Anti-Vaccine Groups Collected Federal Covid-19 Relief Funds

PPP loans were given to anti-vaccine groups - The Washington Post
"Five prominent anti-vaccine organizations that have been known to spread misleading information about the coronavirus received more than $850,000 in loans from the federal Paycheck Protection Program, raising questions about why the government is giving money to groups actively opposing its agenda and seeking to undermine public health during a critical period.

The groups that received the loans are the National Vaccine Information Center, Mercola Health Resources, the Informed Consent Action Network, the Children’s Health Defense and the Tenpenny Integrative Medical Center, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, an advocacy group based in the United Kingdom that fights misinformation and conducted the research using public documents. The group relied on data released in early December by the Small Business Administration in response to a lawsuit from The Washington Post and other news organizations.

Several of the Facebook pages of these organizations have been penalized by the social network, including being prohibited from buying advertising, for pushing misinformation about the coronavirus.

Vaccines are largely considered safe and effective, and clinical trials for those made by Moderna and Pfizer did not raise serious safety concerns. But many Americans hold skeptical attitudes about vaccination, attitudes that public health experts have said are attributable in part to misinformation. Nearly 40 percent of Americans say they definitely or probably would not get a coronavirus vaccine, according to a December survey by the Pew Research Center. Certain groups, including Republicans and Black Americans, are even more skeptical, Pew found. A major funder of the anti-vaccine movement has made millions selling natural health products

Public health officials, including World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, have called vaccine misinformation “a major threat to global health that could reverse decades of progress made in tackling preventable diseases,” and last year the organization partnered with Facebook to help counter misinformation on its platform with content from authoritative sources.


Report: Anti-Vaccine Groups Collected Federal Covid Relief Funds
TOPLINE

Several groups that have misleadingly questioned the safety of Covid-19 vaccines earned over $850,000 in federal coronavirus relief funding last year, the Washington Post reported Monday, leading some critics to question why organizations that could erode public health efforts qualified for large government-backed Paycheck Protection Program loans.

KEY FACTS
In total, five groups that have espoused anti-vaccine views received PPP loans, according to data from the Center for Countering Digital Hate published by the Post.


Two of these groups earned over $150,000, per federal data: Mercola, an organization whose website suggests (despite ample evidence to the contrary) Covid-19 vaccines are unsafe and face masks are ineffective, and the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), which published a whitepaper linking other common vaccines to autism, a theory the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has categorically rejected.

Three other groups received less than $150,000: Children’s Health Defense, the National Vaccine Information Center and the Tenpenny Integrative Medical Center.

These groups likely didn’t run afoul of any federal rules by applying for PPP funds because the program’s qualifications are fairly broad, the Small Business Administration told the Post (the SBA did not respond to a request for comment from Forbes).

Children’s Health Defense founder Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Forbes his organization qualified for a loan under federal law, National Vaccine Information Center co-founder Barbara Loe Fisher said she used PPP to fund employees’ salaries, and ICAN CEO Del Bigtree also said a PPP loan helped his group stay in operation; all three leaders rejected the notion that their groups are anti-vaccine, instead arguing they look out for consumer safety (all three organizations have questioned the safety of widely used vaccines).

The other two groups that received funds did not respond to requests for comment."

How sick is that!? Bailing out organizations that directly undermine the ability of health officials to combat the pandemic.

 

No PPP for anti-vaxxers! Ten advocacy groups tell SBA to claw back $850,000 in PPP Funding to anti-vaxxers – National Consumers League (nclnet.org)
"Washington, DC—Ten patient and consumer advocacy organizations are demanding that the Small Business Administration claw back nearly a million dollars worth of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) monies granted to the leading American anti-vaccine groups.

The advocacy organizations sent a joint letter to the U.S. Small Business Administration to express their collective concerns about the fact that, according to the Washington Post, five of the most virulent anti-vaccine organizations—each of which has spread misleading information about the coronavirus—were granted more than $850,000 in loans from the federal PPP.

“Recipients of PPP loans include organizations that engage in conspiracy theories and lies about the safety and efficacy of vaccines generally and in this current environment, have spread misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine,” stated the letter.

Operation Warp Speed—the federal government’s program to develop, produce, and distribute enough COVID-19 vaccine doses to inoculate 300 million Americans in record time—has cost the American taxpayer roughly $12 billion so far, a number expected to grow more than two-fold at $26 billion. 

“It is unfathomable and utterly counterproductive that taxpayer money was awarded to anti-vaccine groups during this national public health crisis,” the groups wrote. They called upon the Small Business Administration and the Biden Administration to investigate and rescind the loans made to the following anti-vaccination groups: "

Read more HERE.