Here’s a hint: they don’t have any.

It is impossible to keep up with the endless stream of malicious medical misinformation that is posted and reposted on social media. Malicious because giving people false medical advice, including passing on false information in the form of memes on Facebook, can lead to people making the wrong decisions, which in turn can lead to serious illness and death. The eighty-three deaths, most of them children, in the measles outbreak in Samoa in 2020 is a perfect example.

People who care about the truth, who care about accuracy, who care about others, including their health and their children, will check, every time, that what they are posting is supported by real and reliable evidence.

One example of misrepresentation of fact is a meme which claims that nothing natural can patented, and that a patent proves it was deliberately created. It then lists supposed patents for AIDS, Swine Flu, Ebola, and of course, coronavirus, proving that these diseases were designed.

Patent 5676977, claimed to the patent for AIDS, is first on the list. It is not a patent for AIDS, but for a proposed treatment using tetrasilver tetroxide.

Patent 10130701 is the last on the list, its presence supposedly proving the COVID-19 pandemic was planned. It is not a patent for COVID-19 but for an attenuated (weakened) form of another coronavirus entirely, one that causes avian infectious bronchitis. It was patented for possible use as a veterinary vaccine. No patent on the list, when checked, has anything to do with the invention of any illness.

It takes much more effort to stop, check, think, and ask questions than to pass on harmful memes. But a person who is honest and who cares about others will check nonetheless, and do so every time.

Another is a claimed list of ingredients for the flu vaccine. It is not a list of ingredients for any flu vaccine, but an apparently random collection of scary-sounding chemicals and pollutants. One of those listed is thimerosal. This is a form of ethyl mercury which was included in tiny amounts in some vaccines as a preservative. There is a difference between ethyl and methyl mercury, just as there is a difference between ethyl alcohol (a few beers with your mates) and methyl alcohol (going blind or dying in a bar in Laos). Ethyl mercury is quickly and easily removed from the body with no ill effects. Because false anti-vaccination propaganda was making the presence of thimerosal a cause for vaccine hesitancy, it was removed from vaccines in Australia. No flu or COVID-19 vaccine contains any form of mercury.

Truth does not matter to anti-vaxxers.

The list goes on. “Worm-like self-assembling entities found in COVID vaccines” No, they weren’t.

“74% percent of children who died from SIDS had been vaccinated the same day.” Completely false. There is no correlation between vaccination and an increased rate of SIDS.

“Leading doctor says medical personnel instructed to murder millions by putting them on ventilators.”  Getting to the bottom of this one took some time.

The “leading doctor” was not a doctor at all but a low-level respiratory therapist in a non-acute clinic. And he didn’t say millions were killed on instructions from some mysterious figure or organisation. He noticed COVID-19 patients on ventilators died at higher rates than those not placed on ventilators, and said he thought maybe thousands had died because of this. He forgot to take into account that patients on ventilators were the most seriously ill and would  certainly have died had they not been ventilated.

If you see one of these memes, or anything that similarly intends people to reject life-saving medical procedures, or anything at all from slay news or the people’s voice, or other fake news sites, just stop! Stop and think, check, ask questions.

Passing on memes on medical matters without checking is not proof of your superior critical thinking skills. It is not proof of your superior scientific knowledge. It is not proof that you are enlightened, or that the real evidence is being hidden by the medical establishment. The only thing it is proof of is that you care neither about truth nor other people. Stop it.