For science-denying profiteers, the coronavirus pandemic is the perfect opportunity to squeeze cash out of a desperate and gullible public.

So it’s more gratifying than usual when a journalist fact-checks one of the scammers into a full-on meltdown.

On March 29, 2020, journalist and podcaster Carrie Poppy interviewed Kimberly Meredith, a self-described “medical Intuitive, trance channeler, surgical hands-on healer and spiritual teacher with gifts of the Holy Spirit.”

It didn’t go well for Meredith.

Poppy, a co-host of the popular Oh No Ross and Carrie podcast, on which Poppy and fellow journalist Ross Blocher investigate pseudoscience claims, first encountered Meredith at the Conscious Life Expo in Los Angeles in early February 2020.

The expo is a forum for pseudo-scientists, conspiracy-theorists and practitioners of various New Age “arts.”

Meredith has a compelling story. During her early career working in hospitals and as a consultant for television shows, she was in a serious accident. After recovering, she began telling people she had healing powers. She sells “healing” consultations for around $200.

Poppy invited Meredith on the podcast after hearing that Meredith claim she could heal covid-19, the respiratory disease that results from the novel-coronavirus. “We can cure coronavirus,” Meredith said in an interview.

Meredith repeatedly insisted she could heal covid-19 by “scanning” sufferers with her eyes or intuition, in person or via phone or Skype, then calling on God to intervene. “I can scan the body in three-and-half, four minutes,” Meredith explained.

Meredith claimed that her eyes, guided by spiritual forces, involuntarily blink during a scan, cluing her in to a person’s health problems. “I scan the whole body,” Meredith said in an interview. “I will know if you have the virus or not through my eye-blinking.”

Poppy challenged that claim, as well as Meredith’s claims that she once worked as a nurse and has been the subject of double-blind scientific studies, including one at California-based Psy Tek Labs, that have confirmed her powers.

Meredith’s claims quickly fell apart. There are no peer-reviewed, double-blind studies confirming Meredith’s powers. There are no records of her ever receiving a nursing license.

As Meredith grew agitated, Poppy urged the self-proclaimed healer to ask herself a difficult question. “Is it possible I went through something really traumatic, really difficult … and I ended up with these physiological outcomes like my eyes blinking and so on?” Poppy said. “I turned to a spiritual solution and now I might accidentally, through no fault of mine,  I might accidentally be harming people by telling people I can heal them, and taking a step back and asking yourself if that’s something you want to contribute to the world.”

“Carrie, I am a real healer,” Meredith said. “I have healed hundreds and hundreds of people.”

Poppy’s interview with Meredith ended abruptly, with Meredith vaguely threatening legal action if Poppy released the podcast. “That’s not how that works,” Poppy explained.

In the following weeks, Poppy continued trying to verify Meredith’s claims, in particular her claim that she was a licensed nurse. “Still haven't turned up a license -- expired or current -- in any state, for any nursing license, under her legal name or her business/pen name,” Poppy tweeted.

David Axe serves as Defense Editor of the National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels  War Fix, War Is Boring and Machete Squad.