2020 UPDATE on the Critical Report and Social Media Analysis About Emeritus Professor Timothy Noakes

This paper acts as a brief update on the events and postings of 2020 regarding anti-vaccine related misinformation online.In a recent blog post, Tim Noakes continued to spread anti-vaccine misinformation and common anti-vaccine/vaccine hesitant tropes. Such misinformation included the flawed science done by anti-vaccine activist, Brian Hooker. This was used to defend Noakes’ 2014 social media post on Twitter that also included anti-vaccine misinformation (a video directed by Andrew Wakefield with the false autism-vaccine connection and CDC “coverup” conspiracy). He calls on Nathan Geffen, PhD to remove a previous article about him due to concerns about potential falsehoods, but Noakes has failed to do this with the very factual errors he has expressed and spread, which indeed can have public health consequences. Noakes also doubles down by implying support to the discredited, flawed paper by Andrew Wakefield.Previously, Noakes’ social media had been assessed for not just what type of anti-vaccine misinformation was spread, but how much. This included observations of an increasing relationship between those who follow Noakes on Twitter, and those who also follow anti-vaccine accounts — this relationship has continued to increase dramatically in 2020. Noakes has continued to support several anti-vaccine leaders, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his organization Children’s Health Defense, and now recently Judy Mikovits and her documentary “Plandemic”. When assessing the overall vaccine narrative that Noakes broadcasts to his audience, it seems that 93% of it has been anti-vaccine in nature. Furthermore, in the first four months of 2020, Tim Noakes generated a maximum of ~7 million exposures to anti-vaccine misinformation. Across all tweets from August 2014 to May 7th, 2020, this number adds up to a staggering 11 million possible exposures. The claim that Noakes “is not anti-vaccine” and has not shared anti-vaccine misinformation is terribly weak and not based on the evidence.Noakes has spread, expressed, and supported unscientific, disproven claims and the majority of what he has shared about vaccines is dangerous to public health and can cause harm to the reputation of those in his profession. Continuing to do so, as he has done, is a complete contradiction to what Noakes stands for, what others in his profession stand for, and what his own country’s regulatory body, as well as international organizations, stand for.