Tag: amish

Another fake fact check from Facebook’s “Science Feedback”: this one about Amish Covid-19 immunity

If you’ve paid attention, you already know that Facebook’s “Science Feedback” and other health-related fact checkers are prolific distributors of misinformation and false information that typically benefits the vaccine or pharmaceutical industry.

They tend to “fact check” articles about medical studies and topics that are having an impact on the public, in hopes of tamping down the buzz and circulation of the data or details.

This week, these players are working hard to keep the public from learning that the Amish have claimed to reach “herd immunity” with Covid-19 and fared better than places that imposed drastic measures. The Amish say they did so without masking, closing, social distancing, or vaccination.

The Amish claim of herd immunity was previously reported by Associated Press and other news organizations, but didn’t get wide circulation. The propagandists and fake fact checkers didn’t challenge the topic at the time.

But my report on the same, which aired last Sunday on Full Measure, must be having an impact.

In response, Facebook’s Health Feedback propagandists have made several false and unsupported claims in an attempt to discredit The Amish approach and the reporting about it.

The fake fact-checkers, edited by a woman named Fernanda Ferreira, falsely claim that “natural immunity post-infection is variable, while vaccination provides safer and more reliable immunity.” The bulk of the scientific studies show the opposite. (You can find them here and decide for yourself.)

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Amish community may have reached COVID ‘herd immunity,’ health official says

An Amish community in Pennsylvania may have become the first group in the US to achieve herd immunity, a local health official claims.

The administrator of a medical center in the heart of Lancaster County’s New Holland Borough, which is known for its Amish and Mennonite communities, estimates that as many as 90 percent of the religious families have had at least one family member infected with the virus.

“So, you would think if COVID was as contagious as they say, it would go through like a tsunami; and it did,” said Allen Hoover, an administrator of the Parochial Medical Center, which caters to the religious community and has 33,000 patients.

The Amish and Mennonite groups initially complied with stay-at-home orders at the beginning of the pandemic — shuttering schoolhouses and canceling church services.

But by late April, they had resumed worship services, where they shared communion cups and holy kisses, a church greeting among believers.

Soon after, the virus tore throughout the religious enclave.

“It was bad here in the spring; one patient right after another,” said Pam Cooper, a physician’s assistant at the Parochial Medical Center.

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