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The Paycheck Protection Program’s loose rules allowed virtually any small business or company in America to qualify for a government-backed relief loan. Frustrated citizens and activist groups have criticized thousands of recipients they deemed unworthy, including wealthy lawyers, politicians and political lobbyists, publicly traded companies and businesses under government investigation.
Now the federal loan program has drawn criticism for giving loans to organizations that have challenged the safety of vaccines.
Six organizations that have made claims scientists have called false received Paycheck Protection Program loans totaling more than $1.1 million, according to data from the Small Business Administration, which manages the program. The data was released last month under a court order, in response to a lawsuit filed by The New York Times and other news organizations.
The groups that received the loans are Children’s Health Defense, an organization founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; the Informed Consent Action Network; the National Vaccine Information Center; Mercola.com Health Resources and Mercola Consulting Services, both affiliated with the prominent vaccine skeptic Joseph Mercola; and the Tenpenny Integrative Medical Center, a medical practice run by Sherri Tenpenny, a physician and author whose books include “Saying No to Vaccines: A Resource Guide for All Ages.”
The loans, which were made by banks and backed by the government in an effort to stave off the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic, ranged in size from $72,500 to Dr. Tenpenny’s medical center to $335,000 to Mercola.com.
The loans do not appear to violate Small Business Administration rules: Paycheck Protection Program loans were available to any small company or nonprofit organization (generally those with 500 or fewer workers) willing to certify that “current economic uncertainty makes this loan request necessary” to support their continuing operations. Small Business Association representatives did not respond to questions about the loans.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate, a London-based advocacy group, uncovered the loans, and The Washington Post first reported on them.
“There’s an anomaly here,” said Imran Ahmed, the group’s chief executive. “The P.P.P. was needed to deal with the economic shock of Covid, and the anti-vaxxers fundamentally inhibit our ability to defeat Covid and move past this.”
Barbara Loe Fisher, the president of the National Vaccine Information Center in Sterling, Va., said by email that her group had applied for its loan “when it became apparent that lockdowns and social distancing restrictions directly threatened the job security of a number of our employees and jeopardized continued rental of our Virginia headquarters office.” The group used the loan to retain its 21 workers, she said.
Ms. Fisher disputed the idea that her group is anti-vaccine. The organization “does not make vaccine use recommendations and encourages everyone to become fully informed about the risks and complications of infectious diseases and vaccines,” she said.
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Answers to Your Vaccine Questions
While the exact order of vaccine recipients may vary by state, most will likely put medical workers and residents of long-term care facilities first. If you want to understand how this decision is getting made, this article will help.
Life will return to normal only when society as a whole gains enough protection against the coronavirus. Once countries authorize a vaccine, they’ll only be able to vaccinate a few percent of their citizens at most in the first couple months. The unvaccinated majority will still remain vulnerable to getting infected. A growing number of coronavirus vaccines are showing robust protection against becoming sick. But it’s also possible for people to spread the virus without even knowing they’re infected because they experience only mild symptoms or none at all. Scientists don’t yet know if the vaccines also block the transmission of the coronavirus. So for the time being, even vaccinated people will need to wear masks, avoid indoor crowds, and so on. Once enough people get vaccinated, it will become very difficult for the coronavirus to find vulnerable people to infect. Depending on how quickly we as a society achieve that goal, life might start approaching something like normal by the fall 2021.
Yes, but not forever. The two vaccines that will potentially get authorized this month clearly protect people from getting sick with Covid-19. But the clinical trials that delivered these results were not designed to determine whether vaccinated people could still spread the coronavirus without developing symptoms. That remains a possibility. We know that people who are naturally infected by the coronavirus can spread it while they’re not experiencing any cough or other symptoms. Researchers will be intensely studying this question as the vaccines roll out. In the meantime, even vaccinated people will need to think of themselves as possible spreaders.
The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine is delivered as a shot in the arm, like other typical vaccines. The injection won’t be any different from ones you’ve gotten before. Tens of thousands of people have already received the vaccines, and none of them have reported any serious health problems. But some of them have felt short-lived discomfort, including aches and flu-like symptoms that typically last a day. It’s possible that people may need to plan to take a day off work or school after the second shot. While these experiences aren’t pleasant, they are a good sign: they are the result of your own immune system encountering the vaccine and mounting a potent response that will provide long-lasting immunity.
No. The vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer use a genetic molecule to prime the immune system. That molecule, known as mRNA, is eventually destroyed by the body. The mRNA is packaged in an oily bubble that can fuse to a cell, allowing the molecule to slip in. The cell uses the mRNA to make proteins from the coronavirus, which can stimulate the immune system. At any moment, each of our cells may contain hundreds of thousands of mRNA molecules, which they produce in order to make proteins of their own. Once those proteins are made, our cells then shred the mRNA with special enzymes. The mRNA molecules our cells make can only survive a matter of minutes. The mRNA in vaccines is engineered to withstand the cell’s enzymes a bit longer, so that the cells can make extra virus proteins and prompt a stronger immune response. But the mRNA can only last for a few days at most before they are destroyed.
Del Bigtree, the founder of the Informed Consent Action Network, also objected to being described as anti-vaccination, saying his group opposes “the distribution of products that are not properly safety-tested.” He does not consider the Covid-19 vaccines safe, he said.
The loan allowed his organization, near Austin, Texas, to retain 10 jobs, he said.
“We used the loan just as it was designed,” Mr. Bigtree said.
Several of the groups have been penalized by Facebook for making misleading claims, according to Dani Lever, a Facebook spokeswoman.
A page run by Dr. Tenpenny was removed in December for violating the site’s policy on misinformation, Ms. Lever said. The National Vaccine Information Center and Children’s Health Defense are barred from advertising on Facebook. Both groups’ pages, along with the Facebook page for the Informed Consent Action Network, have been removed from Facebook’s algorithmic recommendations system, which diminishes their visibility on the site.
The Paycheck Protection Program distributed $523 billion to more than five million small companies from April to August to help them endure the shutdowns and other economic shocks caused by the pandemic. So long as recipients use most of the money to pay workers and comply with other rules, the loans are eligible to be fully forgiven and paid off by the U.S. government.
Congress recently allocated $284 billion to restart the program, and hard-hit organizations — those whose sales have dropped by at least 25 percent since the pandemic took hold — are eligible for a second loan. Ms. Fisher said her group does not intend to apply for another loan.
Mr. Bigtree said he, too, does not plan to apply again. “Our donor base has gotten much stronger through this,” he said, referring to the pandemic.
The four other organizations that received Paycheck Protection Program aid did not respond to questions about their loans.
Two of the groups received loans very early in the program, when funding was limited and vulnerable small companies were struggling to break through queues that often prioritized wealthy and well-connected applicants.
The Tenpenny Integrative Medical Center got a loan on April 11 from KeyBank, and the National Vaccine Information Center received one four days later from Northwest Federal Credit Union. Neither lender responded to a request for comment.
Mr. Ahmed’s group recently published a report on an October online gathering organized by the National Vaccine Information Center to discuss the coronavirus pandemic. Speakers at the event, including Mr. Kennedy and Dr. Tenpenny, described the Covid-19 crisis as an opportunity to expand the ranks of vaccine skeptics, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate’s report.
Such efforts come as the United States government is working to persuade doubters that vaccines for the coronavirus are safe and effective. Some frontline workers at hospitals and nursing homes have balked at getting inoculated.
Congress created the Paycheck Protection Program in late March as part of the CARES Act. The program’s rules were hastily written and frequently revised, and the relief effort has drawn heavy criticism from lawmakers and others for distributing money unevenly and unfairly, in ways that did not target the money to the neediest recipients.
Loans to three of the vaccine critics — Children’s Health Defense, the Informed Consent Action Network and Mercola.com — were made in May by JPMorgan Chase. A bank spokeswoman declined to comment on the loans. Another lender, PNC, declined to comment on its loan to Mercola Consulting Services in late April.
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