BMJ Covid Inquiry: Understanding & Neutralising Covid-19 Misinformation & Disinformation
By Karam Bales, one of the papers coauthors
The BMJ has published the third of its covid inquiry series, the first looked at airborne transmission while the second evaluates the UK’s approach to covid in schools and children. Both previous papers came under attack from right wing media such as the Daily Mail and the Telegraph with much of the criticism focused on the authors rather than the content.
The third paper on Understanding and Neutralising Covid-19 Misinformation and Disinformation was criticised before it was published, the main focus of the criticism was on myself being a contributor to the paper. Critics claimed that having been an executive of the UK’s and Europe’s largest education trade union the NEU in 2020 and 2021 automatically invalidated the paper. I was also criticised for some freelance work I have done for the Byline Times which included exclusive articles on covid disinformation campaigns in the UK.
Reporting on the previous inquiry series papers.
Overview of the paper
Link below leads to the full paper
The paper’s key message is focused on the disinformation infodemic and provides suggestions on how authorities can combat this.
While the paper focuses on the wider picture of the infodemic several interconnected groups which have received political and media support are highlighted.
The paper references the #HARTleaks which provide the evidence of a coordinated disinformation campaign and calls on the UK’s covid inquiry to examine the leaked chat archives.
The difference between top down and bottom up disinformation is explained and several several research sources are cited to show the considerable impact disinformation has when its promoted by those with large platforms. A relatively small number of individuals and organisations have had a disproportionate influence on public debate.
Working with HART and Us For Them the CRG group of mainly Conservative MPs have added a level of credibility to disinformation particularly when packaged for abroad. The same occurs with inaccurate statements by sceptic MEP gaining traction in the UK.
It should be noted that a considerable number of the UKs high profile covid conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers have no scientific or medical background, instead they are actors and TV presenters amplifying the disinformation produced by groups like HART, UKMFA and the World Council for Health. These “celebrity” promoters of disinformation appear regularly on TalkTV and the Legatum backed GBNews which serves the same function as Fox News in the US.
The most popular conspiracy theories are identified and it that people are more likely to believe abstract theories about nefarious motives of political figures than non-ideological health misinformation suggesting that political ideology is a driving force behind the infodemic.
The CDP has produced multiple reports mapping the political nature of disinformation, the far right’s adoption of the anti-vax movement and the role predominantly right wing media has played in amplifying. We see the same narratives across the world as covid disinformation groups now expand their narratives into a “freedom movement” which identifies globalists controlling governments as the enemy behind the “medical tyranny” of countries’ covid responses. This incorporates the typical elements of the radical right’s agenda such as climate change denial and a focus on fear mongering over “left wing indoctrination” in schools from sex education, LGBT issues and CRT which use the same communication networks mislead and misrepresent.
What can be done?
The paper highlights the importance of fact checking but draws on research showing that even once disinformation has been debunked it still has a lingering effect. In part this is because those who have been led to believe in conspiracy theories see attempts to counter disinformation as efforts to silence their perception of truth.
This is demonstrated by some of the hate mail the CDP receives, accusations of being in the pay of governments, big pharma and the “globalists” when we are simply a citizen journalist outfit run on goodwill and limited spare time with no funding.
Another reason for the lingering effect of debunked disinformation is in creating confusion and doubt in those who haven’t gone down the conspiracy theorists’ rabbit hole. A good example of this would be in covid vaccines for children, take up has been lower in children than in adults, there are a number of reasons for this including a less effective roll out programme but there are many parents who have willingly had three doses themselves who feel uncomfortable with vaccinating their children despite a mountain of real world data that shows vaccination is preferable to infection.
The paper looks at measures being taken in California in an effort to counter disinformation.
The Californian bill has itself been the subject of a campaign of disinformation which has aimed to mislead the public to the extent of the legislation’s powers claiming it would stifle free speech. The bill was specifically aimed at practising disinformation doctors recommending unproven drugs or making clearly false statements to their patients like claiming vaccines contain microchips or make you magnetic. The limited scope of the bill’s powers could not be used to sanction sceptic academics appearing on Fox News.
The other bill which calls on social media companies to share their algorithms with regulators would provide a level of transparency where there is currently a lack of information regarding how users’ timelines are curated. This would allow authorities to see if accusations of bias are accurate and to inform the public. The bill does not contain powers to demand changes to algorithms
Recommendations for the inquiry
It should be noted that two schools had to be evacuated after receiving hoax bomb threats. Staff and students were abused at the school gates, intruders tried to break onto school grounds, anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists lined the fences by playgrounds and fields to shout at students. For several weeks there were serious safeguarding issues, teaching unions called for the government to act but the Education Secretary at the time Nadhim Zahawi refused to take action.
The UK Government regularly failed to follow the recommendations of its scientific advisers. In September of 2020 they chose not to implement measures after a meeting with Carl Heneghan, Sunetra Gupta and Anders Tegnell.
The #HARTleaks provides evidence of the collaboration between politicians HART and Us For Them. One of the founding members of HART is Bernie de Haldevang a member of the House of Lord. Email exchanges shared in the HARTleaks show how he introduced them to influential back benchers in the Conservative Party such as Mark Harper, Steve Baker, and Graham Brady. HART started writing weekly briefing reports for MPs to use in media interviews and in lobbying their colleagues.
Many of the members of the influential ERG group of MP created the Covid Recovery Group of MPs that openly supported the Great Barrington Declaration and were large enough to remove Boris Johnson’s majority in the commons. This group of sceptic MPs applied considerable political pressure both behind the scenes and in public via right wing papers such as the Telegraph that advocated for the government to follow the GBD.
The CRG recieved funding from the incredibly opaque Recovery Alliance that has concerned the Electoral Commission.
In September 2021 Graham Brady chair of the 1922 committee met with a number of anti-vaxxers included Mark Sexton whose harassment of public sector workers in healthcare and the police is well documented.
The #HARTleaks demonstrated the overlapping membership between them and groups like Us For Them, UKMFA, Law or Fiction, Lawyers for Liberty , Pandata and the Daily Sceptic.
It revealed the close relationship between Us For Them and a number of MPs. Receiving PR support from the incredibly well connected Ed Barker, the group was having backroom meetings with ministers and MPs within weeks of being founded. Their newsletters to supporters have regularly taken credit for influencing government policy. One of the groups most vocal supporters is Robert Halfon who was chair of the education select committee that regularly pursued Us For Them’s agenda such as calling urgent meetings such as questioning the CMO and CSO regarding the roll out of vaccination to children.
The disproportionate engagement of politicians with Us For Them comes at a cost to other groups who advocate on behalf of children. For instance while Us For Them, a private lobbying company appears to have a direct line to decision makers, the Education Select Committee, and the Children’s Commissioner, Long Covid Kids a registered charity representing thousands of children suffering long term harm from covid have had minimal engagement despite two years of trying to have their voices heard. The same has been the case for a group representing children who have suffered from PIMS-TS, CEV/CV families and school safety campaign groups such as Parents United and Safe Ed for All.
#HARTleaks reveal discussions between Us For Them and former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith led to his think tank the Centre for Social Justice producing a report that misrepresented school absence figures to claim 100,000 children had been missing from education because of lockdowns. This stat has been fact checked by multiple sources which has shown that the children are not missing, they are suffering from severe absence that the DfE’s own figures show is mainly caused by sickness from covid. Despite this the DfE altered the Schools Bill at the behest of Halfon and the Children’s Commissioner who has also supported and campaigned alongside Us For Them on a number of calls for changes to government policy including having schools designated essential infrastructure that would make it illegal for school staff to strike for any reason.
The DfE has refused to provide evidence requested by FOI for almost every decision made in regards to covid and school. For instance for the past two the data on the number of education workers who died from covid is missing from the annual workforce surveys that are used to inform DfE policy.
Its important to understand if elements of the media and internal political pressure led to decisions that resulted in preventable harm to health and disruption to education.
When PayPal cancelled the accounts of Us For Them, the Daily Sceptic, Free Speech Union, Law or Fiction and UKMFA the groups received considerable support from Conservative MPs including then Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg who threatened PayPal with government intervention. PayPal eventually reversed the decision but alterations are now being made to the Finance Bill to effectively force private companies to provide services to organisations that might have breached their terms and conditions.
The groups have also campaigned with MPs to bring changes to the Online Harms bill, seeing elements of the legislation in regards to misinformation and disinformation watered down. The Online Harms bill has many critics for a number of reasons but once again it’s telling that lobbying groups with political and media links are being listened to while the concerns of other groups including charities haven’t aren’t being addressed.
Collateral Global, the successor organisation to the Great Barrington Declaration has provided the secretariat to the Covid Recovery All Party Parliamentary Group. The secretariat is Jemma Moran, a member of HART.
Collateral Global has received funding from Luke Johnson who also provided funding to the CRG MPs. Luke Johnson is also a director of Toby Young’s Free Speech Union and the pair of them were speakers at a Pandata event.
The APPG takes evidence from sceptics, deniers and antivaxxers, many whose extremist views could be considered to have moved beyond freedom of speech to incitement of abuse and violence.
A second APPG on vaccine harms has also been set up by CRG member Christopher Chope. The small number of people who have had rare adverse reactions are not being served by the APPG, with their genuine voices drowned out by conspiracy theorists like Malhotra and Sexton.
Covid policy is written by politicians, and so any decision will always be influenced by politics, political narratives are driven mainly by the media and Johnson was well known for trying to keep the Conservative friendly press happy. This means the role of the media in platforming disinformation should also be examined, particularly when the '#HARTleaks reveal how certain journalists were actively working with disinformation groups.
Prior to the pandemic the UK media already had a poor track record in promoting anti-vax narratives, the most high profile of these being Andrew Wakefield’s claims about the MMR jab, its worth noting that many HART and UKMFA members are supporters of Wakefield . One of the journalists responsible for promoting Wakefield was the Daily Express’ Lucy Johnson, the paper later had to apologise for Lucy Johnson after she published incorrect information regarding the HPV jab, so it should come as no surprise that she was organising behind the scenes meetings to introduce HART to other journalists and MPs.
A typical anti-vaxxer tactic used long before the pandemic is the misuse of the VAERS and Yellowcard self reporting system for adverse reactions. One of the most damaging examples of this was a paper produced in the US by Tracy Hoeg, the day her pre-print paper was published it was promoted in the Telegraph by Camilla Turner, another journalist named in the #HARTleaks. The massive exaggeration of myocarditis increased parents vax hesitancy and continued to be quoted by certain MPs despite the alarming statistics having been proven to be incorrect.
Government messaging has often been contradictory and confusing throughout the pandemic, the BMJ paper calls for the inquiry to examine how to improve public health messaging to remove the uncertainty that created the space for disinformation to thrive.
Schools policy is mentioned in the paper because statements said with certainty early in the pandemic proved to be inaccurate. For instance claims children were considerably less likely to be infected and that there was “no evidence of a child infecting an adult” were treated as proof rather than the reality which was a lack of reliable evidence.
Then there is the choice of language used by members and advisers to the JCVI in regards to child vaccination. Public Health England’s clinical lead for covid in children once described covid vaccines as “experimental gene altering therapies” aping the language of anti-vaxxers.
The offer of vaccination has now been withdrawn for children turning 5 from September 2022 onwards. The JCVI decision was implemented without a clear public statement, so despite safety concerns not being the reason, disinformation groups were once again able to exploit the lack of clarity from authorities. The reason stated for withdrawing the offer was to protect the take up of other vaccines, suggesting that concerns of increasing vax hesitancy due to disinformation has influenced the decision.
Reaction
Unsurprisingly the UKMFA does not like being named in the BMJ paper and has written to the BMJ in protest.
John Bye, one of the BMJ paper’s coauthors has responded to Liz Evans accusations that this is a smear article. Yes they do describemd themselves as “the UK’s most recognised and respected organisation advocating for individual rights…”
Founder Liz Evans also wrote an article defending her organisation for Toby Young’s Daily Sceptic.
The Daily Sceptic article begins by quoting Jay Bhattacharya who makes two misleading statements in one short tweet. The Californian legislation does not undermine free speech and the BMJ piece was a peer reviewed paper commisioned by the BMJ not simply an opinion piece. However disinformation groups have regularly misrepresented opinion pieces in the BMJ as being peer reviewed papers.
A Koch funded legal fund is currently bringing a number of court cases to challenge attempts to combat disinformation, including the Californian bill.
The Daily Sceptic continues with the narrative of totalitarian extreme censorship, while arguing that the paper should never have been allowed to be published, censorship seems acceptable when it comes to views the Daily Sceptic does not agree with. The paper’s recommendations to the inquiry didn’t call for censorship beyond considering a bill that designed to prevent medical malpractice and profiteering, the paper calls for transparency and scrutiny.
The paper even explains the issue with censorship, Liz Evans acknowledges this before continuing to misrepresent the approach advocated by the paper.
The UKMFA
By accusing the BMJ, myself and my coauthors of smears and making unsubstantiated claims Liz Evans and the Daily Sceptic are themselves engaging in smearing us in an effort to have our work censored. Lets examine the UKMFA’s website to see if the accusations against them are unsubstantiated.
Under resources there is a section dedicated to treatments for the vaccine injured.
The same organisations and others are listed under the covid prevention and treatments section of the UKMFA website.
America’s Frontline Doctors were created by the Council for National Policy as a political project to undermine public health, they were “Trump’s doctors” and the founding member Simone Gold was sent to prison for her involvement in the January 6 storming of Capitol Hill. Simone Gold is now a member of the Council for National Policy.
AFLD are currently embroiled in a civil war between senior members as donations are spent on expensive homes and living expenses.
FLCCC is the main organisation behind promoting Ivermectin, one of the founding members is also a member of America’s Frontline Doctors. A member of FLCCC was recently arrested in Brazil for crimes against humanity after conducting unethical trials that resulted in the deaths of many of their patients. In France investigations have begun into papers FLCCC cite as evidence their alternative treatments work,
World Council for Health, founded by Tess Lawrie, a HART colleague of Liz Evans, was responsible for hosting the press conference for Aseem Malhotra to launch his much criticised anti-vax paper. The group promoted unproven treatments and Tess Lawrie is the founder of the British Ivermectin Research Development group that has raised tens of thousands of pounds in donations that it claims will be used to establish a nationwide ivermectin distribution network.
The WCH has just undergone its own civil war.
The Truth for Health Foundation in the US has several of Jay Bhattacharya’s Pandata colleagues on its board, including Peter McCullough who recently had his medical licence revoked. Truth for Health has set up an in-church telesales franchise.
Other board members of the foundation include the founder and members of the Black Robe Regiment, a religious militia group that has openly called for civil war in the US, and has ties to the Oathkeepers, Michael Flynn and Rodger Stone. Truth for Health and the Black Robes have taken part in the Trump backing Great Awakening Tour in the US, heavily featuring Christian fascists speakers claimed the “angel of death” is coming for their political opponents.
The UKMFA is a member of the World Freedom Alliance founded by Dolores Cahill, the organisation and its founding group the World Doctors Alliance have been calling for healthcare workers to put on Nuremberg 2.0 trials since May 2020 claiming the whole pandemic has been a global conspiracy. Cahill has also been accused by a former member of one of her organisations of misusing donations to fund her lifestyle.
Other critics
Heneghan’s Centre for Evidence Based Medicine is now an official partner of Pandata whose includes Peter McCullough, Trump advisers Scott Atlas and Paul Alexander, alongside members of a many other disinformation groups including HART, World Doctors Alliance and Doctors for Covid Ethics.
Besides members of disinformation groups named in the paper some of the most vocal critics are paediatricians from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) who have supported or spoken in defence of the group Us For Them that has promoted disinformation, particularly in regards to covid vaccines. Several were even personally thanked by Us For Them’s founder Molly Kingsley in her book which in itself made claims that vaccination is more harmful to children than covid. Kingsley is an author for the AIER linked Brownstone Institute and sits on the executive board for the Together Declaration which is holding events on resisting the “globalists Great Reset.” Why paediatricians who have helped produce the evidence base to justify the UK government’s schools covid policy raises a number of valid questions and lines of inquiry. It also demonstrates how certain individuals have a self interest in undermining the BMJ’s inquiry series.
Different views or disinformation?
The #HARTleaks from mid 2021 provided an achieved log of the HART groups entire Rocket chats over an eight month period. It provides extensive evidence of coordinated disinformation campaign groups working closely with certain politicians and the sections of the media. It also shows how data is deliberately manipulated to create false claims.
The Safer to Wait campaign
The named groups have amplified disinformation regarding the risk to pregnant women and their babies of vaccination. The DoHSC had to respond to one example that went viral.
In Summary
While the paper looked at ways of combating disinformation including the Californian bills, the paper’s conclusion did not make policy recommendations, it provided questions that the authors believe the inquiry should seek to answer. This is about transparency not censorship.
Given the evidence available it doesn’t seem an unreasonable line of inquiry.
Disinformation fighters' unethical "inoculation with distorted misinformation" technique exposed:
https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/vaccine-like-inoculation-of-minds