Anti-vaccine cranks target V-Day heroine
AnTI-vAxxeRS have mocked and smeared v-Day heroine Margaret Keenan on social media amid a surge of ‘toxic misinformation’.
A mob of online conspiracy theorists used Facebook to spread slurs about the 91-yearold grandmother and her family after she became the first in the world to have the Pfizer Covid19 jab outside medical trials.
Calling her a ‘guinea pig’ and an ‘actress’, the anti-vaxxers accused her of making a Masonic sign and of having been given a placebo. The wild claims have been widely shared despite being rejected as groundless by experts.
Research suggests there are now 5.35million followers of anti-vaccination accounts across social media in the UK. vaccine minister nadhim Zahawi has warned of the impact of conspiracy theories being shared online.
More than 137,000 Britons were vaccinated against coronavirus in the first week of the pioneering jab being available.
But on the first day, former care worker Louise Hampton posted a link to a report about Mrs Keenan to her 18,000 Facebook followers with the comment: ‘Shame on Margaret’s Family for allowing this! Using Granny as a guinea pig! Maggie’s jab is merely a marketing ploy!’
She also falsely suggested that Mrs Keenan had been injected with a placebo.
Her rantings were greeted with a string of supportive comments.
In a Facebook broadcast viewed over 14,000 times, Miss Hampton repeated her claims about Mrs Keenan and bizarrely added that the pensioner was making a Masonic symbol. She confessed ‘I have no proof on this, no facts.’
Miss Hampton, from Uxbridge in west London, worked for Care UK as a 111 health adviser but quit before she was sacked in September after posting a video claiming coronavirus was a hoax.
Similar slurs were included in a private anti-vax Facebook group aimed at nHS workers.
A survey by market research company Kantar found while 75 per cent of UK residents are likely to accept a jab, only 42 per cent said they would definitely do so.
Jayne Connery, of the Care Campaign of the vulnerable, said: ‘Families are saying they’re not going to consent to their loved ones being given the vaccine and, surprisingly, staff are as well.’
Imran Ahmed, of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said: ‘The toxic misinformation we see swirling around social media is affecting real families and threatening public safety. This needs to be a wake-up call for Government, which is failing to hold tech companies to account.’
Just 57 per cent of black, Asian and minority ethnic people said they would get the jab compared with 79 per cent of white people, according to a study from the Royal Society for Public Health.
Christina Marriott, head of the Royal Society for Public Health said some anti-vaccination messages had been targeted at certain ethnic and religious communities.
Facebook said it would investigate the smears against Mrs Keenan published on its site.
‘Not going to consent’