The Root of COVID Misinformation

Wayne Allyn Root worked his way down the right-wing media food chain to end up at WorldNetDaily, which has shown itself to be quite tolerant of his factually deficient fearmongering about COVID vaccines.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 1/3/2022

Wayne Allyn Root

WND had previously published Root off and on for years, and his last appearance had been in 2016. But starting in late 2020, WND began publishing Root's weekly column. In his Dec. 21, 2020, column, Root had a meltdown over Dr. Anthony Fauci's call to restrict holiday gatherings to reduce the spread of coronavirus:

I have a message for Dr Fauci: "First, not just no. HELL NO. This is America. This is a free country. If we want to celebrate Christmas, we will. If we want to go to church, we will. If we want to spend the holidays with our children, we will. We're adults. We make our own decisions. This isn't a nanny state. It's not the Soviet Union. It's not Nazi Germany. We don't need government bureaucrats telling us what to do, how to live our lives or how to spend the holidays.

"Second, you're a typical Ivy League egghead. You're too smart for your own good. You have IQ but clearly no emotional intelligence. And certainly no common sense.

"Third, how can I say this nicely? SCREW YOU. I love my family. I love my children. I love Christmas. I don't know you. I don't owe you. And I don't answer to you."

It seems clear that Root doesn't love his family enough to take commonsense precautions during a pandemic.

As 2021 continued, Root's spasms of COVID misinformation grew more intense. In his June 14 column, Wayne Allyn Root detailed an interview with Vladimir Zelenko, a doctor whose claims about hydroxychloroquine being an effective treatment for COVID were enthusiastically touted by WND early in the pandemic despite his work lacking credible documentation. Root went on to rant:

It's time to start asking why treatments for COVID-19 proven in multiple studies around the world to save lives are slandered, censored and banned by social media? Who are they to ban life-saving information? Who are they to label life-saving information as "medical misinformation"? What's in it for them if thousands die needlessly? Somebody clearly is getting filthy rich on this scam.

I asked Zelenko about it on a return visit to my show only days ago. He said: "Pre-hospital treatment of COVID-19 was intentionally suppressed. Life-saving information and medication was intentionally suppressed. ... Out of 600,000 dead Americans, we could have saved 510,000. The American people have been brutalized and are the victims of mass murder and crimes against humanity."

I asked Zelenko for his solution to this ongoing tragedy. He said, "Number one, immediately endorse pre-hospital treatment with the Zelenko Protocol, and make it the standard of care. Number two, we must bring these criminals to justice."

Amen.

An anonymously written Aug. 6 WND article complained that Google "stopped serving its ads on WND's homepage, apparently because the tech giant deemed many of the news site's stories and opinion columns to contain "unreliable and harmful claims," adding:

Among the offending articles was an Aug. 2 opinion column by Wayne Allyn Root titled "The vaccine isn't working, but the gravy train is." In it, Root backs his claim by citing a Bloomberg report that there were more than 110,000 cases of "breakthrough COVID-19," meaning cases in which people tested positive for COVID after having been vaccinated.

WND, unsurprisingly, is misrepresenting the contents of Root's column, pretending a relatively uncontroversial claim is the sticking point. In fact, the thesis of Root's column is that it's "a great big lie" to claim that unvaccinated people are driving the current surge in COVID cases. Root touted that "In Singapore, 75% of the new COVID-19 cases are among the vaccinated" -- but that claim lacks context; it omits the fact that cases among vaccinated people are less severe, while unvaccinated people are catching more severe cases of COVID. Root also ranted that President Biden let refugees from countries where the purportedly "live among filth and squalor" and "bring with them Third World illness and disease" into the U.S., meaning "These are the dreaded superspreaders." That is not true.

Root goes full Godwin

Root began his Aug. 9 WND column by declaring, "This is the most important commentary I've ever written." But it turns out that by "most important," he meant "craziest and most Nazi-smearing":

This is 1938. I'm a Jew. I now understand just a little of what it felt like to be a Jew in 1938. No, it's not the Holocaust. Nothing can be compared to the Holocaust. Ever.

But 1938 was not the Holocaust. It was the pre-Holocaust. It was the time before the nightmare, when the foundation was being laid to destroy the freedom, free speech, businesses and lives of millions of Jews.

Everything happening today to the American people … to the U.S. Constitution ... to freedom ... and particularly to unvaccinated Americans reminds me of 1938. This is only the beginning. It gets much worse from here.

First, "the papers." Vaccine mandates and vaccine passports are just like 1938, when the Gestapo demanded papers from every German.

Republicans asked for "papers" from migrants who had broken into our country. Criminals. Democrats said, "No, that's racism." Republicans asked for "papers" once every two years for federal elections, to prove you have a right to vote. Democrats said, "No, that's racism."

Now Democrats want American citizens, not illegal aliens, not criminals, but patriots born in this country, to produce papers 24/7. We'll need papers to enter restaurants, bars, nightclubs, concerts, casinos, conventions and hotels and to board a train, plane or bus. We'll need papers to enter a supermarket, or we'll starve to death. All for the crime of being unvaccinated against ... wait for it ...

The flu.

All for the crime of being unwilling to inject an untested, rushed to production, experimental, "for emergency use only" shot into our bodies.

Nope, Wayne, COVID is not the flu. Then he laughably insisted: "By the way, this isn't about vaccines. If you want the vaccine, take it. I'd never stop you. I'd never limit your freedom, your choice. This is about vaccine mandates – forcibly injecting Americans who don't want it. That's 1938." But if he's lying that the COVID vaccines are "untested, rushed to production, experimental," it's definitely about the vaccine. And never mind that when the pandemic began, Root was touting how "the coronavirus vaccine will be developed in a capitalist nation." He seemed pretty bullish on the vaccine back then.

But he wasn't done ranting or Nazi-baiting:

Stars on clothing. It's coming. The vaccinated get into restaurants, bars, concerts, supermarkets, planes and trains. They keep their jobs. The rest of us are marked as "subhuman" for life. That's the star. That's 1938.

Media and social media as the public-relations wing of the government. That's called propaganda. Remind you of 1938? Back then, the Jews' books were burned. Today, it's those of conservatives, patriots and specifically the unvaccinated. We are silenced. Our facts are labeled "misleading." Only the facts that agree with big government's agenda count. That's 1938.

Door-to-door intimidation and making lists of those who disagree with "government knows best." Trust me, that army of door-to-door vaccine brainwashers will soon be turned into a Gestapo of gun-grabbers. 1938 was the year Nazis banned Jews from owning guns. They took them door to door. That's 1938.

Only days ago, a former Department of Homeland Security official said the unvaccinated should be on the federal no-fly list. That's exactly how Nazis attacked the Jews and others who disagreed with their agenda. It was always lists. Lists of people to be disappeared in the middle of the night; lists of those to be sent to reeducation camps; lists of those to be sent to concentration camps; lists of enemies of the state. It's happening again. Maybe this time you'll only lose your job or free speech. This is, again, 1938.

It's all disgusting and disgraceful. But I'm warning you, this is just the start. It's all going downhill from here – fast. This is the end of America. This is 1938.

Root has to keep his readers agitated and hateful. Where does he go after smearing people he doesn't like as literal Nazis? He clearly doesn't see his own vicious hyperbole as disgusting and disgraceful.

Root invoked "1938 Nazi Germany" again in his Aug. 16 column:

This is madness. Forced vaccination with an experimental "for emergency use only" shot has precipitated death or injury for over 500,000 Americans. Is this really happening? Are you sure this isn't 1938 Nazi Germany, or a communist country that provides no civil or human rights to its citizens? Because this can't be America.

That figure of over 500,000 total deaths, serious injuries and adverse effects linked to the COVID-19 vaccines is not from me ... it's not from some wild, unreliable internet rumor ... it comes from the vaccine adverse event reporting system called VAERS that's connected to the U.S. government and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It's more deaths and injuries than all the vaccines in the past three decades combined, by a mile. By the way, throughout history, VAERS has always underreported deaths and injuries by a wide margin.

Root went on to claim that "In the European Union, the same vaccine reporting system reports over 20,000 dead and over 2 million injured by the vaccines" -- though the European system works the same way as VAERS in that reported effects have not been verified.

Root continued to fearmonger: "In Massachusetts, there are 9,969 "breakthrough cases" of vaccinated people with COVID-19, and over 100 vaccinated people are dead of COVID-19. That's reported by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health." But that 9,969 number is a mere 0.23 percent of all people fully vaccinated in the state.

Root then ranted:

If Trump were president, the media would be reporting those numbers in gigantic headlines and calling "Trump's vaccine" a "Frankenstein's monster." They'd be accusing Trump of murder. They'd be calling him "Hitler."

Not one Democrat in America would be taking these vaccines.

There would be Black Lives Matter riots as black Americans accused Trump of racism and genocide. The American Civil Liberties Union would be filing lawsuits in every city, county and state in America. They'd call forced vaccinations under Trump "the civil rights issue of our lifetime."

And the children? Are you aware Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (the most respected in the world) just did a study of 45,000 American kids with COVID-19 and found zero deaths among healthy children? Zero as in 0. Only a handful of children in all of America died from COVID-19, and Johns Hopkins reports all of them had childhood cancer.

So, if Trump were president and the government demanded every schoolchild be masked and vaccinated with a dangerous and sometimes deadly experimental vaccine, even though there was zero risk of death from this flu bug, what would liberals say? How about feminist mothers?

You don't have to guess. I know. Liberal mothers across America would say, "Trump wants to murder our children."

Root's unspoken implication is that if Trump were still president, he'd be first in line to get the vaccine and would be downplaying or dismissing the purported side effects he's now fearmongering about. After all, he has been nothing if not a major Trump suck-up over the past four-plus years.

Root's argument here is hollow and cynical. We wouldn't expect anything else.

Self-unawareness

Root struck again in his Sept. 6 column, beginning with unironically insisting that everyone else is lying but him:

It's been quite a week. I've been in the media business for decades and I've never before witnessed such lies, exaggeration and outright fraud. All with the intent to force everyone to be vaccinated. The question is why?

Let's start with the vaccine itself. The results in Israel prove what a sham, charade and fraud this all is. The U.S. government and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention argue that the vaccine is our only chance to survive. And that people are hospitalized and dying with COVID-19 because they are unvaccinated.

Both arguments are pure fraud.

[...]

Worst of all, the media have blacked out the developing disaster in Israel. Israel is the most vaccinated country in the world. They all got the Pfizer vaccine. At first, deaths and hospitalizations went to almost zero. Israel declared victory over COVID-19.

But everything changed. Today a massive COVID-19 outbreak has engulfed vaccinated Israel. Hospitals are full. People are dying. At this moment, Israel, the most vaccinated nation in the world, has more COVID-19 infections per capita than any country in the world.

At this moment, 0.2% of the entire population of Israel is catching COVID-19 each day.

This past week was the worst week for COVID-19 in Israel EVER. Israel is setting records for vaccinated people in the hospital. Deaths are skyrocketing.

Root offers no source for his claim that "0.2% of the entire population of Israel is catching COVID-19 each day" -- we could find no evidence to back it up -- which is a major tell that he's probably lying. but actual data from Israel tell a far different story:

But early data from the Health Ministry aired by Channel 12 news Sunday evening appears to show that those who have received a third vaccine dose are highly protected against the disease. According to the data, just 0.2% of the first 1.1 million Israelis who got their booster dose have been diagnosed with COVID-19 after at least seven days passed since the shot.

In absolute terms, the number of virus carriers who received their third dose is 2,790. Of them, just 187 (0.01%) were hospitalized and 88 (0.008%) developed serious symptoms. Fewer than 15 of them have died, with the report offering no exact number.

Root went on to selectively rant about the reason why:

The vaccine isn't just failing, it's a spectacular fail. It wore off. It no longer works. And just as my holistic doctor friends predicted, it makes the next wave far worse. These doctors say vaccinated people are far more contagious; they carry heavier viral loads and are far more susceptible to getting severe illness than someone with "natural immunity."

This experiment with an "experimental, emergency-use-only" vaccine is a great big failure. A dangerous and deadly failure.

Actually there are numerous vaccines that require a regular booster shot, and we don't recall Root ever calling them a "great big failure." Root also conveniently ignores the fact that the Delta variant is much more transmissible than the original COVID-19 virus -- and that vaccination does, in fact, tend to make on less susceptible to catching COVID and from being severely affected if one does catch it.

But Root has fear to peddle, so he resorted to the old VAERS lie:

Separate from all that, the VAERS vaccine reporting system reports the vaccine itself is causing tremendous rates of death and crippling injuries. So, vaccinated Americans are dying and becoming severely sick from the vaccine, in addition to dying and becoming severely sick from COVID-19 after getting the vaccine.

And none of this is featured in the news. It's a total media blackout.

Root served up one more rant: "Worse yet, the same government, CDC and media are trying desperately to denigrate and slander the drug that is most successful in treating COVID-19. It's called ivermectin. In my next column, I'll show you conclusive proof from around the world that ivermectin is miraculously effective versus COVID-19." Root won't tell you that many of those studies he want to cite are far from authoritative and have shady origins, which is why few legitimate medical authorities recommend ivermectin.

Vaccine mandate rants (and buy his book)

The idea of vaccine mandates sent Root further into meltdown mode. He ranted in his Sept. 27 column:

I have bad news and good news.

I'll save the good news for the end – because you need to know there is hope.

The bad news is that the country is on fire, thanks to the brain-dead, feeble, old man with dementia (aka President Joe Biden). If you don't believe me, just see the 14,000 Haitian migrants hiding under a bridge in Texas, now released into America by Biden. That should help the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the worst is yet to come. I'm referring to Biden's vaccine mandate. This is the most dangerous threat to our national security in history.

As a nationally syndicated radio host, I get thousands of emails a week. The ones I'm getting right now are downright tragic. I'm getting heartfelt letters of anguish from police officers, firefighters, paramedics, nurses, corrections officers, active-duty military, military fighter jet pilots, even Navy SEALs.

They're all getting ready to quit or be fired because of vaccine mandates. They do not want the vaccine. Even if they have to give up their pensions. Even if they are one year away from retirement and a six-figure pension.

They've studied the vaccine. They know the dangers. They know it's crippling, killing and weakening the immune systems of millions of Americans. They've seen the Project Veritas undercover videos of U.S. government health care workers admitting the COVID-19 vaccine is killing and injuring Americans – and admitting our government is covering it up.

[...]

So, maybe, just maybe this whole vaccine mandate disaster is "made in China." Dividing America, weakening our economy, gutting our military and creating a shortage of front-line first responders is a dream come true for China.

This is how China wins WWIII without firing a shot.

Root seems quite excited that his fellow right-wing minions have been eating up his anti-vaxx propaganda. And that "good news" he was claiming? It involves giving him money:

So, what's the good news? I have a solution. You can read about it in my brand-new No. 1 bestselling book, "The Great Patriot Protest & Boycott Book." It's the conservative version of "Rules for Radicals." It teaches conservatives how to use protest, boycotts, intimidation and civil disobedience – just like liberals have done to us for decades. Two can play at that game. It teaches conservatives how to become the LOUD MAJORITY.

This book even includes the actual phone numbers and emails to contact the top liberal and woke CEOs in America.

Root used his Oct. 4 column to misleadingly liken anti-vaxxers like himself to Martin Luther King (oh, and buy his book!):

Sadly, it's now time for conservatives, Christians, patriots and 80 million-plus Trump warriors to adopt the mentality, strategy and tactics of Dr. Martin Luther King and other black civil rights leaders. Because we are now the persecuted. It's our civil and human rights being violated.

In response to the communist takeover of America; to the destruction (at record pace) of everything that made our country great; and to the clear civil-rights and free-speech violations of the Constitution aimed at conservatives and patriots (and in particular, the unvaccinated), I wrote a brand-new bestselling book titled, "The Great Patriot Protest & Boycott Book" to teach conservatives how to use protest, boycotts, intimidation and civil disobedience – just as liberals and civil rights activists have done for decades.

The loud minority has outplayed and steamrolled the silent majority for decades with this strategy of intimidation. Two can play at this game. We can't be silent anymore. We can't play nice anymore.

With the strategy in my book, conservatives can now play the same game as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and other liberal activists. If you can't beat 'em, copy them. Use their tactics. Fight fire with fire.

And the main tactic we need right now is civil disobedience – to prevent restaurants and retail stores from falling in line with clearly illegal and unconstitutional vaccine mandates and vaccine passports.

In his Nov. 8 column, he brought up the old Cloward-Piven bogeyman to rage against vaccine mandates:

Open borders is Cloward-Piven strategy updated for 2021. And as the greatest bonus ever, Democrats know these millions of foreigners will loyally vote for the party who lets them in and then promises to give them the biggest welfare checks. These are lifetime Democrat voters.

But there is now a powerful Part Deux to Cloward-Piven. Democrats aren't content to just welcome tens of millions of foreign welfare addicts into the USA. They want to make tens of millions of American-born citizens unemployed and dependent on government too.

So, Part Deux of Cloward-Piven is the vaccine mandates.

These COVID-19 vaccine mandates are destroying the country, creating chaos, crisis and division. They are wiping out the ranks of the police, fire, paramedics, nurses, prison guards, border patrol and military. Our middle class is being ripped to shreds. These front-line heroes and defenders don't want this dangerous, experimental, for-emergency-use-only jab. There will soon be no one to answer your 911 call. The police will be defunded – without voters ever getting a vote.

The military will be left weak and crippled. Wanna bet China is directing this plan? We all know China owns Biden and his family. Biden is serving up the country on a platter to China.

The vaccine mandates also make the supply chain problems much worse. Truck drivers don't want the jab. They're quitting in droves. Jet pilots don't want the jab. They're basically on strike now – ask Southwest and American Airlines why thousands of flights were grounded recently. If these pilots are fired, the tourism industry will be devastated. Shipping cargo by air will be devastated. Without pilots and truckers, food and supplies won't make it to stores. Shelves will be empty – just like the old communist Soviet Union. Coincidence?

Like I said, this is a communist takeover of the USA. Empty shelves are the hallmark of communism.

Root plugged his book again and insisted that his right-wing brad of "civil disobedience" is the way forward. But the end of his column sounded like he would be open to more drastic actions:

The choice is clear: We either resist, or we lose America, our jobs, our careers, our middle-class quality of life, our health and everything that made America great. It's time to fight like animals, fight like it's the end of America, fight like our lives and the lives of our children are at stake...

Because they are.

Does that sound like someone who will stop at mere "civil disobedience"?