Starting in mid-2021, Malone received criticism for propagating
COVID-19 misinformation and conspiracy theories, including making claims about the toxicity of
spike proteins generated by some
COVID-19 vaccines;
[4][30][6][31] using interviews on mass media to popularize medication with
ivermectin;
[32] and
tweeting a study by others questioning vaccine safety that was later retracted.
[4] He said that
LinkedIn temporarily suspended his account over a post stating that the Chairman of the
Thomson Reuters Foundation was also a board member at
Pfizer, and other posts questioning the efficacy of some COVID-19 vaccines.
[33][34] Malone has also falsely claimed that the
Pfizer–BioNTech and
Moderna COVID-19 vaccines could worsen COVID-19 infections,
[1] and that the
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had not granted full approval to the Pfizer vaccine in August 2021.
[35] Malone has promoted hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as
COVID-19 treatments.
[7] In November 2021, Malone shared a deceptive video on Twitter that falsely linked athlete deaths to COVID-19 vaccines. In particular, the video suggested that Jake West, a 17-year-old Indiana high school football player who succumbed to sudden cardiac arrest, had actually died from COVID-19 vaccination. However, West had died years earlier, in 2013, due to an undiagnosed heart condition