

Joints for jabs also briefly became a national phenomena:

Note: Free alcohol was also offered to the vaccinated by multiple companies.

The story above can be found here.

Sleazy Advertising:

Sex sells, so it was not surprising human relationships would be targeted throughout the pandemic.

Health authorities around the world also gave far more ridiculous advice throughout the pandemic regarding social distancing during physical intimacy, that to this day, I am still a bit in disbelief they promoted.

I’m almost sad I never got this message for Valentine’s day.

One of the many of vaccine side effects I’ve repeatedly come across is erectile dysfunction which I believe is a result of the micro-clotting they cause.

This really happened. Others were even more direct:

Vaccination Instead of Health

Years ago, I read a book that argued all successful ideologies must market themselves with messages that were universally persuasive. The two messages that fulfill that criteria are:

•You are special.

•Everything that is wrong with your life is not your fault.

I generally agree with that author’s argument, although as the previous section shows, you can also make the case that a sexual or financial appeal comes close to being a universal persuasion. Everyone I’ve spoken to believes around 90% of the population is susceptible to universal persuasions (the 3-10% that prioritize thinking critically instead want things that make sense and feel genuine).

Note: One of the sad thing I’ve observed with people in medicine, and particularly within public health is that their focus of reality becomes so narrowed that mass vaccination (and similar interventions like water fluoridation) are seen as the sole determinants of health. Because of this, I often see these people continually freaking out over vaccine hesitancy and quite literally loosing sleep at night over the small numbers of people who are not vaccinated (this frustration existed long before COVID-19 at a time when far fewer people questioned vaccination).

Throughout COVID-19, vaccinated people were made to feel like they were superior to everyone else, and all personal responsibility (e.g., having a healthy lifestyle) that was known to reduce your risk of COVID-19 was thrown out the window for the belief you could magically solve every problem in your life by having someone else simply give you a vaccine

Peter Hotez recently provided what I believe may be the most widely recognized illustrations of this mentality in history (it was seen by millions of people):

Pierre Kory, MD MPA @PierreKory

This might be my all time favorite Joe Rogan moment. In just a few minutes, Peter Hotez inadvertently shows the world exactly what has gone wrong with our medical system and why his endless push for more vaccines will never create health.

Sadly, Peter is not alone in this regard, and many others share his beliefs. The best example I know of came from the Hawaii’s government:

Note: Keiki is Hawaiian for children.

Sadly, this same ignorance could be seen all the way across the nation:

“I want you to look at this [burger] and think of [it] when you think of vaccination. Yumm…vaccination…I’m getting a very good feeling about vaccination.”

One reader shared that New Zealand used free KFC to promote the vaccines (with the campaign being targeted to the native Maori population):

After I saw this I could not help but be reminded of a previous breast cancer promotion (there was also one done for fracking drill bits):

There was also the infamous Krispy Kreme promotion. I felt it was particularly noteworthy because I believe the only thing all members of the political spectrum were in agreement about COVID-19 was it being more dangerous for obese diabetics.

I was truly amazed at how far the media went to promote this campaign:

I could not believe they actually made heart-shaped donuts to commemorate the vaccines…

Or how ignorant the health care authorities expected us to be about medicine:

Or the immune system:

This was another great excuses for the vaccines failing (which I must note, was known would happen from the start of the campaign).

The FDA’s unscientific advertisements were not limited to vaccines. While working with industry to protect the market for these vaccines, the FDA also made other nonsensical claims like rebranding ivermectin as a horse dewormer:

In the same way industry and government will lie about health to sell their products, it is also very common new diseases will be created out of thin air (this is termed disease branding and sadly is much more common than you might realize, especially in psychiatry). One of the most comical examples I saw was the attempt to create this psychiatric condition:

A common marketing strategy is to make people want what they can’t have, and I assumed this campaign was aimed at reinforcing that (remember, when the vaccines were rolled out, they were deliberately made only available to certain groups so everyone felt left out until it was there turn)…Then again I may in fact be suffering from vaccine envy and all the work I have done over the last year is simply an expression of these repressed emotions!

Targeting Children

Virtually ever cult always targets children because it is well known that if you convert someone at a young age (when they lack the critical thinking to resist common brainwashing tactics) they are converted for life, which is always necessary for the long-term viability of the institution.

These advertisements become quite surreal when you see them be targeted to children (if you have any doubts, read “Elmo’s” tweet about it).

It still amazes me public health officials do not recognize needing boosters means your vaccination program has failed...

Ryan Gerritsen🇨🇦🇳🇱 @ryangerritsen

Quebec child vaccination ad. Unbelievable.

Children were of course also used to market the vaccine to adults:

A Midwestern Doctor @MidwesternDoc

My favorite thing about this video is that Africa, despite having very low uptake of the vaccines, has remarkably fared better than the rest of the world with COVID-19 and no expert can explain why.

This was probably the saddest example I saw throughout the pandemic:

The most criminal example however was Pfizer’s advertising for children to be in their vaccine trials (remember the case of Maddie de Garay, who was permanently disabled in the Pfizer trial for kids, had her injury recorded as stomach pain, and then was kicked to the curb by Pfizer):

This meme was also adopted to later market the vaccines:

Superheroes were also used to incentivize children to vaccinate in other settings.

Holiday Festivities:

Since nothing was off limits, the holidays were also targeted and I heard more stories than I can count of people being banned from Thanksgiving or Christmas because they did not want to be vaccinated (I can’t recall another time where a government campaign targeted our critical social bonds like this).

Note: The above photo was taken by a reader.

Australia lead the charge in isolating the unvaccinated from society. Not surprisingly their chief public health officer likewise advised against having unvaccinated family members at Christmas.

Stanford, for example, really pushed this immoral narrative.

This campaign was particularly egregious because everyone knew the vaccines did not protect against transmission (so it was irrelevant if a relative was unvaccinated), but our public officials intentionally lied about that so that they could have another argument to justify their unlawful mandates.

Near the start of the marketing campaign, Fauci helped feed into this hysteria by “vaccinating” Santa so Christmas could be saved:

Note: Santa is probably one of the most socially distanced individuals on the planet.

One of the most upsetting vaccine promotions I came across echoing this theme came about a year later:

As hard as that is to believe, Canada actually aired the same message this year:

Conclusion:

A classic marketing strategy is to create a need and then market a product as the solution to that need. Throughout the pandemic, it was clear the purpose of the lockdowns and social distancing was to create the “need” for vaccines, and the advertisements here should reflect how much work was done to sway those who did not succumb to that need.

If I had to pick the single most absurd message I saw throughout the pandemic, it would be the one Igor Chudov discovered:

My runner up was this example which was widely promoted at the time it happened (I know there are a lot of contenders, but this one is something else):

A reader also offered an excellent contender:

Fortunately, while the last two years have been quite depressing, more and more signs are showing that mass psychosis is breaking. Almost everyone, despite Peter Hotez’s best efforts, has avoided the boosters, and according to the most recent survey, the majority of the population is concerned about their safety (a significant portion also doubts their efficacy). Once that psychosis breaks, it is critical to preserve these examples as reminders for the next generation so history does not repeat itself and the same cons can be pulled again.

One of the things that bothers me immensely about this is that because the messaging these people provided aligned with the vested interests, they could lie or spread as much misinformation as they wanted without any accountability (Hotez for example has been trotted out as an expert throughout COVID-19, tries to censor all “misinformation” and has had made an endless number of erroneous doom and gloom pronouncements on television). I feel that if I were to state 1% of the lies many of these people have stated I would not have the readership I have (as I’d be rightfully viewed as someone who is untrustworthy) and many would be eagerly jumping on those errors.

This is probably the most offensive disinformation I came across as its consequences were disastrous for many (e.g., I know many elderly individuals who died from the vaccines).

A key theme I have been trying to highlight here is that the traditional model of governance where leaders decide (often questionable) policies and then shove them down the public’s throat with propaganda no longer works. In the past, this could be done because there was a monopoly in the media which made it possible for an absurd message like the ones shown above to be distributed throughout the population and no competing narrative to see the light of day.

The Internet has upended that equation because there are far too many people who will create competing narratives at almost no cost (whereas the traditional propaganda model is expensive), and the internet naturally selects for the most compelling arguments to be seen. For example, a few of the messages I came up with off the top of my head that were put together in my free time have now been seen by millions of people. Regardless of how much money is spent, government and industry can never compete with millions of citizens looking for ways to spread the truth online.

Over the last few years, I, and others, have come to believe we are witnessing the death spiral of the traditional propaganda model (which, as is commonly seen in failing totalitarian states, is defaulting to more absurd lies to maintain its “authority” that only further weaken the public’s trust). I cannot see any way out of this as the COVID-19 vaccine campaign was so egregious it destroyed much of the longstanding credibility our institutions had, and the only other option, destroying the internet entirely, is no longer viable because too much of our economy is intertwined with it.

The authors who initially proposed this theory believe the only remaining option is for our government to follow the alternative model envisioned a century ago:

Instead of having a qualified leadership govern the country as it pleased, we need to develop an educated citizenry who can understand the complex problems our country faces. The populace, then of their own accord, must be convinced the policies our leadership choses make sense and agree to follow them of their own free will. I believe this is the shift our species will go in and that each of us should be doing our part to help develop an informed public (I also suspect Elon Musk’s recognition of this reality led him to buy Twitter so it could be used for that purpose).

At this point, I am very hopeful for where things will go over the next few years but simultaneous recognize the previous regime that depended upon censorship and control will continue to struggle harder and harder until it is forced to accept the times have changed.

Thank you so much for all of your support over the last year. I am still in awe of how fast this substack has taken off and I hope I can continue to reciprocate that support to each of you as we move into 2023. Please let me know in the comments if you believe there are any important vaccine promotions I forgot to highlight (I will add them in) and which your favorite example was. I also hope you have a New Year’s Resolution planned that is a bit better than Hawaii’s example shown above!