Coronavirus: Anti-vaxxers are the biggest threat to our health

Developing a coronavirus vaccine is only the start: we then have to persuade legions of conspiracy theorists around the globe that it’s safe to use.

A protester holds up a placard during the 'Wake Up Australia!' march against mandatory vaccinations at Sydney’s Hyde Park in May. Picture: AAP

Take my gloved hand, dear reader, and come with me down the rabbit hole. The entrance of which is at 52 Aintree Road, Bootle, on Merseyside.

It was there this week that the proprietor of Skin Kerr, Aesthetics Hair and Beauty (next to Volume Hair and Makeup and two doors down from Glamorous Tanning) put up a large poster in the window. It read: “Covid Free Salon; no masks, we take cash; Covid talk is banned; you can’t catch what doesn’t exist.”

At the bottom was printed a Twitter hashtag, “#wedonotconsent”.

As of Thursday, following press coverage, the poster is gone, the manager unavailable for comment and the police are promising a visit.

But let’s follow that hashtag, which may give us some clues about what the poster’s author has been reading. When you search for “wedonotconsent” on Twitter you enter a parallel universe.

TRAFALGAR SQUARE, LONDON 29.08.2020
Photos taken by the talented Zak Kilby!! Thank you to @davidicke Mikael Nordfors #TrafalgarSquare #LondonProtests #awake #wedonotconsent #COVID19 #Doctors #freedom #corruption #Boris #SpeakingOut #davidicke #IStandWithPiersCorbyn #unity pic.twitter.com/S3JEiws8Ej

— StandUpX (@StandUpX2) September 1, 2020

This is the one!
We give the truth.
We give solutions.
We use the law back at those taking our liberty and lives.
Please share. pic.twitter.com/CKSHjbLVtw

— Kate Shemirani (@KateShemirani) September 1, 2020

It’s here that Save Our Rights UK, Stand Up X and Wake Up! World post tweets with links to videos saying the virus is a hoax, or to news stories about how Bill Gates has a secret plan to rule the world via vaccines. Scroll down and the right-wing Breitbart news site rubs virtual elbows with Piers Corbyn, the intellectually erratic older brother of the former Labour leader. Scroll up and a chap called Neil Clark, a veteran supporter of George Galloway and anything that the Russian state tweets, writes: “If enough people simply refuse to comply, the restrictions are unenforceable. The power is with us – the people – and not with those who seek to control us.” To which Gareth Icke, loyal son of David Icke, the serial far-right conspiracy theorist and former self-proclaimed messiah, adds: “This. 100 per cent this.”

Many make mention of a march planned in London at the end of the month, following one held the weekend before last; #wedonotconsent is full of praise for the recent demonstrations in Berlin which comprised, in the words of one observer, “a bizarre mix of people: families and senior citizens were joined by right-wing extremists, some sporting swastika tattoos. Protesters brandished signs reading ‘Take off the slave masks’ while others held up peace flags.”

One fairly prolific tweeter is “Anne M”. This week she wrote “No to the new normal, forced vaccines, health passports and the global elite control agenda, Awake not woke. We are many. #wedonotconsent.” And she linked to a report headlined “Oxford coronavirus trial on hold over ‘potentially unexplained illness’”. The implied tone was “unexplained, eh?”

In fact the temporary halt to phase three of the Astrazeneca/Oxford University vaccine trial is no huge deal. Not at the moment. Nor is there anything sinister about the patient’s illness being undiagnosed as yet. It’s just that when you are trying to find a vaccine that you might give to billions of people, it’s a pretty good idea to be careful. So just one illness among thousands of volunteers stops the trials for a bit.

Anne M and her fellow hashtaggers and demonstrators may sound fringe. But a demonstration of how apparently fringe sentiments can have real effects was seen recently in Bradford. A few weeks ago a “well-spoken” woman in Derby posted a video in Urdu in which she said that she was a doctor and claimed that if children were returned to school and discovered to be sick, they could be taken away from their parents. By the end of last month health professionals in Bradford were picking up real resistance among some communities to sending their children back to school. As one father told doctors, “The government isn’t telling the truth and everyone in power keeps changing their minds.” So he preferred to believe the video. Back in April a similar social media post about hospitals deterred some Asian families from reporting illness.

As it happens I was recording a Times podcast interview this week with the journalist Brian Deer. His new book tells how he exposed Andrew Wakefield, the doctor who claimed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, as a fraud. Towards the end of the interview we discussed how, even after his exposure, Wakefield was able to keep his anti-vaccine show on the road with the support of afflicted parents, “alternative health” aficionados, careless celebrities and, latterly, populist politicians. Deer even begins his book with Wakefield as a guest at Donald Trump’s inauguration party in January 2017, six years after being struck off by the General Medical Council over here. At that time, like populists in France, Brazil and Italy, Trump professed himself convinced of the danger from vaccination. Wakefield’s discredited work has led to a drop in vaccination rates in several affluent parts of the world. The scientific truth has had its work cut out combating a social media-fuelled world of fear and disinformation. Where, as with the early days of MMR, “mainstream media” and elected politicians seem to give credence to the idea of medical danger, then distrust of the authorities becomes a public health problem in itself.

A coronavirus vaccine will need 60 to 70 per cent uptake to create herd immunity (it’s about 95 per cent for the even more infectious measles virus). But many doctors and scientists worry what the impact of an over-hurried vaccine might be. Following Vladimir Putin’s claim of a successful Russian vaccine, and the now jab-friendly President Trump’s promise of an election-winning vaccine by November 3, nine of the leading coronavirus vaccine developers signed a “careful” pledge. With Trump seeming to suggest that speed required waiving the usual regulatory process, and with federal agencies subsequently appearing to support vaccine approval before the completion of clinical trials, the developers agreed that they would only apply for approval once all three trial phases were successfully completed. No corner-cutting. Because one false vaccine and all trust will be gone.

Anti-vaxxers and Victorians fed up with the coronavirus lockdown at Parliament House in Melbourne on Mother's Day. Picture: AAP

The activities of the social media fringe and the experience of the Wakefield fraud teaches that transparency, an obstinate willingness to counter disinformation and utter rigour are essential to maintaining public health. In Bradford, doctors directly approached the author of the schools video and persuaded her that she’d been wrong and to withdraw the video and make a new one. “Please send your children to school, it’s very important they continue with their education,” it said.

We’ve been warned though. If through carelessness – including, sometimes, journalistic carelessness – or politically induced haste, health conspiracism becomes established beyond the fringe, then persuading the owner of Skin Kerr of the error of their hashtagged ways will be the very least of our problems.

The Times