I’m glad to see “Dr” Mercola getting the attention he deserves for his anti-vaccine stance.

The thing that gets me about hucksters, mountebanks, and bounders of Mercola’s ilk is that they are, in fact, selling an alternative. In Mercola’s case, he suggests that you can fight COVID-19 with simple vitamins:

He also began promoting vitamin supplements as a way to ward off the coronavirus. In a warning letter on Feb. 18, the F.D.A. said Dr. Mercola had “misleadingly represented” what were “unapproved and misbranded products” on Mercola.com as established Covid-19 treatments.

HIs “Liposomal Vitamin C” tablets will cost you $37, for example, for 180 pills.

A friend, many years ago, suggested I read Vaccine Epidemic, mistaking me for someone without a scientific bent or who is suspicious of public health. I am neither.

I concluded of that book that the anti-vaccine movement is cynical at its heart. A crucial issue is the degree to which the prime movers are hucksters:

For a group of people who are suspicious of substances being introduced into their children’s bodies by vaccines, they are curiously eager to offer their children up for experimentation, or to attempt all kinds of “natural” or “homeopathic” cures into them, without anything close to the oversight and study exacted on vaccines.

The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online