When Anti-Vax Prophecy Fails: Charity for “the Vaccine Injured”

A blurb on JustGiving:

Weʼre raising £1,000,000 to Help fund the setting up of the “Charity Organisation for the Vaccine InjureD”

I am raising money to finance the setting up and running of a charity to help those who have been injured by vaccinations. My proposal is for the Charity to set up a call-centre to refer enquiries to qualified medical personnel who can advise and help and ultimately to help those in financial difficulty because of their adverse effects. It is known that adverse effects and death are afflicting approximately 3% of the Covid vaccinated. So far. Approximately 5 billion people have been vaccinated worldwide. 3% extrapolates to almost the poulation of the UK. So far. Help me set up this Charity. We should help these people. With your help we can.

The blurb was uploaded by John Bowe, a former actor now associated with Laurence Fox‘s Reform Party.

As a “proposal” this is all quite thin. Where has the million quid figure come from? On Twitter, Bowe has assembled anecdotes from people who claim they have been permanently injuried by Covid vaccination; but few or any of their claims appear to be properly documented, and medically recognised “adverse effects” (presumably the basis for his “3%” figure) are overwhelmingly transitory. We know, of course, that very rarely the AstraZeneca vaccine can cause blood clots, but what kind of “help and advice” is currently missing that Bowe intends to provide? In the UK, patient advocacy organisations already exist for anyone who believes they have suffered harm due to NHS treatment.

Despite the lack of credible detail, Bowe was invited onto GBNews to discuss his plan in a softball interview with Mark Steyn, where he said that he was inspired following a “three-month sabbatical”. On Twitter, he has further announced two trustees: sometime TV archaeologist Neil Oliver, and Dr Tess Lawrie, a pregnancy and childbirth specialist who has found fame as an invermectin enthusiast and Covid vaccination alarmist.

Vaccine conspiricists have for months been predicting an apocalyptic day of reckoning when the vaccinated will suddenly sicken and start dying in large numbers; significantly, the white-bearded Bowe told Steyn that the charity will be an example of the unvaccinated being “big enough” to help the vaccinated, implying that everyone aside from the unvaccinated elect will be afflicted.

In this context, Bowe’s grandiose proposal looks to me to be messianic cope in the wake of a failed prophecy; the predicted harm is not self-evident, and so members of the public will be invited to come forward and identify with the victim narrative on offer. As with therapists specialising in Satanic Ritual Abuse, the strategy will likely generate some apparently confirmatory anecdotes that will serve as data.

While Bowe is attempting to raise funds for his charity, another page on JustGiving in the meantime is raising funds for the man himself:

Weʼre raising £50,000 to help the British actor and campaigner, John Bowe.

John Bowe – a man of principle
Over the last two and a half years, due to circumstances beyond his control, the great actor and campaigner, John Bowe, has lost his income and his house.

This is our way of thanking John for all he has sacrificed.

This campaign, set up by a comedian named Abi Roberts (although originally using the name “Cathy Crunt”), has been endorsed by Fox, the narrative being that Bowe “has lost everything for speaking out”. However, the man is in his seventies, and he announced last year that he had decided to “quit acting” to focus on activism. At his time of life this was a retirement, and although actors’ finances can be precarious, he enjoyed professional success in a number of televison roles and his career included steady and lucrative work on two prime-time soap operas. It’s not clear why he should now be so hard up (despite owning a house in Italy), much less why he should be taken seriously as the visionary figurehead for a million pound project.

UPDATE (17 June): Bowe has been invited back onto GBNews for a segment hosted by Mark Dolan billed as “The Big Question – is the Covid 19 vaccine safe?”. Don’t expect much debate: Bowe will be in conservation with Lawrie and all-purpose conspiracy crank Naomi Wolf.

UPDATE 2 (19 June): His trustees now include a menopause specialist named Dr Tina Peers and (perhaps inevitably) James Melville.

UPDATE 3 (29 August): Another trustee: Neil Oliver.

UPDATE 4 (29 August): A social psychologist named Carol Jasper tried out the service and posted her account to Twitter. Here is what she wrote (slightly edited) for ease of reading:

Just called the C.O.V.I.D helpline with a genuine query. My husband had a month long headache at the same time as his first Pfizer injection. I asked what would their advice be regarding a subsequent booster.

The operator said, and I quote, you could look online to see what [1] other people are saying about this?

I replied – seriously?

She said – er no, I’ll get a colleague to call you back within half an hour.

I asked who that would be; she said she didn’t know. She hadn’t worked that out yet.

She did say it was a charity set up to help [2] the vaccine injured and that they would be able to give me advice from a medical professional. I await their return call. [3]

…Received a call back from Lucy. She did not ask if I had permission to speak for my husband. She said they could redirect me to people who could advise about future vaccination options and recommended I look at [4] some websites including the Peoples Health Alliance and one called, I think, Covid Family Support. She confirmed she was not a medical professional. That they had no medical professionals and that they could offer nothing more than redirect people to websites [5].

My experience was of a very amateur service with unqualified and unprofessional staff with no medical knowledge or expertise. They did not ask ascertain permissions or offer anything helpful.

I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions as to the efficacy of the ‘service’ [6].

Neither did they make clear that headache could be caused by many factors: Exhaustion, eye strain, poor lighting, underlying medical issue

I wasn’t expecting this to be properly investigated but it was assumed it was a vaccine related event purely because I said he’d had [7], which is surely a HUGE red flag.

Jasper ended with some screenshots of material RTed by Bowe, including a Tweet in which Dolores Cahill is quoted as saying that “Everyone who has had an MRNA injection dies within 3 to 5 years!” and Tweets promoting Ivermectin. She writes:

Here are some ‘clues’ to the possible motivation behind this helpline.

There’s no credible scientific evidence for any of these assertions.

Creating fear and uncertainty and then providing a ‘solution’ by directing to a paid for service is a recognised function of AV agents.

UPDATE 5 (21 February 2023): Bowe has now closed down the charity, after apparently being unable to complete the Charity Commission’s paperwork competently:

The Helpline for the Vaccine Injured will cease operation at the end of this week. I am not prepared to appeal the Charity Commission’s decision to refuse our application. I understand the adjudicator’s difficulty in appreciating what we are trying to do but as much as we want to help the injured and bereaved at least three more months of tweaking grammar and adding explanatory paragraphs is not how I wish to use my time, energy and desire to help people, to stop the shots and to lobby for the creation of proper help for people who have suffered as a result of following this Government’s advice. That is where I will put my efforts now.

I would like to thank all the people who donated and helped us set up the Helpline and I assure them that, in line with our stated commitment in our Trust Deed, all surplus money will be divided between Vaccine Injury support groups like ukcvfamily, VIBUK etc.

UPDATE 5 (13 March 2023): Bowe has now broken down the expenses:

After deductions 12k received from Justgiving. Approx5-6k spent on Telecomms, line rentals, headsets, etc. plus travel and expenses for Irish Health Conference, Malhotra press Conference [see here – RB], etc Approx £3k each to UKCVFAMILY and VIBUK.