Inside the Covid-19 anti-vaxx movement making millions by flogging dangerous ideas which could 'kill tens of thousands'

ALL over the world, scientists are desperately working to produce a Covid-19 vaccine that will end the pandemic and save thousands of lives – but a terrifying number of people already say they won't take it.

As many as a third of Brits could refuse the urgent treatment, with experts pointing the finger at rampant "anti-vaxx" conspiracy theorists for spreading dangerous misinformation about the pandemic.

Anti-vaxxers, who oppose vaccinations for a variety of nonsensical reasons, are exploding in popularity during the coronavirus pandemic.

Anti-vaxx social media accounts tracked by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) now command an audience of over 58million, but the true size of their reach is likely to be much higher.

Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the CCDH says they're now racking up a million new followers every month as more and more misinformation about the pandemic spreads.

"Anti-vaxxers have an ideological bomb, a dirty bomb that spreads misinformation throughout society and has the capacity to kill tens of thousands," Ahmed tells Sun Online.

"Right now, we appear to be sitting back and allowing them to continue, whereas if it were a conventional bomb, we’d consider these people terrorists.

"This is a really dangerous thing we’re dealing with. People will die.”

Lies costing lives

Thousands of deaths might sound like an exaggeration, but science is in agreement with the grim assessment.

Research published in the Emerging Infectious Diseases journal suggests 82 per cent of a population needs immunity from Covid-19 – either through vaccination or prior infection – to achieve herd immunity, stopping the disease from spreading.

But polling conducted by the CCDH found only 69 per cent of people in the UK planned to get a vaccine, nowhere near the 82 per cent required.

“If we’re well below that, what that will mean is wave after wave of the disease coming back," Ahmed explains.

"We know how many this wave has killed [44,517 so far in the UK].

"How many do you think the next ones will?”

Dr Doug Brown, Chief Executive of the British Society for Immunology, previously told Sun Online that for any vaccine to be effective against the coronavirus, "critical to its success will be a high uptake rate".

"While this is a scary time for many, in order to save lives and guard against the worst effects of this virus, we must be guided by the scientific evidence so that we can provide the best protection for our families," he adds.

"Vaccination is one of the safest ways to protect you and your family against infectious diseases."

We already know that dangerous conspiracy theories about vaccines and unscientific remedies spread on social media can have devastating real-world consequences.

In 2019, a state of emergency was declared in New York during a deadly measles outbreak, in which thousands of unvaccinated children were infected with the life-threatening virus.

And in 2017, a secret Facebook group was exposed in which mums were giving bleach enemas to their kids believing it would "cure" them.

They then uploaded pictures of "parasites" which left their children's bodies after the sick treatment – but they were actually photographing bowel lining that had been burned out by the bleach.

Rocketing popularity

Despite the dangers of medical misinformation being well-known to the public and social media platforms, business is booming for British anti-vaxxers.

The Arnica Parents' Support Network Facebook group, where posts include conspiracies linking the coronavirus with 5G and claims that Bill Gates is using the pandemic to make a New World Order, has nearly 40,000 members.

The group, which was founded by a mum-of-two from London, even counts frontline NHS staff among its followers.

Another group containing anti-vaxx posts titled "Dr Wakefield's Work Must Continue" has over 20,500 followers.

Its name is an apparent reference to disgraced medic Andrew Wakefield who published a fraudulent study linking the MMR vaccine with autism in 1998 and who was banned from practicing medicine in the UK in 2010.

But even these groups are dwarfed by American pages that have UK-based administrators.

One group, Autism Mothers, has nearly 200,000 followers and appears to be managed in part by people based in the UK.

A video recently appeared in the group which had been censored by YouTube for featuring a fired academic encouraging Americans to "be resisting" social distancing rules.

Conspiracies for clicks

Even serial conspiracists have been using the pandemic to boost their own audiences.

David Icke, a conspiracy theorist famous for claiming the Royal family are actually shape-shifting aliens, has been spewing new nonsense about the coronavirus to increase his following.

YouTube and Facebook removed Icke's content from their sites in which he linked 5G with the virus.

In one livestream, Icke said: "If 5G continues and reaches where they want to take it, human life as we know it is over… So people have to make a decision."

But despite his ban on YouTube and Facebook, Icke is still active on Twitter where he has over 344,000 followers.

Today, he shared an essay on Twitter published on his website suggesting people were being lied to about the reality of Covid-19.

"At this point, I’ve written well over 150 articles about COVID-19," it reads.

"And of course, the phenomenon is not real. Most people wouldn’t be able to grasp that."

In a recent interview on the London Real site, which the CCDH describes as the "foremost promoter of David Icke's conspiracy theories about Covid and vaccines", Icke boasts about his success.

"I’ve been trashed and ridiculed and abused for 30 years," Icke tells London Real founder Brian Rose, whose own following has reportedly almost doubled from 1.5million in January to over 2.8million now.

"I’m sitting here now stronger than ever, talking to more people than ever."

Ahmed says Rose, who has also made videos featuring Andrew Wakefield, uses free conspiracy content to draw punters in as a means to ultimately sell products to them.

Social sites cashing in

But it's not just the promoters of conspiracy theories who are making a killing.

Social media platforms are cashing in too by allowing anti-vaxx adverts on their sites.

The CCDH estimates the market could be worth up to $1billion a year to tech giants.

Their investigations uncovered Facebook accepting paid anti-vaxx adverts and YouTube displaying adverts on anti-vaxx videos, indicating that the companies were directly profiting from the misinformation.

Ahmed says despite promises made by social media sites to not allow anti-vaxx content, they are not transparent about continuing to profit from the conspiracy theorists on their platforms.

"They obfuscate and lie and wait for the story to die down. That’s how it works."

Ahmed believes the most effective way to stop the groups growing – and their messages reaching more people – is to deplatform them altogether.

“Ask yourself the question – why is Facebook allowing people whose job it is to make money by persuading people not to take vaccines and put themselves and the whole of the community at risk, why are they allowing that on their platforms?” Ahmed says.

"There’s nothing wrong with making a buck – the problem comes when you’re making a buck by killing other people.”

A Facebook spokesperson said: “We are working to stop harmful misinformation from spreading on our platforms and have removed hundreds of thousands of pieces of COVID-19-related misinformation.

"We reduce vaccine misinformation in News Feed, we don’t show it in search results or recommend it to you on Facebook or Instagram, we don’t allow it in ads, and we connect people with authoritative information from recognised health experts."

A YouTube spokesperson said: "We’re committed to providing timely and helpful information about COVID-19 during this critical time, including raising authoritative content, reducing the spread of harmful misinformation and showing information panels, using WHO data and the NHS resources, to help combat misinformation.

"We've taken a number of steps to address this including surfacing more authoritative content across our site for people searching for vaccination-related topics, beginning to reduce recommendations of certain anti-vaccination videos and showing information panels with more sources where they can fact check information for themselves."

Sun Online has contacted Brian Rose for comment.

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