Why we need the Covid jab: James O'Brien's powerful analogy for anti-vaxxers
26 July 2021, 13:40
James O'Brien uses this analogy about seatbelts to explain to anti-vaxxers why they should indeed have the Covid vaccine.
It comes after thousands of anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine protesters gathered in central London for a “worldwide rally for freedom” five days on from restrictions being lifted in England.
Conspiracy theorists David Icke, Gillian McKeith and Piers Corbyn, the brother of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, were among the speakers at the demonstration in Trafalgar Square.
Read more: Starmer condemns 'shocking' anti-vax speech comparing NHS medics to Nazis
Protesters opposing Covid-19 restrictions and the vaccination programme also gathered in Belfast and Dublin on Saturday afternoon.
He read out a text from Mark in Bournemouth who questioned why he hadn't mentioned the Covid-related deaths of those who had been double-jabbed.
James responded: "The massive majority of people killed in road traffic accidents in this country...are wearing seatbelts, Mark.
"What does that tell you about seatbelts, does it tell you that they are pointless? No. It tells you that the massive majority of people on the roads in this country wear seatbelts.
"People wearing seatbelts get involved in car accidents and they get killed even though they are wearing seatbelts. Literally nobody Mark, except you think, thinks that proves that wearing seatbelts are pointless."
He likened it to the vaccine: "You can still catch coronavirus when you have been vaccinated, even when you've been vaccinated twice as Sajid Javid did, and you can still die from it even when you have been vaccinated twice - but if you haven't been vaccinated you are infinitely more likely to suffer serious illness and or death."
James said he disliked Mark's "furious certainty" that he is right regarding vaccines when "what you're sending to a national radio station is so pant-wettingly stupid."
"It's almost like a form of anti-intellectual self-harm, except the harm you do to yourself potentially is not merely intellectual it could indeed be physical and possibly even fatal," James said.
