The anti-vaxxers are on a tear My loathing for these madmen knows no bounds: It was a peaceful Sunday afternoon at the Conscious Life Expo, and in a large, windowless ballroom, Del Bigtree was red-faced and triumphant in front of a captivated crowd. “These people,” he told them, “need to go to prison!” There was a smattering of solemn applause. “For life!” someone in the audience cried out. Bigtree is a TV producer turned big fish in the anti-vaccine world, and this talk was, more or less, part of his victory lap. In a lecture running nearly two hours, he accused government officials and pharmaceutical companies of fraud for promoting mRNA vaccine, and for downplaying the effectiveness of drugs like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. (Neither drug is effective as a cure, treatment, or preventative for COVID; the FDA warns against using hydroxychloroquine for COVID due to possible heart rhythm problems, and ivermectin because it can lead to problems ranging from hypotension to death. The use of both drugs has been heavily politicized, and a recent study found that conservative doctors are more likely to prescribe them, despite a large and growing body of research showing neither drug is effective for COVID.) But Bigtree also had another, more optimistic agenda: to assure his audience that he and other anti-vaccine figures are now seeking their legal and political revenge. Bigtree falsely claimed governments and health departments had killed people with overdoses of hydroxychloroquine “so they could say it doesn’t work,” and told the crowd, “I…