#2811: Richard Enos

Richard Enos is an anti-vaccine activist and general conspiracy theorist affiliated with the woo- and conspiracy website Collective Evolution. Now, exactly who he is or where he comes from (he might be Canadian) is somewhat unclear to us, but what is clear is that he has been caught parroting various anti-vaccine nonsense (e.g. the incorrect claim that unvaccinated children pose no threat to anybody) in various media. In 2019, for instance, he was among several anti-vaccine activists trying to argue that New York Senator Joe Peralta’s death was caused by the flu vaccine, exclusively on the basis that Peralta had received the vaccine relatively briefly before his death at a vaccination event he had himself helped organize – the fact that Peralta had been sick for weeks before the shot and demonstrably died of sepsis notwithstanding (Enos, of course, obfuscates on the timeline and presents it as “After Getting Flu Shot, New York State Senator Gets Sick For Two Weeks, Then Dies”).

 

Enos’s main argument – though he is, of course, just JAQing off – is that Peralta himself allegedly “attributed [his illness] to a flu vaccine he had taken” and that “when a person is sick, they have a pretty good idea what caused it”, the latter claim being, as anyone with any medical background (or awareness of cognitive biases) would immediately tell you, utterly and dangerously false: people are absolutely terrible at determining the causes of their illnesses (partially due to this). Confusions about that simple point, of course, is partially what fuels the anti-vaccine movement to begin with. To Enos, however, there are conspiracies afoot: “What I would like to point out, though, is how deathly silent the Mainstream Media is on this possible connection.” The real reason why mainstream media didn’t mention the connection is of course because there is absolutely no evidence it's there, and plenty of evidence it isn’t. But you know.

 

Apparently Enos has also dabbled in UFO nonsense.

 

Diagnosis: Standard antivaccine loon and conspiracy theorist; not a major fish, but silly and paranoid enough to merit an entry here. His errors of thought are disconcertingly common and his kind is legion.

 

Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence