Anti-vaxxers have consistently spread rumors that are dangerous. They've repeatedly referenced a many-times debunked study that vaccines cause autism (they don't). They've spread the conspiracy theory the poliovirus does not exist, that pesticides cause any clinical symptoms of polio, and that eating yoghurt causes HPV.
Inventing and propagating weird rumors is sort of their thing.
Now they have come up with a new conspiracy theory, and it's actually pretty great and one we're happy for them to spread around the Internet.
As spotted by several Twitter, Reddit and Facebook users, they now appear to believe that holding a potato to your kids' arms will suck out the "toxins" from vaccines.
"You can vaccinate your kids and then hold a raw potato to the wound where the needle entered, and it will suck the toxins from the vaccines out, leaving only the non-toxic parts," a post informs anti-vaxxers. "It's a great way to stay healthy AND thwart big pharma!
Of course this is nonsense and there is no way a potato is going to suck anything out of your arm, before we even get into the logistics of Maris Pipers being able to distinguish between the "toxic and non-toxic parts" of an MMR jab you should do this one weird trick that Big Pharma doesn't want you to know, anti-vaxxers.
Twitter is split between people who like the theory and want to spread it around in the hope that it solves the anti-vaxxer problem and shifts a few potatoes...
... people who can't believe the amount of stupid they just read...
... and people who just found it quite funny.
Us? We mainly just like picturing a nurse's confused expression when they look up after vaccinating a child only to find the patient's parent sheepishly pulling a sack of King Edwards out their bag and rubbing it on their offspring's wound.
"Wh- what's that?"
"Nothing."
"Is that a potato salad-"
"OH I SEE YOU'RE IN LEAGUE WITH BIG PHARMA TOO"
Anyway, hopefully, this new rumor works, at least until the anti-vaxxers decide it's potato pushing from the pro-potato agenda of Big Potato.
