Back in the day we never had misinformation or disinformation, we just had inaccuracies and lies. We also had differences of opinion which reasonable people could try to resolve by respectful discussion and debate. In medical and other scientific fields, that process of debating differences of opinion was recognised as a foundational principle of science and the means by which collective knowledge and understanding could most efficiently evolve: the scientific process.
Covid changed all that. Any opposition to the official narrative surrounding lockdowns, masks, vaccines and the like simply was not tolerated. The terms misinformation and disinformation were weaponised to shutdown debate for ‘the public good’. Any attempt at counter-argument was labelled mis- or dis- information and therefore wrong or dangerous.
Last week, the Covid Inquiry stepped into this territory. Disappointingly, it did so in a biased and blinkered manner. In advance of the opening of Module 4, Ben Connah, secretary to the inquiry, said: “In this module, we will be looking specifically at misinformation and disinformation and whether that led to vaccine hesitancy.”
Then last week in his introductory address, Hugo Keith KC, lead counsel for the inquiry, revealed that the inquiry had essentially already reached conclusions before it had even heard the oral evidence, when he spoke about misinformation, disinformation and the CDU censorship scandal. He said:
So, my Lady, we have asked a number of organisations, the DHSC, NHS England, UKHSA, to explain how the Government, the UK Government, tackled Covid vaccine mis- and disinformation and we will be looking at the work of the Counter Disinformation Unit and the Rapid Response Unit. What did they do to address these real problems?
We have also obtained evidence from the social media platforms as to how the Government interacted with them, and we will be hearing from the Permanent Secretary at the DCMS about the processes for identifying and acting on such material.
These seem obsequious comments, particularly for those of us directly impacted by the CDU’s censorship activities. The inference from Mr Keith’s words is that to the extent the inquiry is willing to consider the role of state-led censorship at all, it will only be to applaud the Government for “tackling” the expression of views that officials, and the snooping team in the CDU, determined to be ‘dis’ or ‘mis’ information, and to probe what more it could have done to control the pandemic response narrative.
Even the most zealous supporters and critics of the Government’s management of the Covid vaccination programme would have to admit that in the heat of the rollout, statements and claims will have been made — on all ‘sides’ — that were exaggerated, unsupportable or plain wrong.
Whilst some have argued that there was a good public health justification for early efforts to limit the spread of demonstrably inaccurate ‘mis-‘ information or intentionally misleading ‘dis-‘ information, it is now readily evident that the state’s censorship exercise went far beyond this — it suppressed reams of material that could in no way be said to fall into those categories. We both have pertinent experience of this happening:
It has been discovered, for example, that in June 2021 a public letter that Alan and 63 other doctors with relevant expertise had co-signed, setting out serious ethical and clinical concerns about the extension of Covid vaccines to children, was referred to the Counter Disinformation Unit. In other words, one or more anonymous officials determined, without any right of reply or recourse, that the genuinely held concerns of 63 healthcare professionals and scientists were inaccurate or constituted deliberately misleading information about Covid vaccines.
We are still to learn what if anything in the letter was identified as inaccurate or misleading. Indeed, a number of the concerns and questions the group set out in that letter have since either been borne out by events or remained unaddressed. These include concerns and questions about the absence of pharmacokinetic data, about the evidence of natural immunity in healthy children and, sadly, about the risks of serious side-effects including myocarditis.
Around the same time a number of Molly’s comments and opinion pieces about the Covid vaccine rollout to children, including some published by national print media, were flagged by the CDU’s censorship operation. They included op-ed headlines and comments such as ‘Healthy children simply do not need a Covid jab’ and “We should not be edging towards something that has not been sanctioned by the JCVI. It is building a climate of pressure“. Again, it is hard to see what is misleading, incorrect or dangerous about these statements.
It is also now beyond doubt that, at the same time, pharmaceutical companies, mainstream elements of the media and the Government were able to pump out industrial levels of demonstrably inaccurate, false and in some cases deliberately misleading information about the risks and effects of Covid and the risks and benefits of Covid vaccines. And with a great deal more resources at their disposal, they proved to be successful at selling those misleading messages and muting all contrary messages. Are Mr Keith and Baroness Hallett aware of this well-documented litany of mis- and dis- information originated by pharmaceutical companies and the Government and promoted by elements of the media? Are they even remotely inquisitive about the effect that ‘official’ mis- and dis- information (propaganda by another name) and the near-total silencing of intelligent critical commentary had on vaccine uptake and hesitancy? Do they care?
Since the first Covid vaccine was approved in December 2020, the UK pharmaceutical industry’s own self-regulatory body, the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA), has published findings which confirm — definitively — that Covid vaccine manufacturers have been guilty of misleading the public in at least 16 separate cases involving Covid vaccine products alone. Those 16 cases detailed at least 53 individual breaches of specific clauses of the industry’s Code of Practice. We can only say “at least”, because these are only the cases which have so far been published. We do also know about a number of cases involving those same corporations which are still awaiting judgment and publication, so even this staggering roll of dishonour is unlikely to be comprehensive.
These Code of Practice breaches include very serious findings which bear directly on the topic of mis- and dis- information during the pandemic period. They have included findings of those companies:
- misleading the public about the safety of their Covid vaccines
- misleading the public about the efficacy of their Covid vaccines
- advertising unlicensed medicines and unlicensed uses of their Covid vaccines
- advertising prescription-only Covid vaccines to the general public
- failing to declare involvement in promotional communications about their Covid vaccines to the public
- describing their Covid vaccines as “safe” (a prohibited descriptor)
- allowing the use of misleading adverts for their Covid vaccines to be promoted to children
- bringing discredit on, and reducing confidence in, the pharmaceutical industry
Some of these findings implicate very serious conduct. It is perhaps only because the Code of Practice is part of an industry self-regulatory system that the individuals and pharmaceutical companies involved have not faced prosecution or other serious legal consequences. (If the Government’s medicines regulator, the MHRA, rather than the industry’s PMCPA, had dealt with these cases there would have been the option for the MHRA to progress to civil penalties or even criminal prosecution.)
This programme of documented misleading of the public by Covid vaccine manufacturers has continued unabated over much of the past four years, a fact which is not so surprising when one considers how trivial are the penalties imposed by the PMCPA. Desultory four or five figure ‘administrative charges’ for guilty pharmaceutical groups whose profits are measured in billions of pounds, and whose combined market capitalisations run into tens of billions of dollars, provide no deterrence against repeated breaches. (In the UK, Pfizer generated nearly £2 billion of profit from its Covid vaccine in 2021 alone.)
If Baroness Hallett and her supine legal team were truly concerned about restoring public trust and confidence in government vaccination programmes, and dealing with the spread and consequences of mis- and dis- information during the next pandemic, they would need to look at far more than just the activities of those who challenged the official Government narrative. And they would need to do so with a mind open to the possibility that the Government’s narrative might not have been unimpeachably ‘true’.
Their apparent closed-mindedness and lack of curiosity in this respect speaks volumes for the true intentions of this inquiry. The presumption already being engineered for the next pandemic appears to be simply to shut down public debate and eliminate dissenting views ever more efficiently. If the inquiry’s feeble and superficial explorations so far in this vaccine module have revealed anything, it is how desperately we needed, and still need, more dissent and more debate, not less.
Dr Alan Black is a retired pharmaceutical physician and Molly Kingsley is the founder of UsForThem.
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