Peter Hotez Publishes His 'Antivaccine' Counterattack Plans

State-run "encyclopedia of vaccine myths" that "debunks" information in real-time, vaccine mandates, and prevention of full informed consent.

by Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

Vaccine fanatic Peter Hotez has proven to be a so-called ‘disinformation superspreader’. Last week on X, he claimed the COVID-19 injections saved more than 14 million lives:

To counter his absurd claims, I responded with the following:

A few days ago, Peter Hotez published an opinion piece in PLOS Global Public Health titled, It won’t end with COVID: Countering the next phase of American antivaccine activism 2025–29:

Here are the key points of his plan:

1. Delineating the ‘Problem’

• Hotez identifies the rise of vaccine exemptions, particularly in states like Idaho, as a major risk to public health. He uses county-level data to emphasize areas with high exemption rates (up to 30%). He claims, “antivaccine activism became a major lethal force in America.”

2. Public Risk ‘Education’

• He proposes expanding graphics comparing the risks of diseases versus vaccine side effects, arguing that such visuals (e.g., measles versus MMR vaccine) are effective in persuading hesitant parents. However, the graphic he provides in his article is entirely theoretical and makes false claims, including that there’s zero known risk of autism from MMR vaccination. The figure also claims that the hospitalization rate of measles among unvaccinated is 20%, however, even before good medical care, Miller published in the BMJ (1964) that the real risk of hospitalization was only ~1.2%:

3. Combating ‘Disinformation’ - Encyclopedia of Vaccine Myths

• Hotez advocates for government agencies to create a publicly accessible encyclopedia of vaccine myths: “I propose the establishment of a well vetted pub- licly accessible website, preferably one created and established by a U.S. Government HHS agency, which can create a continuously updated virtual encyclopedia of vaccine myths and explain in straightforward language why they lack scientific merit.”

• He criticizes the current approach of ‘avoiding direct confrontation with disinformation’, arguing that real-time debunking is necessary. For example, he attempted to refute claims about mRNA vaccines integrating into human DNA and causing turbo-cancer, which he dismissed as baseless without any real supporting evidence​.

4. State-Level Political Advocacy

• Hotez emphasizes mobilizing political will at the state level to combat legislation perceived as hostile to vaccination: “Therefore, state- wide vaccine coalitions and partnerships urgently need help to prevent the passage of onerous legislation that could for example ban pediatric COVID-19 immunizations, require pediatricians to read the full list of excipients in vaccines prior to parental informed consent signatures, stop disease data collection, halt school vaccine mandates, or encourage alternative or unproven immunization schedules.”

In other words, Hotez doesn’t want doctors to disclose the full ingredient list of vaccines before injection and wants to continue forcing children to be hyper-vaccinated in order to attend school. Hotez's plan focuses heavily on centralized control to counter ‘vaccine hesitancy’, likely because the vast majority of Americans have lost trust in his obsession to inject as many vaccine doses as possible into their children. Hotez’s counterattack plan is doomed to fail.

Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation

www.mcculloughfnd.org

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