Anti-Vaxxers Are Saying We Are Magnetized, Microchipped....And Wait, There's More

If you know anti-vaxxers, you know Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, disinformation diva and homeopathic hippie long gone off the rails. Her site takes for granted that vaccines, the “unsafe and defective tentacles of Big Pharma,” cause all the things, from ADHD to digestive disorders. According to Politifact, Sherri’s so far down the rabbit hole she’s become one of twelve influencers responsible for 65% of all anti-vax nonsense on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, which is a technical metric fuckton of bullshit. But Sherri outdid herself on June 8th in front of Ohio state legislators, according to The New York Daily News, when she ranted that “I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures all over the internet of people who have had these shots and now they’re magnetized. They can put a key on their forehead (and) it sticks… They can put spoons and forks all over them.”

According to Sherri Tenpenny, your Pfizer shot will turn you into Magneto. Which would be cool, except then you have to fight Iron Man, and no one has the resources to go after Tony Stark. Right?

That would have made about as much sense as her real point. But it gets worse.

The U.K. Independent tells how a nurse stood up and attempted to prove her Covid vaccine had turned her into Magneto through “magnetic vaccine crystals” by sticking a key and a bobby pin to her chest. No one was super-impressed, so she tried to stick the key to her neck.

Her Covid-vaccine induced superpowers failed her.

“Covid vaccines will make you magnetic” is just the latest lie spread by the Covid anti-vaxxers, who are becoming more and more desperate by the day as 44.2% of Americans, and 42.6% of Ohioans, are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. The Magneto Lie has become so pervasive that the CDC had to issue a fucking statement, which should make us all want to walk quietly into the sea. They say that the COVID-19 vaccine does not contain “ingredients that can produce an electromagnetic field”; moreover, even if it did, “the vaccine is less than a milliliter,” which is not enough for anything magnetic to stick to the injection site itself, much less your body as a whole, much less turn you into one of the X-Men.

Sorry to crush your dreams.

Did You Hear The Anti-Vaxxer One About The Microchip?

Of course you did.

Covid anti-vaxxers, especially of the Q-Anon stripe, love to tell you that Bill Gates put a tracking chip in every single vaccine dose. It’s always Bill Gates. But how do “They” assure each person gets microchipped? Are there numerous microchips floating around in each bottle of vaccine? What if I get five microchips and you get none? Do we get microchipped on the first or second dose? How do “They” differentiate between first and second doses? Is everything back there labeled? At this point, we’re talking about a conspiracy involving my friendly neighborhood pharmacist.

The CDC answered this one sideways, which should make you despair for America, a land where John Cougar Mellencamp fans could once suck on chili dogs outside the Tasti-Freeze without someone bitching about the Deep State. “All COVID-19 vaccines,” the CDC says, “are free from… any manufactured products such as microelectronics, electrodes, carbon nanotubes, and nanowire semiconductors.”

Reuters has debunked this theory multiple times. Exactly six times, in fact, because that’s how desperate anti-vaxxers are to push it — and how eager Americans are to believe that Bill Gates is evil, we’re capable of fringe science, and that’s how far the rabbit hole goes. All the way to your neighborhood pharmacy, my friend. Oh, and that supposed diagram passed around Twitter as a mock-up for a Covid microchip? It’s a guitar pedal.

You Will Not Become A Hybrid

Covid anti-vaxxers have also been peddling some bullshit about the vaccine turning you into a hybrid… of some kind. Here’s how it works. Sort of. Kind of. According to pseudoscience, or something I saw on “The X-Files” once, COVID-19 vaccines use mRNA, or “messenger RNA,” or nanotechnology, to alter human DNA and turn recipients into a hybrid. This will make you, according to a Facebook post Reuters cites, “no longer human… Nanotechnology. It spreads itself throughout the body altering the dna & reeking [sic] havoc on the entire system. There is no way to detoxify or remove it from the body. It’s forever.”

Now we’re becoming the Terminator?

As Reuters says, mRNA does not in fact alter your DNA, and the CDC pretty much covered the no nanotechnology part. Covid anti-vaxxers seem to be spinning lies straight out of sci-fi, and Americans — like Fox Mulder from “The X-Files” — want to believe. This is why we have vaccines going bad. The anti-vaxxers seem to be more and more desperate and more and more solid science emerges: that the vaccine doesn’t harm the placenta, that it doesn’t shed the live COVID-19 virus (that lie’s out there, but it’s not one anti-vaxxers are shouting particularly loudly), that they are safe and effective. Of course, if you don’t trust Big Pharma, or if you regularly use the words “Big Pharma,” you’ll find none of this information persuasive, and probably fall back on nanotechnology anyway.

But Why Are We Falling For Anti-Vaxxers’ Lies?

Americans are suckers for an easy narrative. We love a good Western, with clear good guys and bad guys all wrapped up in a bow. Vaccines and pandemics and herd immunity and death tolls are scary and murky and confusing, with no clear villains and no clear winners. Covid anti-vaxxers hand scared people an easy way to take control. We are the Good Guys. Big Pharma/the Deep State are the Bad Guys.

Covid anti-vaxxers are the snake-oil salesmen of the 21st century, peddling lies about 5G networks for clicks. Americans want to believe, because right now it’s hard to believe in anything. Nanotechnology, magnetic powers, Deep State conspiracy — they’re willing to think they’ll turn into Magneto or the Terminator if they get jabbed rather than face the terror of efficacy rates and variants and death tolls. It’s too much.

They call us Sheeple, because we believe what the media tells us. That’s part of the Big Lie. Everything’s part of the Big Lie if you squint at it the right away. According to NPR, 25% of Americans won’t get a COVID-19 vaccine, and PBS has found that 41% of Republicans still refuse one. We don’t know how many of those people will refuse a vaccine because they believe in COVID-19 conspiracy crap. But sometimes it’s easier to swallow the pill than take the needle.