Toby Rogers believes that “the autism epidemic is thalidomide, The Big Short, & Spotlight all in one. The biggest medical mistake in history, driven by profit, covered up by ppl we trust.”
At least that’s what you see on his Twitter profile if you aren’t blocked, like I am…
Who is Toby Rogers?
Even with all of those initials after his name (his PhD is in economics), it is easy to dismiss his claims once you see what they are.
For example, take a look at his recent “numbers needed to treat” thread on Twitter.
He uses a comparison between the COVID-19 mortality rate and vaccine injury rate for COVID-19 vaccines that are being developed, trying to say the risks will outweigh the benefits of the vaccine.
Do you notice a problem with his math?
The 2.6% to 6% range numbers he has made up are really about mild side effects, like fever and pain. They are not for severe adverse reactions and are certainly not for vaccine deaths, which are extremely rare.
The Folks Listening to Toby Rogers
While it would be easy to dismiss someone like Toby Rogers as just another psuedo-expert pushing misinformation and propaganda that vaccines are associated with autism, there is a problem with that strategy.
“Bogdan also broached the subject with one of her patients, Joyce Brooks, a black woman who heads the education committee of the Colorado NAACP. Brooks helped arrange a presentation for the Denver chapter’s leadership by Colorado anti-vaccination activist Phil Silberman and Toby Rogers, an economist who frequently attacks the safety of vaccines on social media and has done work in the past for Kennedy’s Children’s Health Defense nonprofit group.”
Anti-vaccination leaders fuel black mistrust of medical establishment as covid-19 kills people of color
Sometimes these folks convince other people to listen to their misinformation and propaganda about vaccines…
“Toby Rogers and the University of Sydney’s School of Social and Political Sciences, for awarding Rogers a doctorate on the basis of his PhD thesis The Political Economy of Autism, which uncritically cites junk science to support the conspiracy theory that a capital conquest of science and medicine has caused a global autism epidemic through exposure to environmental toxicants such as pesticides, antidepressants and vaccines.”
Australian Skeptics Bent Spoon Nominations
Don’t.
Know who you are getting your vaccine information and advice from.
Do your own research and get information from the experts, not someone you met through your chiropractor…
And you will quickly see that vaccines are safe, with few risks, and are very necessary.
More on Toby Rogers
- How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Hurts Autistic Families
- Anti-Vax Groups Are Targeting Minority Communities
- Do One Out of 39 Vaccinated Children Suffer Serious Injuries?
- Are Fewer Than 1% of Vaccine Injuries Reported to VAERS?
- Are There Any Long-Term Studies On Vaccine Safety?
- Explaining the Correlation of Autism After Vaccines
- The Myth of an Autism Epidemic
- Reasons to Be Confident in a COVID-19 Vaccine
- Vaccines and Autism Redux
- Anti-vaccination leaders fuel black mistrust of medical establishment as covid-19 kills people of color
- Anti-Vaccine Movement, Racism And COVID-19 Collide In Colorado
- Racist Pundit Michelle Malkin Headlines Anti-Vaccine Rally at Colorado Capitol Sunday
- V is for Vaccine: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Del Bigtree rile up an antivaccine demonstration against SB 276
- Australian Skeptics Bent Spoon Nominations
- IAC – Ask the Experts about COVID-19 and Routine Vaccination
All vaccines ate very very very evil indeed, and someone should go round Big Pharma and give them a taste of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. FOR SURE.
How does one call themselves “truth teller” when they are so full of shit?
So so,
… vaccines are safe, with few risks, and are very necessary.
Well then. kindly take the vaccines yourself, get all your family swallow it and if you’re All still well after 12 months, I volunteer being the next taking it.
Deal?
Or else, shut your fuck to the up and voluntarily > Disappear. But make it fast, jerk
Gladly. While people like you continue to be scared little bitches who can’t fucking read anything besides social media comments and continue to spread diseases that we could easily get rid of.
You are such a great contributor to society.
Right?
Nope. YOU shut the fuck up. You fucking illiterate waste of space.
If vaccines are so safe; why is my wife forever injured from one? #gardasilisevil
Because, like pretty much every medicine and medical procedure, there is always a small chance of side effects. People die during routine surgeries, so should we deem surgery as unsafe? People have adverse reactions to medicines, so should we deem medicine unsafe? There are always a small percentage of people who are going to suffer side effects. That doesn’t change the fact that the vast majority of people will NOT suffer those side effects. My dad’s next door neighbor has been disabled for most of his life due to the polio vaccine. I asked him once if he could go back in time and not get the vaccine, would he do it and his exact response to that was “No, because living my entire life with a disability is a hell of a lot better than dying from a preventable disease as a child.”
….Therefore one cannot mandate and should NOT mandate ANY vaccine under such circumstances.
Toby Rogers is a Twitter coward (blocks at the slightest challenge, usually paired with a grade school-caliber insult) whose PhD on the mythical ‘Autism Epidemic’ makes Judy Wilyman’s similarly pathetic anti-vax effort seem worthy of a Nobel Prize by comparison.
His overwrought appeals to emotion via anecdote clearly strike a cord with simpletons devoid of critical thinking skills though, and in the age of social media and the democratization of ‘facts’, his bad-faith strategies are highly effective.
His PhD is in political economy. He was the nicest guy when I knew him at USYD but he always kept his actual PhD thesis topic close to his chest so we always talked knowledge politics/sociology of knowledge type literature in relation to my thesis on climate change denial and not his. It wasn’t till his ramped up his twitter activity that I knew what he was working on.