Look into recent past shows there’s no lie too big for anti-vaxxers

Brian Pinker, left, and Margaret Keenan. Both very much alive. Pictures: AFP

I had the very great pleasure of talking to some of the pioneers of the Covid-19 vaccination this week, late night calls in Australian time to those who were the first in line to receive Covid-19 vaccinations.

The first person to receive a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine outside of a clinical trial is (notice the present tense) Margaret Keenan. She received her first dose of Pfizer vaccine on 8 December 2020, six days before her 91st birthday and the second three weeks later on 29 December.

“It’s the best early birthday present I could wish for because it means I can finally look forward to spending time with my family and friends in the New Year after being on my own for most of the year,” Margaret Keenan said at the time.

Margaret remains hale and hearty according to her carers.

But you wouldn’t know that if you listened to anti-vaxxers. In the wake of that glorious moment, anti-vaxxers killed the lovely lady off.

Three days after Keenan received her first dose of Pfizer, one message from an anti-vaxxer on Telegram read, “Have you searched Margaret Keenan outcome? The first shot. Died as far as I can read. Obfuscation.”

Another on Facebook pronounced Margaret dead, not as a result of receiving the vaccine, but that she had died twelve years earlier and had been replaced by a crisis actor.

Deadly lies

The anti-vaxxer declared in a badly spelled and punctuated message to the world: “I’ve been digging on that woman that is meant to have taken the first vaccine today. She died in 2008. She’s on the “Funeral Notices.co.uk” there is no other Margaret keenan (sic) registered in Coventry. I grew up there and the only family I now called keenan (sic) don’t know anything about this one … theyre (sic) also saying shes (sic) 91 but desnt (sic) look a day overt 70 … another psyop (sic) and crisis actor.”

So many sics. So much sickness.

No crisis actor: Margaret Keenan, then 90, becomes the first patient in the United Kingdom to receive the Pfizer/BioNtech Covid-19 vaccine at University Hospital, Coventry. Picture: Jacob King /Getty Images

Another anti-vaxxer doing “her own research” sought to find the ‘real’ identity of Margaret Keenan and surmised she was in fact among of group of anti-vax protesters. “Does anyone have the name of that crisis actor from the protests … that old woman … that appears to look exactly like this Margaret Keenan … WAKE UP.”

While another declared the then 90-year-old woman had been ‘sterilised’ by the vaccine – all in caps for added emphasis.

“MARGARET KEENAN, 90 IS THE FIRST PERSON IN THE WORLD TO GET STERILIZED WITH CLINICALLY APPROVED COVID-19 VACCINE FROM PFIZER / BIONTECH.”

Crisis actor lie

And there’s a YouTube video from an anti-vaxxer that remains up (shame YouTube, shame) where an anti-vaxxer attempted to prove the filming of Margaret Keenan receiving the vaccination as a staged moment, fixating on Keenan’s great moment of triumph where she was wheeled through a hospital ward to the applause of health care professionals. Why, the wheelchair? Perhaps she had been paralysed by the Pfizer dose, the anti-vaxxer speculated.

The second person and first man to receive Pfizer was Bill Shakespeare who, just like his namesake, the Immortal Bard was born and bred in Warwickshire. This alone drew suspicion and baseless cries of ‘crisis actor.’

Sadly, Bill passed away in May from a stroke. The cause of death was unrelated to the vaccine. The fact that had to be mentioned in media reports tells us what we can expect from anti-vaxxers.

On Thursday night, I spoke with Brian Pinker, 83 — the first man to receive a dose of Astra-Zeneca. He was at his home in Oxford. Now Brian is a bit of a hero of mine and I told him so. It takes courage to be the first, not so much out of concern for any adverse reaction to the vaccine but to have one’s name and face broadcast around the world in a climate of misinformation.

“I know. I was on the telly,” he said.

The retired maintenance manager declared himself “fighting fit.”

On January 4 this year, Brian received the first dose of Astra-Zeneca. Twelve weeks later, he was fully vaxxed.

“I never felt a thing.” No adverse reaction, not a bit of fatigue, a sniffle or a cough? “Not a thing, either time,” he said.

Brian receives dialysis three days a week. This fact was not lost on anti-vaxxers who assumed in dark corners of the web that the vaccine was the cause of his renal dysfunction. Not so. Brian explained that he began to suffer renal disease in 2015. The cause of it still baffles his doctors. He received a kidney transplant in 2017 but it was unsuccessful. Thus, he has to head down to his local hospital and is hooked up to a dialysis machine every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

I explained to Brian that in Australia there had been a lot of poor messaging around the Astra-Zeneca vaccine. Politicians and health bureaucrats had sometimes inadvertently, sometimes injudiciously created the myth of Astra-Zeneca as a poor man’s vaccine, a vaccine of second choice in Australia.

“I can only speak for myself, but it has given me the confidence to return to a normal life,” Brian said. “If you ask me if you’re given a chance to take (Astra-Zeneca), do not hesitate.”

Sinister misinformation

The sinister misinformation campaigns from anti-vaxxers associated with those who were first in line seem laughable now. Brian Pinker and Margaret Keenan are still demonstrably, provably alive. And travelling beautifully.

A month ago, The Australian exposed the awful lie of a young Sydney man, still a teenager who sadly died of a heart attack while swimming. A mix of malicious gossip and poor judgment saw that young man as a victim of a recent Pfizer vaccination. It was completely baseless. The young man had not received the Pfizer vaccine. Not Astra-Zeneca. Nothing.

Why do anti-vaxxers do such horrible things? The answer is obvious. It has nothing to do with their personal choices. The lies are designed to keep other people anxious and fearful. Moreover, they lie to keep their own diminishing group of conspiracists in a state of perpetual anger.

Facts will always defeat them. Lying is all they know. And as I keep saying, anti-vaxxers lie. All. The. Time.