From The Times:
A Conservative MP was applauded by a group of antivaxers that included Piers Corbyn, brother of the former Labour leader, as he questioned the safety of coronavirus vaccinations during a Commons debate.
Sir Christopher Chope, the MP for Christchurch, claimed that the vaccines were “not perfectly safe” and that there was a question about “whether they are effective”.
…Chope, who was criticised by the UK Statistics Authority in June for making baseless claims in parliament about the safety of coronavirus vaccines, used his speech to encourage those present to watch a film he took part in produced by Oracle Films, an antivax conspiracy group that had their account suspended by Paypal last year after claiming that vaccines could alter DNA.
The debate (which occured on 24 October) was triggered by a petition, which the paper noted had been promoted online by GB News’ Bev Turner and Richard Fairbrass of the pop-duo Right Said Fred.
The full debate can be read here; it came in the wake of the launch of Chope’s “All-Party Parliamentary Group on Covid-19 Vaccine Damage” a few days before, and is the latest publicity stunt by which false and misleading claims are gaining currency in the UK despite failing to achieve genuine scientific recognition.
Along with Chope’s buffoonery, the familiar tropes of vaccine alarmism were aired by Danny “Dunning” Kruger and, inevitably, Andrew Bridgen. Kruger, parroting a recent claim by Dutch MEP Rob Roos, complained that Pfizer had not tested for whether the vaccine prevented transmission (dealt with here), and repeated Aseem Malhotra’s misleading claim about the risk reduction of Covid vaccination (dealt with here). Bridgen also commended Malhotra, and cited Florida Department of Health – an example of how the baleful influence of Joseph Ladapo (dealt with here) has an international dimension.
It was perhaps inevitable that The Times would lead with Chope’s sensationalist claims, but it is a shame that the paper of record barely noted how some other MPs present – primarily Elliot Colburn, Andrew Gwynne and Caroline Johnson, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care – answered claims about safety and effectiveness in some detail.
Bridgen’s involvement has also now itself sparked a conspiracy theory: for some months he has been under investigation by Parliament’s Standards Committee over failing to declare an interest, and compounded matters by suggesting that the Commissioner, Kathryn Stone, had targeted him at the behest of Boris Johnson in return for a peerage. The Committee has now finished its work and recommended that Bridgen be suspended from Parliament.
The conspiracy milieu has interpreted this outcome as Bridgen being punished for participating in the debate: a Tweet by Turner (RTed by GB News’ Neil Oliver) asked “WHO is shutting everyone down?!”, the capitalised “WHO” seemingly implying the World Health Organization; while blowhard Maajid Nawaz’s opinion is that “there are no coincidences in war” and that we must “RESIST”.
Bridgen’s allegation against Stone seems to reflect a worldview in which his working assumption is that people always act out of self-interest rather than according to duty or responsibility. Last year he claimed that the British Medical Association was “hand-in-glove” with PPE manufacturers, although he later backed down, claiming in the face of the plain meaning of his own words that he never intended to suggest improper influence.
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