Bartholomew's Notes

One of the best episodes from the first series of Frasier is “Death Becomes Him“, in which Frasier Crane becomes so disturbed by the sudden death of a physician from a heart attack that he gatecrashes the doctor’s funeral reception in a futile attempt to discover an underlying cause. To his dismay, the doctor’s relatives tell him that the deceased had no history of heart disease, high blood pressure or high cholesterol; that he was a “total health fanatic” who avoided fattening desserts; and that he regularly attended a gym and played basketball four times a week:

Gail: Gary was in phenomenal shape.
Bobbie: He didn’t smoke, never touched caffeine…
Allen: Did you know he had less than 10 percent body fat on him?
Frasier: My goodness. Has anybody checked to see if he’s really dead?

The show satirises a natural human instinct to seek out existential reassurance in the face of the knowledge that, despite however we live our lives, death may still come like a thief in the night. Surely, that victim of illness or sudden death must have done something that I can avoid or that doesn’t apply to me?

This tendency is now being ruthlessly exploited by anti-vaxxers and vaccine alarmists, who appear now to attribute any unexpected natural death to Covid vaccination. In the UK, for instance, Aseem Malhotra now claims that Covid vaccination likely explains “all unexplained heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrhythmias, & heart failure since 2021”. On Twitter, he amplifies and endorses any anecdotal claim that he believes supports this assertion. Meanwhile, GB News has run a sarcastically titled segment called “Nothing to See Here”, in which Mark Steyn cited a random selection of sudden deaths. News of any celebrity death on social media attracts comments either speculating or asserting that Covid vaccination was the cause.

In the USA, meanwhile, we have “Died Suddenly”. As noted in the Guardian:

One phrase that is picking up steam in the anti-vax world is “died suddenly”, which may be used in official media reports to talk about any sudden death, making it harder to moderate automatically.

A Died Suddenly Twitter account, which was verified through the paid Twitter Blue program, plans to release a documentary on Monday that promotes vaccine misinformation.

In a trailer for the film, 12 people are shown fainting or seizing, with the implication that they died from vaccines. In fact, at least four of the people shown did not die, and there were no links to the vaccines in their fainting episodes.

The trailer also shows footage of Megyn Kelly, a SiriusXM host, talking about her sister’s heart attack. But the trailer doesn’t show Kelly’s discussion of their family history of heart attacks.

A detailed debunking of the trailer was posted to Twitter by “The Real Truther” at the end of October: clips the trailer uses include the on-court (and non-fatal) collapse of basketball star Keyontae Johnson in December 2020, before vaccines were even available; a woman who fainted at a train station in Argentina (actually due to low blood pressure); a royal guard fainting while standing vigil at Queen Elizabeth’s coffin (a well-known phenonmenon caused by standing still for long periods); and comedian Heather McDonald fainting on stage (due to not eating and drinking). (1)

The trailer describes the documentary as a “Stew Peters Network EXCLUSIVE”, and it follows his earlier efforts Watch the Waters and These Little Ones. The former apparently claims that “the coronavirus is not a virus, but a synthetic version of snake venom that evil forces are spreading through remdesivir, the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and drinking water to “make you a hybrid of Satan”, while the latter is concerned with how “millions of children vanish each year”.

This context might suggest a marginal effort unlikely to be embraced by the wider community of Covid vaccination alarmists – indeed, Robert Malone (who had previously been on Peters’ show) denounced Watch the Waters, leading Peters to allege that Malone is working for the CIA. However, Peters is sponsored by Mike Lindell of MyPillow and election truther fame, and Lindell’s support of anti-vaxxers was noted a few days ago by Business Insider:

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell recently became a sponsor for the prominent anti-vaxxer Dr Sherri Tenpenny, an example of Lindell’s growing penchant for funding fringe media figures.

…In June, Slate [sic – actually Salon] described Tenpenny as an “adviser” to the pillow salesman, without specifying any details of the arrangement.

…Lindell and Tenpenny met, she said, at sessions of the “ReAwaken America” tour, which as The Guardian reported showed a growing alliance between conservative Christians, Trump supporters and anti-vaccine activists.

More on ReAwaken America here.

UPDATE: Within the vaccine alarmist movement,  Died Suddenly has come under fire from a sociologist named Josh Guetzkow. On his Substack blog, Guetzkow describes it as “trash”, and his post has been reposted by Toby Young on his Daily Sceptic website. Guetzkow’s view has also been endorsed by Aseem Malhotra and Clare Craig. Craig speculates that the documentary may be “an intent to muddy the waters”.

Note

1. A similar collage, called “Until Proven Otherwise” was uploaded to Twitter earlier this month by “Texas Kate” and endorsed by Malhotra. The first example given is Charlbi Dean, an actress who died aged 32 of a lung infection and who previously had had her spleen removed. Also in the video is a 15-year-old girl named Jorja Halliday, who died on the day she was due to receive her Covid vaccination; in this case there was a misleading headline (“15-year-old girl died suddenly from Covid complication on day of her vaccine”) which was later amended to “15-year-old girl died suddenly from Covid complication on day her vaccine was due”.

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In 1991, Michael Palin crossed the border from Sudan into Ethiopia as part of his Pole to Pole BBC travel series. As he writes in his account of the journey:

It all looks unfamiliar and potentially threatening but to our enormous relief our Ethiopian contacts — Graham Hancock, a journalist and Santha Faiia, a Malaysian photographer who has lived a long time in the country — are there to meet us… Graham has a well-researched theory that the Ark of the Covenant is held in a chapel not far from here, and he has just completed a book on his findings.

Palin of course had no way of knowing that Hancock’s book, The Sign and the Seal, would be a popular bestseller and launch Hancock’s career as a celebrity pseudo-historian. Publishers packaged it to look like an earlier “crypto-history” sensation, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, while the title of his 1995 follow-up, Fingerprints of the Gods, recalled Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods. Hancock is now identified with extravagant claims about the existence of a global pre-Ice Age civilisation, evidence for which can supposedly be discerned in various archaeological remains, but which professional archaeologists have either failed to notice or refuse to accept.

As well as the books themselves, there have been lucrative Daily Mail serialisations and documentaries on British television. Now, there is a series (produced by ITN Productions) on Netflix, where his son is a senior manager. The title, Ancient Apocalyse, echoes Ancient Aliens, although as recently quoted in the Telegraph Hancock says that he’s “so pissed at the f—ing ancient-aliens lobby. They’ve turned this entire field into a laughing stock”.

The series of eight half-hour episodes also features Hancock’s collaborator Randall Carlson; the two men appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast in 2017, in debate with Michael Shermer, and Rogan is an interviewee in the Netflix series. These associations show how Hancock here serves as a gateway into the wider conspiracy milieu – Rogan is infamous for Covid misinformation, while Carlson’s YouTube output includes “They’re Lying to Us About Global Warming” and “Why Aren’t COVID Vaccines Working?”

As for the documentary series itself, a professional archaeologist named Flint Dibble has an overview:

Hancock argues that viewers should “not rely on the so-called experts”, implying they should rely on his narrative instead. His attacks against “mainstream archaeologists”, the “so-called experts” who “practice censorship” are strident and frequent. After all, as he puts in in episode six, “archaeologists have been wrong before and they could be wrong again”.

One particular problem with Hancock’s theories is the idea that sophisticated ancient remains cannot have arisen out of the ancient civilisations themselves:

Scholars and journalists have pointed out that Hancock’s ideas recycle the long since discredited conclusions drawn by American congressman Ignatius Donnelly in his book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, published in 1882.

…Like many forms of pseudo archaeology, these claims act to reinforce white supremacist ideas, stripping Indigenous people of their rich heritage and instead giving credit to aliens or white people.

Further criticisms have been expressed in Twitter threads by (among others) Ella Al-Shamahi, Jonathan Jarry, Jens Notroff, John Hoopes and Holly Walters.

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Election denialism in the USA is alive and well, despite a more muted response to the midterm results than we saw in 2020. Case in point: “wealth guru” Robert Kiyosaki, on Twitter:

STALIN said: “It’s not who votes that counts. It is who counts the votes that counts.” America is dying. Our votes no longer count. Speak out. Fight back. Demand recounts now, not next election. Democracy is at stake and worth fighting for. Don’t let Communists steal our freedom.

Kiyosaki is a leading figure the “wealth guru” subculture. His Rich Dad, Poor Dad books have sold millions, and thousands have paid to attend his seminars in various countries. Repeated predictions of an imminent financial crash have kept him in the news for years.

Kiyosaki has also long been associated with Donald Trump; in 2007 the two men co-authored Why We Want You Be Rich, publicity material for which also featured Trump’s prosperity gospel evangelist Paula White (1). Presumably, Kiyosaki’s investment in election conspiracy rhetoric is an example of the debasing influence that holds sway over all those who embrace Trump’s movement.

Ahead of the midterms, Kiyosaki endorsed election conspiracy theorist Kari Lake in Arizona and appeared on stage with her; his most recent Tweets denounce the “Clinton and Obama Crime Families”, and perhaps inevitably he has also jumped on the World Economic Forum conspiracy theory bandwagon. He also commends Jordan Peterson’s “words of wisdom” to his 2.2 million followers.

Despite formerly promoting real estate investment, he now says that “Marxist took over the US in the 2020” and will raise property taxes; instead, “I recommend gold, silver, Bitcoin”. His latest book, Capitalist Manifesto (2), is a boilerplate rant if the blurb is anything to go by:

Marx’s ideology was spreading through America via the education system. In 2020, protestors are parents, protesting mandatory vaccines for their children, wearing of masks, and the teaching of Critical Race Theory, gender identity, and Post-Modernist Education… all Marxist in heritage.

His view of the Covid-19 pandemic and vaccination is that both are “fishy” and a way for Bill Gates to make money.

In 2010 a journalistic investigation into Kiyosaki’s seminars in Canada found “aggressive sales tactics… where participants are urged to increase their credit card limits after being pressured to spend tens of thousands of dollars on advanced courses”. In 2012 one of his companies declared bankruptcy following a legal dispute.

Note

1. In terms of religion, Kiyosaki describes God as “the best business partner that I’ve ever had”, and he recommends tithing 10% to “charitable organizations”. However, he doesn’t appear to be affiliated with Christianity and one of his books, Rich Brother Rich Sister: Two Different Paths to God, Money and Happiness, was co-authored with his sister Tenzin (Emi) Kiyosaki, a former Buddhist nun who was ordained by the Dalai Lama.

2. According to some listings, the full title is Capitalist Manifesto: Money for Nothing – Gold, Silver and Bitcoin for Free. However, that absurd and self-parodying subtitle does not appear on the cover and it’s possible there’s been some automated confusion somewhere.

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From Coindesk:

Last week, a theory spread on Twitter and right-wing websites suggesting the U.S. government’s massive aid to the besieged nation rebounded to the U.S. Democratic party via the failed FTX crypto exchange, which was an official partner of Ukrainian government for the crypto fundraising campaign.

…Neither Ukrainian government nor FTX ever announced an investment event of any sorts. Such a move would have been extravagant for a nation fielding a full-scale military invasion from Russia using military and financial aid from the U.S., E.U., U.K. and other countries, observers have been quick to point out.

The false claim of an “investment” is a wild extrapolation from old news that Ukraine had “partnered with FTX in March to cash out crypto donations and turn them into ammunition and humanitarian aid”. As Alex Bornyakov, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation, now writes:

A fundraising crypto foundation @_AidForUkraine used @FTX_Official to convert crypto donations into fiat in March. Ukraine’s gov never invested any funds into FTX. The whole narrative that Ukraine allegedly invested in FTX, who donated money to Democrats is nonsense, frankly 🤦‍♂️

This is also confirmed by someone involved with Aid for Ukraine:

The funds were converted to fiat, then transferred immediately to the government account in the National Bank of Ukraine and spent. 54 Million+ of those was spent this summer – you can check the monthly reports at https://aid-for-ukraine.io.

Despite the lack of evidence for any “investment”, the inherent inplausiblity of the claim, and the obvious way the allegation has been concocted by twisting the story from March, the false narrative is currently dominating social media.

Its rise via Zerohedge and Gateway Pundit is charted on a blog called Did Nothing Wrong, written by Jay McKenzie, who also provides a detailed critique and an explanation for its popularity:

This narrative is an excuse for the poor Republican performance in the midterms. It’s an attack line against Joe Biden by tying him and the Democratic Party to “corruption in Ukraine”—with the search for this supposed corruption still a MAGA open wound that led to Donald Trump’s first impeachment. It also gives further justification for ending aid to Ukraine, as increasing numbers of politicians and voters on the right are pushing for. The usual reasons for astroturfed disinformation campaigns also apply. This is about sowing doubt and confusion. It’s an opportunity for junk news purveyors to convince more people to click on a link and provide them with ad revenue.

In the UK, the conspiracy theory has been promoted with trademark smugness by James Melville, a frequent commentator on GB News and Talk TV whose public profile is based purely on self-promotion rather than expertise in anything. Melville’s engagement is typically superficial: seeing an extravagant claim makes him feel clever, and amplifying it to his 360,000 followers creates a mutual appreciation feedback loop that disincentivises due diligence, caution or common sense. In this case, he further argues that the story shows that the term “conspiracy theory” has been used to suppress true information.

Also on board is another GB News regular: Calvin Robinson, who now appears on the channel wearing a cassock and dog collar after having been ordained into a fringe breakaway Anglican denomination. The reverend suggests that Ukraine “was a money laundering operation all along”, claiming that “the West donated billions to the ‘war effort'” and that “Zelensky invested that money into FTX”. In a follow up, he clarifies “no evidence of Zelenskyy investing in FTX” (followed by an enigmatic asterisk), before linking FTX to Covid conspiricism: “FTX backed the research that found ivermectin to be ‘ineffective’. FTX donated $39m to Dems, but also donated $ to Republicans who were ‘prepared for next pandemic'”.

Another part of the FTX conspiracy theory is the detail that FTX used to be listed as a “partner” on the website of the World Economic Forum, but the WEF has now deleted its webpage announcing this. The New York Post has reported this under the headline “How World Economic Forum, others are hiding their past ties with FTX”; this implies something underhand, although one wonders what the WEF ought to have done instead. According to the article itself:

“FTX was a World Economic Forum partner. In light of last week’s events, their partnership was suspended and they were removed from the Partners section of our website,” a spokesman for the Geneva-based organization headed by Klaus Schwab told The Post on Monday.

According to one WEF insider, Bankman-Fried likely landed on the group’s site because he donated cash to the group, in addition to his upcoming speaking gig.

The former partnership is seen by conspiricists as further evidence of the WEF’s supposed control over world events, rather than as an example of how it has has a tendency to latch onto anything big in order to promote itself and in this instance has been embarrassed.

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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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From MailOnline:

The NHS should launch specialised clinics to people who have suffered long-lasting illness after getting a Covid jab, an MP said today.

Sir Christopher Chope, Tory MP for Christchurch in Dorset, called for the health service to ‘take seriously’ the need to help the unlucky few who’ve become seriously unwell after getting the life-saving vaccines.

…Sir Christopher made the comments at the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the victims of vaccine damage, which he chairs.

The article goes on to discuss the “extremely rare side effect of AstraZeneca’s jab” that led to 45 confirmed deaths due to clotting. However, we then get the following detail:

…Sir Christopher also invited Dr Aseem Malhotra, an NHS-trained cardiologist, to give a talk on ‘curing the pandemic of misinformation on Covid through real evidence-based medicine’.

…Dr Malhotra argued that Pfizer’s Covid vaccine should be immediately suspended until all of the raw data on the vaccine’s effectiveness is made available.

There’s also a photo of Malhotra, which forms part of how the article is previewed when shared on social media.

Although Malhotra is only introduced about halfway into the article, his appearance wasn’t just some sort of appendage – originally, the launch of the APPG was supposed to have been a showcase for Malhotra’s recent review paper, but due to the launch being postponed after the Queen’s death he instead held his own press conference elsewhere.

John Bye has assembled some details about what happened at the APPG meeting – his Twitter thread can be seen here. According his account of an audio recording, “attendees who have actually been affected by adverse reactions often had to shout over MPs to be heard, while cranks from Aseem Malhotra to Mark Sexton [blogged here] had a field day”; Malhotra spoke for 45 minutes; and attendees who spoke from the audience included Tess Lawrie of HART (see below) and Mohammad Adil, who was suspended by the General Medical Council in 2020 for calling the Covid pandemic a “hoax” – Chope reportedly said that his suspension was “outrageous” (I blogged about Adil here).

According by Bye, one attendee said they felt “let down” by all this, eliciting an “indignant” response from Chope. Given this context, it is reasonable to suppose that AstraZeneca victims are being used to give spurious credibility and moral standing to Malhotra’s unrelated claims (1), and much else besides. Indeed, when a doctor named Alastair McAlpine dismissed the event on Twitter as “nonsense” and expressed unguarded satisfaction that only a few MPs had attended (“Lol”) he was immediately accused of mocking the victims and has now had to lock down his Twitter account due to a pile-on (encouraged by the anti-vax pop duo Right Said Fred).

The APPG has been variously called the “All-Party Parliamentary Group for the victims of vaccine damage” (Mail Online) and the “All-Party Parliamentary Group on Vaccine Damage” (Malhotra’s press conference blurb), although the formal name is the “All-Party Parliamentary Group on Covid-19 Vaccine Damage”. Christopher Chope is the chair; other MPs listed as officers are the Conservative MPs Edward Leigh, Desmond Swayne and Greg Knight, along with Graham Stringer from Labour. According to James Freeman Wells, who appears to be Malhotra’s impresario, Malhotra’s invitation was “supported by Sir Jeremy Wright MP, Andrew Bridgen MP, Sir Desmond Swayne MP & Danny Kruger MP”.

Another thread by Bye, from October 2021, is useful as background to how the APPG has come about, highlighting the likely involvement of the anti-Covid vaccination group HART (Health Advisory and Recovery Team). His account is pieced together from HART’s leaked chatlogs, extracts from which are included as screenshots.

As he explains, “HART’s strategy (set by founder Narice Bernard and political fixer Bernie de Haldevang) was to work as a ‘scientific partner’ to the Conservative backbench 1922 Committee and Covid Recovery Group, providing them with evidence to use to sway government policy”. Bernie de Haldevang apparently had the confidence of Andrew Rosindell MP, and he used ” Rosindell as a gateway to Liam Fox and the CRG’s Mark Harper and Steve Baker.” HART members later had a meeting “with Graham Brady, Andrew Bridgen and other MPs”. After that, the “Brady connection” was useful “when William Wragg and Christopher Chope ask questions in Parliament about post-vaccination deaths.”

Those questions were about vaccine effectiveness rather than adverse reactions, but HART’s view was that they could be pointed “in the right direction”. Brady then conveyed a letter to Chope from HART (written by Jemma Moran, who was also at the APPG meeting), and a few months later Chope put forward a “Vaccine Damage Bill” in Parliament. This new APPG is the natural follow-on from that.

UPDATE: John Bye adds:

Also attending the APPG meeting were conspiracy theorists Maajid Nawaz and Matt Le Tissier, and HART’s Ros Jones, Clare Craig, Norman Fenton, Martin Neil *and* Tony Hinton.

Meanwhile people who actually suffered adverse reactions struggled to find seats.

As evidnce for the latter, he notes a Tweet from a vaccine injury support group (CV1) stating “No one listened to us yesterday because the focus was not on us. We are very dissapointed that we all made the effort to come to a meeting where we had to fight for seats and shout to make our voices heard”.

Footnote

(1) Malhotra’s allegations have become increasingly extravagant as his media profile has grown: he now claims that Covid vaccination likely explains “all unexplained heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrhythmias, & heart failure since 2021”; that Pfizer knew that their vaccine would cause the effects he alleges; and that the pharmaceutical industry is a “psychopathic entity” with control over governments and medical guidelines. He also uncritically endorses social media narratives alleging vaccine deaths, and he has done a right-wing media round involving GB News, Russell Brand, Fox News (Laura Ingraham) and, erm, a shock jock from Tucson named Garret Lewis. Acting as a gateway into the conspiracy milieu, he also Re-Tweets supportive comments from the likes of John Mappin (UK QAnon enthusiast) and Maajid Nawaz. Attempting to convince his professional peers, though, appears to be less of a priority.

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From AFP Canada:

A cardiologist from the United Kingdom says Covid-19 vaccines should be suspended because they pose a greater threat than the virus itself…. Cardiologist Aseem Malhotra appeared September 27, 2022 in a press conference with the World Council for Health — a group that has previously spread vaccine misinformation — to call for the “immediate and complete suspension of Covid-19 vaccine.”

…Following the press conference, Malhotra tweeted about his paper, titled: “Curing the pandemic of misinformation on Covid-19 mRNA vaccines through real evidence-based medicine.” Published in Insulin Resistance — an open-access journal where Malhotra serves on the editorial board — the article received thousands of interactions on social media, according to CrowdTangle, a monitoring tool.

….The findings were further amplified in articles and posts from organizations that AFP has previously found to spread vaccine misinformation, including Children’s Health Defense, The Epoch Times and the Gateway Pundit. On October 3, 2022, Malhotra appeared on an online program hosted by Del Bigtree, CEO of the anti-vaccination Informed Consent Action Network.

We can add an online appearance with Russell Brand to the list. The AFP article goes on to fact-check Malhotra’s work in some detail. I discussed the press conference and provided some links here.

As has been widely discussed, Malhotra’s paper was a review article that sifts through other studies for evidence – and despite Malhotra’s expertise being in cardiology, it makes forays into areas such as the effectiveness of Covid vaccination, based on a reassassment of statistical information already published elsewhere.

Malhotra’s supporters have made made a big deal about the fact that the paper was peer reviewed; the journal editor, Caryn Zinn, says that the process was “rigorous”, although given the number of errors and misrepresentations that have been identified since publication some have doubts have been raised. There’s nothing wrong with the fact that Malhotra is on the editorial board, but the paper contains only a token reference to insulin to fit the scope of the journal’s title, and as such it is reasonable to suppose that the journal was chosen because Malhotra had reason to believe he would get an easier ride. Malhotra and Zinn could put such speculation to rest by publishing the reviewers’ comments so that we could judge for ourselves.

Malhotra’s paper includes a reference to Zoë Harcombe, an “obesity researcher” who is involved with the anti-Covid vaccination group HART – Malhotra describes her as having “investigated” the possibility that the UK Government’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation may have been “biased” due to members working for organisations that have received funding from Bill Gates. Malhotra, Harcombe and Zinn have actually been networked since before Covid – along with a high-profile sports scientist in South Africa named Tim Noakes they have advocated together against sugar and carbohydrates, and in favour of fat, and against the use of statins. In 2016, Zinn and Harcombe provided testimony in support of Noakes when he was being investigated by the Health Professionals’ Council of SA over a complaint lodged by the president of the Association for Dietetics in South Africa. The hearing found in Noakes’ favour, and Harcombe and Zinn are associated with his Noakes Foundation. Noakes has praised Malhotra’s paper as a “brilliant, brilliant article”.

In 2019 Harcombe and Malhotra featured in a story in the Mail on Sunday on “the deadly propaganda of the statin deniers”. Harcombe and a third person discussed, Dr Malcolm Kendrick, are currently suing the paper for libel. The paper’s critical perspective was perhaps unexpected, given that novelties in health and diet advice are a perennial Mail favourite – indeed, Malhotra and Harcombe have both written pieces that have been published under the Mail banner (although it’s not clear for which paper). A possible explanation is the detail that Harcombe and Malhotra had been “invited to brief deputy Labour leader Tom Watson” – this, then, was another line of attack against Watson, already under pressure due to his disastrous investment in the “VIP abuse” hoaxer Carl Beech.

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From Reuters, last week:

A COVID-19 vaccination centre in Bristol was temporarily closed on Oct. 1 following a demonstration by protesters. It reopened as scheduled on Oct. 4. A video being shared on social media misleadingly claims the centre was “closed for the foreseeable future”.

…In the footage, which was recorded on Saturday, Oct. 1, a man in military uniform tells viewers that he and other protesters had “closed” a vaccine centre at the University of the West of England, Bristol (UWE).

…Similar posts can be seen on Facebook (here, here and here), Twitter (part one here and part two here), where together the videos have been viewed more than 118,000 times, and Instagram (here).

The “man in military uniform” (more specifically, combat gear) has been identified by John Bye as a former soldier named Dale Vincent. Vincent was reportedly arrested.

The action was led by Mark Sexton, a former police officer who got into the news last year after lodging a police complaint against vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi. Sexton also spoke at a protest in London around the same time, as discussed by Reuters here (and noted by me at the time).

Sexton was not deterred by Vincent’s arrest, and there was a further disruption at a vaccination centre in Windsor a few days ago. Videos show several individuals telling security staff that they will be issued with “caution notices” in relation to a series of crimes – typical sovereign citizen pseudo-legalese babble. A distinctive figure dressed in red (and the only black man apparently involved) was one Dave Murphy, a urine-therapy enthusiast who goes by the name “Allegedly Dave”.

This time Sexton himself was arrested, along with his associate Steve Forsythe and Mikey P. Mikey P was featured in the Mail on Sunday last year, after the paper infiltrated a group called “Veterans 4 Freedom”, which was plotting to target vaccination centres – following the group’s exposure (one “cell” was so inept that it held a planning meeting in a pub garden), it reformed as “Global Veterans Alliance”. Videos from Windsor show a number of the disrupters were wearing berets, indicating their status as ex-military. They also all appear to be middle-aged – it is reasonable to suppose that these are men who have not adapted well to civilian life or status, or to the passage of years.

One detail from the Bristol protest noted by John Bye is that Sexton brandished his phone at police and told them that Aseem Malhotra was on the line and wanting to talk to them. Bye attempted to ask Malhotra about this on Twitter:

Given Mark Sexton’s claim that he had him on the phone during this incident, will @DrAseemMalhotra confirm whether:

1) He has been in contact with Mark Sexton
2) He asked Mark Sexton to let him talk to the police
3) He condones Mark Sexton and his group’s violent behaviour

No reply so far. More on Malhotra here.

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A much discussed press release from the law firm Hamlins:

Today a group of people have launched a legal action against Associated Newspapers, publishers of The Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday and the Mail Online.

The group behind this legal offensive are: Baroness Doreen Lawrence of Clarendon OBE; Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex; Sir Elton John and David Furnish; Elizabeth Hurley; and Sadie Frost.

These individuals have become aware of compelling and highly distressing evidence that they have been the victims of abhorrent criminal activity and gross breaches of privacy by Associated Newspapers.

The allegations include bugging, corrupt payments to police officials, impersonation to gain medical details (Hamlins declines to use the word “blagging”) and accessing financial records illicitly. Further:

It is apparent to these individuals that the alleged crimes listed above represent the tip of the iceberg – and that many other innocent people remain unknowing victims of similar terrible and reprehensible covert acts.

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From the website of South African academic publisher AOSIS:

…Writing in the peer-reviewed Journal of Insulin Resistance (JIR), one of the UK’s most eminent Consultant Cardiologists Dr. Aseem Malhotra, who was one of the first to take two doses of the vaccine and promote it on Good Morning Britain, says that since the rollout of the vaccine the evidence of its effectiveness and true rates of adverse events have changed.

In a two-part review article entitled “Curing the pandemic of misinformation on COVID-19 mRNA vaccines through real evidence-based medicine,” he writes that real-world data reveals that in the non-elderly population, the number needed to vaccinate to prevent one death from Covid-19 runs into thousands and that re-analysis of randomised controlled trial data ( that first led to approval of the vaccines for BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna) suggests a greater risk of suffering a serious adverse event from the vaccine than to be hospitalised with Covid-19.

The review article makes only passing reference to “insulin” as a nod to the journal’s stated purpose, and the journal appears to have been chosen simply because Malhotra is a member of the editorial board. The editor, one Caryn Zinn, is a nutritionist.

Assuming that the peer review process was as rigorous as claimed, publication means that a couple of academics looked the paper over and decided that the issues it raises are worth airing. It’s a baseline for the start of an academic discussion. However, Malhotra and his supporters appear to believe that publication is a landmark event that establishes widespread vaccine injury as confirmed scientific fact. Malhotra has even given a lengthy press conference about his paper in the Upper Hall at the Emmanuel Centre – chosen due to its Westminster location – under the auspices of the World Council for Health, an organisation described by Vice in February as “an umbrella group for purveyors of COVID misinformation”.

Malhotra was previously profiled by the Guardian in 2018, when Sarah Boseley noted his views on statins:

Malhotra urges a low-carb, high-fat diet. His book, The Pioppi Diet, has the distinction of being named by the British Dietetic Association as one of the five worst “celeb” diet books in Britain…

…[In 2016] Malhotra was expressing strong views about statins, claiming in a BMJ article that was later partially retracted that they caused side-effects in 20% of patients. On BBC radio, he went further. “It was actually probably an underestimate,” he said, and questioned the benefits of the drug for any patient, citing the cholesterol sceptic Michel de Lorgeril.

He was accused by Prof Rory Collins at Oxford University of endangering lives. Collins said scare stories about statins could do as much harm as Andrew Wakefield did when he claimed that vaccines caused autism.

Malhotra’s father died of an unexpected heart attack last year aged 73, six months after being vaccinated. In his review article Malhotra explains that his father had been in good health, and that vaccination must therefore be the reason for his death.

It remains to be seen how academics respond to his paper formally, although engagement on social media has been scathing: on Twitter, James Neill has a handy “Master list of debunks” thread that includes threads by Viki Male, Frank Han, John Bye, Dr Barrett, Medlife Crisis, Demian Tresch, Health Nerd, Carol Jasper and David Robert Grimes. Wider context has also been provided by the Counter Disinformation Project.

Advance news of Malhotra’s paper was given to John Bowe, a retired actor who runs a self-styled “vaccine injury” advice line (discussed here). The fulfillment of prophecies that vaccination would cause widespread death and harm is not self-evident, and so the faithful have taken to scouring the media for anecdotes about sudden deaths and attempting to discern signs and proofs by sifting through published statistics. Malhotra does a bit of both.

On 12 September Bowe announced “something massive is coming next week”, and he warned “DONT GET JABBED”. On 23 and 24 September his associates Neil Oliver and James Melville also indicated that they were in the know, and Melville explained that there had been a delay due to the mourning period for the Queen. Followers were thus kept in eager anticipation for two weeks – by the time of the big reveal, many of them may have already declined booster jabs and invested personal credibility in exhorting friends and relations to follow suit. As such, they were primed to accept Malhotra’s paper uncritically.

Invitations to the press conference were apparently handled by one James Freeman Wells, a former Brexit Party MEP, and he is currently complaining that “the UK press” did not attend. Wells has also recorded a video with Malhotra, available on his “Freeman Reports United Free Press” website and the conspiricist video-sharing site Brand New Tube (discussed here). Wells’ previous subjects have included the New Zealand web show Counterspin (“labelled far-right by legacy media”, according to Wells) and Australian Senator Alex Antic. The video of the press conference, meanwhile, was handled by “Oracle Films”, which specialises in interviews with Covid vaccination sceptics such as Matt Le Tissier and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

In other words, Malhotra is deeply embedded within a conspiricist milieu and online media network, and this is his target audience/congregation. This is also reflected in the paper itself – he is listed as the sole author, but his acknowledgements include references to “Dr Clare Craig for edits and data analysis, and Alex Starling for comments and suggestions”. Some deleted Tweets that undermine Craig’s general credibility have been helpfully preserved by Neil O’Brien MP, and can be seen here. If she did the data analysis, one wonders why she was not listed as a co-author.

Last October, John Bye noted that Alex Starling had had an online exchange with one Paul Yowell about how the MPs William Wragg and Christopher Chope could be furnished “with the right information” so that they would start asking questions about adverse vaccine reactions rather than just vaccine effectiveness. That may explain why there is now an “All-Party Parliamentary Group on Covid-19 Vaccine Damage“, chaired by Chope. According to the World Council for Health, the original plan was that Malhotra’s presentation would be at a launch event for this APPG (which they misname as the “All-Party Parliamentary Group on Vaccine Damage”).

UPDATE: A former broadcast executive named Mark Sharman attended the press conference and complains:

Rows of empty chairs stood testimony to the indifference as a senior physician presented his findings at a press conference in London today (Tuesday September 27th). Only GBNews and a Polish crew attended.

Meanwhile, John Bye has posted an account to Twitter. The original thread is the best place to access this (he includes screenshots from various sources), but as a bit of future proofing here is the text:

Within a minute of starting, Aseem Malhotra managed to crowbar in a reference to the Holocaust. Talking about “wilful blindness”, he implied that people “ignoring” covid vaccine injuries, which he falsely claims are common, are comparable to Germans ignoring Nazi atrocities.

He also confirmed that anti-vax disinformation group HART helped him write his paper, saying he asked Clare [Craig] and HART to estimate how many people they think would need to be vaccinated to prevent one covid death. Needless to say, their estimate is wildly inaccurate.

HART’s estimate is based on UKHSA data which a) specifically says it shouldn’t be used to judge vaccine efficacy, b) has confounding factors re: who got vaccinated, and c) is widely acknowledged to overestimate the unvaccinated population (and so underestimates their death rate).

Later on Malhotra cited HART again, saying “the HART group are very good”. Er .. no. “They’ve looked at ambulance data, and after the vaccine rollout we found there were an extra 14,000 out of hospital cardiac arrests that are unexplained.” Many are likely to be covid related.

Bizarrely, Malhotra pointed at high rates of cardiac / respiratory arrest call outs in 2021-22 and said they “should have stopped” after the first wave in March 2020. Er .. why? The second wave was even bigger, and we’re still dealing with the long term impacts of covid.

HART aren’t the only anti-vax group Malhotra name dropped. He said “I spoke to [RFK Jr] for the very first time yesterday. He called me and was congratulating me on the paper.” RFK Jr is founder of Children’s Health Defense, which campaigns against routine childhood vaccines.

Earlier Malhotra had dismissed concerns about the MMR vaccine, saying “traditional” vaccines are amongst the safest treatments. So why is he chumming with RFK Jr and the WCH when both promote the work of Andrew Wakefield, who falsely claimed the MMR jab causes autism?!?

After Malhotra finished, Ryan Cole made even wilder claims about covid vaccines, and Tess Lawrie wrapped up by claiming “there’s no longer any doubt among independent experts who have no conflicts of interest that what are called covid-19 vaccines are neither safe nor effective”.

Lawrie then told anyone worried by the nonsense they’d just heard to check the World Council for Health website “for information on what may help reduce the impact of the covid injections on your health”. This includes everything from ivermectin (of course) to .. potatoes?

Things got really wild in the Q&A session though. Responding to a question from unemployed actor John Bowe, Ryan Cole suggested the only reason vaccinated people aren’t all dying is because most of us got “duds” due to “poor manufacturing”. Malhotra didn’t challenge this idiocy.

Malhotra did compliment fellow low carb diet fan turned covid crank Ivor Cummins on his “documentary” though. He also did a separate interview with Ivor after the main event, which is now being teased with a clip in which (hilariously) Malhotra doesn’t get a word in edgeways.

Responding to a question from former Brexit Party MEP James Wells, who seems to have setup the press conference, Malhotra also said he thinks “big pharma” is funding studies linking excess cardiac deaths to covid to divert attention away from their vaccines.

Malhotra admits that severe covid (which hundreds of thousands of people in the UK have had) can lead to heart attacks, but that “it’s complete and total nonsense” that mild covid can also cause complications. “Show us the data”, he said. Here you go: [Link]

Things went off the rails at the end of the Q&A though, when a member of the audience asked “if you still believe in airborne viruses”. Amidst nervous laughter from the panel, Malhotra refused to take the microphone. Sadly these are the kind of people he’s associating with now.

Tess Lawrie however said that while “I think our current understanding is that [viruses do exist], there’s a lot that needs to be discussed now in terms of our understanding of disease causation and so on, so let’s start asking these questions and having these conversations”.

GBNews (which has a history of promoting Covid vaccination scaremongering) also invited Malhotra onto the channel, where he was interviewed by Dan Wootton.

UPDATE 2: Also at GB News, Mark Dolan has declared Malhotra to be the UK’s “Greatest Briton”, based on a nomination from Dominique Samuels. In Dolan’s view, “we need to have a grown up conversation about vaccine mandates, vaccine safety and victims of injuries from the vaccine”.

UPDATE 3: Malhotra’s paper is discussed in depth by David Gorski here. A more general critical overview of his career and self-presentation is provided by Christopher Snowden here.

UPDATE 4: Malhotra is now giving his imprimataur to any social media claim about vaccination harms. In one Tweet, for instance, he amplifies someone calling themselves “Jabby Dodger Bex”, who claims that a “friend at work” had phoned her up to narrate her own demise just minutes after being vaccinated. Malhotra’s assessment of this anecdoate is that “this is just awful”.

UPDATE 5: Malhotra was a guest at a birthday party for Covid conspiricist influencer James Melville. He’s been part of the Melville crowd for some months.

UPDATE 6: A critique of Malhotra’s study has appeared on Health Feedback.

UPDATE 7: A long factcheck from the AFP.

UPDATE 8: Further discussion by me.

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