The UKHSA declared last week that the number of measles cases in the West Midlands (216 confirmed and 103 probable since October) is a “national incident”. Many have blamed low vaccine take-up, laying the blame on online vaccine ‘misinformation’. But this doesn’t add up, says Toby in his Spectator column this week. Here’s an excerpt.
The main spreaders of health-related ‘misinformation’ over the past four years or so have not been vaccine sceptics, but official organisations like the World Health Organisation which, in the early phase of the pandemic, exaggerated the risk of COVID-19, particularly to children, leading to unnecessary school closures. We now know that the two-metre social distancing rule had no scientific basis, and the evidence underlying mask mandates is threadbare at best. We also have good reason to believe the cost of lockdown far outweighed the benefit. The example of Sweden, which never imposed a national lockdown, suggests there were very few benefits at all.
Surely it is this catalogue of errors, which caused incalculable social and economic harm, that has eroded people’s trust in the public health establishment, not the anti-vaxxers? Is it any wonder some parents are reluctant for their children to have the MMR, given how often they’ve been lied to about the benefits of this or that health measure over the past four years? I daresay a few of them can recall the government applying pressure on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) to change its mind about recommending in December 2021 that five- to 11-year-olds shouldn’t be given the Covid jab. …
Toby cites a report by the Royal Society in 2022 entitled ‘The Online Information Environment: Understanding how the internet shapes people’s engagement with scientific information’, which recommended against “content removal” as a strategy for combatting misinformation as there’s no evidence it works and it may make things worse.
In any case, he suggests, “a more probable cause is the conversion of the NHS into a Covid-only service from March 2020 to July 2021, meaning lots of parents failed to get their kids jabbed. As with other recent health crises, the ‘national incident’ is a consequence of the government’s mismanagement of the pandemic.”
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.