No 10 battle of the sexes demeans them and us
‘You wouldn’t actually have the jab?” my cab driver baulks, staring back at me in his rear-view mirror. There’s a moment’s silence in which I regret having tried to make conversation with a cheery “what about this Pfizer vaccine, eh? That’s the game-changer we needed!” and debate whether it might be better for both my blood pressure and his to find a polite get-out and end this here.
But with his outraged brows and wide conspiracy-theorist pupils, he’s prodded the bear, and woken the beast. I hear myself reply in as measured a tone as I can manage: “Not only would I have it, but I’d have it as soon as it’s rolled out. Hell, they can even doubledose me if they want.” “But it’s made in China!” the cabbie flings back. Deep breath. “No. It’s not. Pfizer is an American company, and Biontech are German.” His eyes narrow: “That’s what they’re telling us.”
It’s when the sinister “they” makes an appearance that any conversation with an anti-vaxxer must be curtailed, along with every attempt at logic. “They” are the amorphous dark forces apparently trying to poison us all; “they” are the hooded villains at the heart of every anti-vax group’s stream of disinformation. When I wrote about the 14 per cent of Brits who declared they “would not want to be vaccinated against the coronavirus even if a high-quality vaccine were available” back in July, my inbox was filled with “theys” for weeks afterwards. So it was heartening to read the findings of a recent survey by ORB International in which four out of five Brits agreed that those who spread anti-vax disinformation should face prosecution.
We’re not talking about people like my cab driver being hauled off in cuffs (although by the end of that journey and his detailed explanation of why Turkish scientists couldn’t be trusted either, I was fantasising about worse fates), but the heads of anti-vax groups with hundreds of thousands of members who still churn out disinformation. Those people, like the “phone masters” who claimed 5G networks were causing the spread of Covid-19, aren’t just cretinous, they are dangerous.
As shadow culture secretary, Jo
Stevens rightfully pointed out, when she branded the Government’s record on tackling disinformation throughout the pandemic “pitiful”: “This is literally a matter of life and death and anyone who is dissuaded from being vaccinated because of this is one person too many.”
Only it’s not just one too many, as we know from our current R-rate, but the added 1.2 people they will in turn infect, and the 1.2 people after that; it’s the wilful infection of our parents and grandparents, our vulnerable friends and relatives. So yes, the propagation of potentially fatal lies should be made illegal. And yes, as Imran Ahmed, d, CEO of the Centre for Countering Digital ital Hate, has said, the Government needs to step up when it comes to “falling ng for Big Tech’s excuses, and introduce e financial and criminal penalties for failures that lead to serious harm”. m”.
When I read one of ORB International’s further findings – that only half of the 2,000 people questioned believed a vaccine produced in record time could be e safe – I wasn’t surprised. I thought back ack to some of the emails I got in response nse to my July column. Not the ones peppered with ominous “theys”, but also the carefully thought out messages from self-described “vaccine hesitants” who simply wanted more information before e giving their informed consent.
There were readers who explained their concerns about a vaccine “that has not been widely y tested”. One told me about the devastating effects of Thalidomide de on a family friend, while another r
– a devout Catholic – feared that the only successful vaccine might be e developed using the cell-lines from om aborted foetuses.
Catholics should be able to rest st easy in the knowledge that the Pfizer fizer vaccine wasn’t made using such cells but through genetic sequencing using computers. Everyone should uld be able to find out precisely how the new Moderna vaccine – which is showing early signs of being 95 per cent effective – was developed. But that kind of information can only y reach its target audiences if public ic health messaging around vaccines es is strong enough; if questions are being answered comprehensively, and if the kind of anti-vax groups who swoop op and prey on our fears are stamped out. ut.
Otherwise there will be smoke e without fire. The spreaders of misinformation and disinformation ion specialise in dropping precisely the kind of smoke bombs that obscure re fact and rationality. “They” are the hooded ooded villains and the unregulated, not t the scientists working day and night to free us from this pandemic.
“They” are the poison we should uld fear most.
The spreaders of misinformation drop smoke bombs that obscure rationality