On the August 27 edition of Real America’s Voice’s The Water Cooler with David Brody, correspondent April Moss provided a platform for coronavirus and anti-vaccination conspiracy theorist Judy Mikovits to undermine the new FDA approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. (Readers may recall that months ago Moss was a CBS Detroit meteorologist-turned-Project Veritas “whistleblower”; she claimed that her company’s COVID-19 vaccination policy amounted to segregation. She was eventually fired from the station.)   

Mikovits is a notorious coronavirus conspiracy theorist who is known for appearing in Plandemic – a propaganda film riddled with dangerous medical misinformation. In the film, Mikovits repeatedly makes misleading and false claims about the effectiveness of coronavirus vaccines, promotes the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine, and attacks public health measures. 

During the interview, Mikovits claimed that because the Pfizer vaccine is now being marketed under the name “Comirnaty,” the FDA has approved a completely different vaccine. This is not the case. The “Comirnaty” vaccine is the same Pfizer-BioNTech inoculation, just under a different name. It should be noted that “BioNTech” is the name of the German pharmaceutical company that co-developed the vaccine with Pfizer, and drugs are not usually named or marketed under the title of the company that created them.

Moss, the interviewer, added to Mikovits’ false claim, suggesting, “There is no distinguisher now between a BioNTech and this other one that has just been announced, really. I think the public had no idea that this second vaccine was even around from Pfizer.” 

Mikovits then suggested that folks who received a Pfizer vaccine “were forced to be experimental animals” because “animal trials were never done” before it was approved for distribution. This is also untrue; animal trials were conducted and the Pfizer vaccine went through rigorous clinical trials. 

Mikovits also referred to “mass vaccination programs” and drive-through vaccine clinics as part of a large clinical “trial.”

(Transcript available here)

This was not the only time the simple name change has caused conspiratorial confusion on Real America’s Voice. During former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s podcast War Room: Pandemic on August 24, vaccine conspiracy theorist Dr. Robert Malone suggested that “the mainstream media has lied” because the Comirnaty vaccine is “not necessarily identical” to the Pfizer vaccine and is “not yet available.”

Vaccine conspiracy theorists are grasping at straws as they attempt to convince their followers to skip getting the vaccine. Unfortunately, turning vaccinations into a political issue is causing unvaccinated individuals to die at a high rate.