Reform supporting anti-vaxxers

Berd

An additional reason for Reform politicising the issue could be their interest in discrediting other parties who support vaccination, & fertilising the growth of conspiracy theories which some Reform supporters seem to feed on. Just a suggestion! I’m not especially a ‘leftie’ by the way. But would Reform even exist without Farage, or without the immigration issue? They seem blatantly opportunistic.

You could be right. It certainly seems that words like "truth" and "fact" are irrelevant to Reform.

Jane43

Chocolatelovinggran

Whatever your views on vaccines, I have concerns about this unqualified man ( diet books to infection " expert" is quite the stretch) being invited to address a political party.
I find it difficult to imagine any other party giving him such a platform.

A lot of what Reform does emulates the bandwagons of the Trump administration - DOGE, anti immigration, bitcoin, ‘patriotism’, free speech and now anti vaccines. Kennedy has done a U turn and is now endorsing the measles vaccine after cases in the USA reached a 33 year high with two deaths of unvaccinated children. Autism could be Reform’s next target.

Reform has already started on autism:

www.rethink.org/news-and-stories/news-and-views/2025/nigel-farage-says-mental-health-conditions-are-over-diagnosed-we-disagree/

Heaven help us!

It's £££ he wants in my opinion, westendgirl
Not just approval.

Kandinsky

I don’t know what to believe anymore regarding the Covid vaccine - but I won’t be having any more & regret the 4 I’ve already had.

This means you are not protecting anyone else. The point of the vaccine is to keep you out of hospital so other people might be able to get a bed. Not having it bcause of what nutters say is selfish and stupid.

It appears that even Reform is trying to distance itself from him, but defends his right to free speech - I think that's where the connection is

Indeed growstuff that’s what I read yesterday in the Telegraph. Reform gave him a platform (same as last year) but this year he just went off on a rant & Reform aren’t supportive of his views but defend his right to express them.

However, bad optics. Tainted by association.
Wrong platform.

But they’ve given him a platform and the publicity. And now distance themselves from him. Typical Reform tactics. Light the blue touch paper…

FriedGreenTomatoes2

^It appears that even Reform is trying to distance itself from him, but defends his right to free speech - I think that's where the connection is^

Indeed growstuff that’s what I read yesterday in the Telegraph. Reform gave him a platform (same as last year) but this year he just went off on a rant & Reform aren’t supportive of his views but defend his right to express them.

However, bad optics. Tainted by association.
Wrong platform.

Where would Reform draw a line on the right to express free speech, especially at their own conference?

With hindsight, the whole Covid situation could have been managed better and people should be given the opportunity to give their opinions. However, claiming there is a connection between Covid vaccinations is just stupid and dangerous. There is no evidence. There is no evidence that a vaccination caused Malhotra's father's death either.

People are anxious enough about vaccines without somebody in the public eye spouting "information" which is false. It's feeding a narrative which can only be described as a form of collective paranoia.

Considering Covid was only 5 years ago no one knows what the long term effects of the vaccine are.
So calling people stupid for having concerns is a bit, well, stupid.

Kandinsky

Considering Covid was only 5 years ago no one knows what the long term effects of the vaccine are.
So calling people stupid for having concerns is a bit, well, stupid.

And yet people are queuing up to take those weight reduction injections . Don’t see people giving lectures about that.

Although he was involved in the making of it so would know more than the average Joe.

Kandinsky

Considering Covid was only 5 years ago no one knows what the long term effects of the vaccine are.
So calling people stupid for having concerns is a bit, well, stupid.

Anybody is perfectly within their right to call somebody who has no evidence stupid, including the stupid people who suck up what the stupid people claim.

There is currently research on Long Covid and the reason a tiny handful of people died as a result of having the Covid vaccine.

Any medical intervention will have side effects. If a vaccine is administered to millions of people worldwide, it's inevitable that some people will be adversely affected. It's also inevitable there will be coincidences. What needs to be known is what the benefits were. The evidence so far shows that the benefits far outweighed the risks.

Menopauselbitch

Although he was involved in the making of it so would know more than the average Joe.

Sorry. Who was involved in making what?

Kandinsky

Considering Covid was only 5 years ago no one knows what the long term effects of the vaccine are.
So calling people stupid for having concerns is a bit, well, stupid.

Actually huge amounts of research have been done into the effects of the pandemic in the last 5 years and much is known.

There are nearly 2 million people in the UK with Long Covid and the investigation into the condition has helped with the understanding of ME also. It is known that there is a genetic susceptibility to catching Covid and also to completely avoiding it. Some people have incredibly active Mast cells, the big stuff of the immune cells and they knock the virus on the head as soon as it appears. Conversely, the covid virus is known to be able to hide in the body rather like herpes and it's been found in the brain as well as gut in particular.
This information is all out there in scientific papers and health databases. It's not difficult to find though god knows how long this will last once Kennedy and his US pals carry on wrecking.
And I've written this on my phone which doesn't allow me to go back and correct a few points of grammar, dammit, you'll have to live with those!

Granatlast007

That’s interesting. Thank you.

A friend's 21 year old daughter died as a result of an adverse reaction to a drug which is a commonly used anaesthetic. It was a terrible tragedy but the drug is in use with lots of people every day of the week . No one (as far as I know) is refusing to be anaesthetised whilst under going surgery. Any drug will cause a problem for a small percentage of people and that includes penicillin, aspirin and practically every drug known to man. We have to learn to understand and manage "risk" as opposed to "benefit", clearly some people don't understand this.

foxie48 I was pondering about starting a thread on risk. I really wonder how much people understand.

Currently, research shows that deaths caused as a direct result of Covid vaccines was less than 1 in a million. When millions of people are being vaccinated, that means that deaths will be in double or treble digits. Although devastating to the people affected, it's a tiny risk.

On the other hand, I've seen threads on GN where people have been discussing whether to take medication to treat high cholesterol or blood pressure. They've been to told that their risk of having a heart attack or stroke within 10 years is 20%, but they dismiss it.

The puzzle is that people refuse to have a vaccination because there's a risk of harm of less than 1 in a million. They obviously believe that level of risk is significant. However, when they are told their risk of a heart attack/stroke is 20% (ie 1 in 5), they don't think that level is significant.

Those people are 200,000 times more likely to have a heart attack or stroke within 10 years than they are to be harmed by Covid vaccine.

Moreover, they are many times (sorry, don't know exact figures) more likely to suffer adverse affects from Covid infection (death or Long Covid) than they are to suffer harm from the vaccine.

One of my daughter's friends is a doctor who spent the pandemic on a Covid ward in one of our leading hospitals. She is travelling to the US for a court case involving a drug company. In a recent conversation she said that as far as she, and all her colleagues, are concerned the only thing that stopped Covid was the vaccine. She has no doubt at all.

foxie-48 one of my daughter's university friends is an anaesthetist and he once told her that the problem with anaesthetics is that you can get a very rare reaction that cannot be foreseen and is always fatal.

It is possible to have all one’s covid vaccinations and still have concerns about the possible long term effects. It is possible to feel compassion for people who have been bereaved or suffered lifelong harm from covid vaccinations without dismissing those people as just a small minority - collateral damage for the greater good. That’s no comfort if it’s your loved one or yourself, particularly as many of the victims were healthy young adults who might have been at less risk of the most severe effects of covid than those they were vaccinated to protect. That’s not to say that the vaccine didn’t save lives, but the Astra Zeneca vaccine was withdrawn or restricted for good reason.

I’d like to think it might be possible to discuss concerns in a balanced way and to acknowledge how difficult it was in 2020/ 21 when we were facing the unknown. Unfortunately it seems that it is still not possible to express any concerns on here without being jumped on by the majority and accused of being some kind of crazy anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist who is willing to put others at risk (irrespective of the fact that the vaccine is no longer widely offered anyway, so who is putting people at risk?)

MayBee70

Kandinsky

Considering Covid was only 5 years ago no one knows what the long term effects of the vaccine are.
So calling people stupid for having concerns is a bit, well, stupid.

And yet people are queuing up to take those weight reduction injections . Don’t see people giving lectures about that.

Good point MayBee.
Same (bit different I know) about all this ‘vaping’ people do. They carry them around constantly and suck on them as f they were dummies (pacifiers, rubber bungs - not stupid people!)

nightowl I feel a lot of empathy for people who have been harmed by Covid vaccines, but the fact is they are a tiny minority. Somebody on GN claimed there were 16 million, which is absolute nonsense.

Of course there must be work to try and identify the risk factors, so that accurate risk/benefit judgments can be made. Of course there should be discussion. What there shouldn't be is scare-mongering by people who don't know what they're talking about.

Yes, I will jump when people come up with ridiculous claims!

I had all the Covid vaccinations with no problems and I'll continue to have them. Of course every vaccine carries risks but the chance of serious adverse effects is very low. Occasionally people die but that's the price for general immunity. If Reform is promoting anti-vax ideas then its very dangerous. I read that Kennedy in the US who is prominent in anti-vaxxing had his kids vaccinated. If that's true he's not exactly someone to rely on. I wonder how many Reform politicians were vaccinated.

Deedaa my daughter is a fellow of the Royal College of Anaesthetists. She spends her working life dealing with the risks associated with her job and the risks it presents to patients. One of the biggest risks is being overweight, it can greatly affect how easy it is to intubate a patient once the paralysing drug has been administered and a machine needs to breathe for the patient, but I've never heard anyone refuse a cream cake or an extra slice of pizza because it might cause them to be overweight. She says her heart sinks when a patient is very overweight and needs an op which means they must lie on their front, it presents extra challenges for the anaesthetist who's job it is to keep them alive during an operation! Also giving epidurals to an overweight patient presents lots of challenges too!

growstuff

nightowl I feel a lot of empathy for people who have been harmed by Covid vaccines, but the fact is they are a tiny minority. Somebody on GN claimed there were 16 million, which is absolute nonsense.

Of course there must be work to try and identify the risk factors, so that accurate risk/benefit judgments can be made. Of course there should be discussion. What there shouldn't be is scare-mongering by people who don't know what they're talking about.

A discussion of risk would be interesting though it could get excited and out of hand quite quickly, people get very heated and there is so much data out there that it can get grabbed and misunderstood or misused.

I happened to be working for one of the big universities in the 1990s as a research assistant in the medical division and I was part of a team who constructed the beginning of one of the big medical databases. Think hours spent wading through medical journals from day one identifying single and double blind trials. Quite a slog and it's the reason that I can now find my way through medical info on the net although it's a jungle now.

I guess we all assess risk separately depending on our individual circumstances and life story. Life is unfair and you would feel that if it was your baby that died of whooping cough.
Even within the medical profession there is disagreement and controversy. Of course it's upsetting when people feel threatened by scaremongering but I agree that the number of people harmed by vaccines is tiny compared to those whose life has been saved.