James O'Brien asks how can we show anti-vaxxers the truth about the Covid vaccine?
11 November 2020, 14:08
With the prospect of an effective Covid-19 vaccine potentially just a month away James O'Brien examined some of the scepticism around vaccines.
Delving into the history, James told his LBC listeners that much of the current scepticism around vaccinations started with an article in the medical journal The Lancet written by Andrew Wakefield.
He said it ended in "ignominy and disgrace" for the author, but that it's publication "gave a lot of honest and decent people something to cling to."
US pharmaceutical firm Pfizer, working with German biotech company BioNTech, has released preliminary findings that suggest their vaccine is more than 90% effective in preventing Covid-19.
The vaccine has been tested on 43,500 people in six countries and no safety concerns have been raised.
James told his listeners that "lots of people who bought into it were not bad people" but he added that it was "bad science."
Adding evidence showed that "most of the vaccine-related misinformation before Covid-19 even started was coming out of Russian troll farms."
"Why? Because the less stable we are, the less united we are, the easier it is for Vladimir Putin to point at us when his own people are toying with the idea of doing to him what they did to his mate in the Ukraine and he can say 'why do you want to be like them? They're biting chunks out of each other all the time'."
James told his listeners he didn't want to argue or fight with people who "believe this stuff" around the dangers of vaccines because it has been "fed into the public bloodstream because you are a victim of a hoax."
"But you don't believe it yet, and there's nothing I can do to help you."
James said the worst thing he could do would be to invite people onto the radio to "spread the misinformation and propaganda still further."
Asking a final question James pointed out that the idea political leaders are "embarked upon some secret scheme to hand control of the globe over to some mysterious cabal."
"How do we discuss this? How do we reflect that sense of urgency," James asked?
