The anti-vaxx conspiracists have blood on their hands

The Herald Scotland

17-07-2025

Scotland's own Neil Oliver, for instance, was a middling TV presenter until he parlayed vaccine conspiracy into international celebrity.
Donald Trump's current pick for US ambassador to Malaysia is a publicity-seeker called Nick Adams. He achieved Twitter "fame" by endlessly claiming he's 'Alpha Male', telling parents to 'take your kids to Hooters', and cheering on those refusing the Covid vaccine.
Finding the sweet spot where anti-vaxx messaging meets politics is a guaranteed passage to money, fame and power. Just ask GB News. The right-wing channel aired the US conspiracist Naomi Wolf comparing the vaccine rollout to 'mass murder'.
When that future history of this era is written, after the chapter on the rise of the idiot, the next section should recount the consequences of their reign.
Read more by Neil Mackay
We see some of the profound real-world results in Britain today: a child has died in Liverpool's Alder Hey hospital after contracting measles.
They were the second child to die in Britain since 2023; 17 children have been treated at Alder Hey since June.
It's an agonising truth, but such deaths were all but unavoidable given the damage caused by widespread dissemination of anti-vaccine conspiracy in Britain.
Millions of children worldwide are at risk of death and illness due to declining vaccination rates, according to the World Health Organization and Unicef.
Britain has the worst vaccine level for MMR – against measles, mumps and rubella – in the G7.
The required rate is 95%. In Britain, only 89% of children received the jab in 2024. In Germany, it was 96%.
In France, Italy and Japan 95%. Even in America, where Covid conspiracy runs riot, rates were higher at 92%.
Rates for the second MMR dose fall to 85% in Britain. In the pre-Covid years, around 93% got their MMR jab.
The picture of vaccine take-up in Britain is complex, and differs depending on vaccine. There's wide regional variation.
For the six-in-one vaccine – covering diphtheria, hepatitis B, haemophilus influenzae type B, polio, tetanus and whooping cough – London is nine per cent lower at 86.2% than the highest coverage in north-east England with 95.2%.
Scotland and Wales have better coverage with the six-in-one, hitting the 95% target in some cases. However, overall Scotland has witnessed long-term declines in the uptake of all primary and booster childhood vaccinations, Public Health Scotland says.
The journal Community Practitioner, which covers issues related to the work of community practitioners and health visitors, reported in March last year that in Scotland there had been 'declines in MMR, both the 5-in-1 and 6-in-1, rotavirus, MenB, PCV [pneumococcal], and Hib/MenC.
'For MMR 2 by age five, only two regions (Angus and East Dunbartonshire) hit the 95% uptake target, and the lowest uptake was in Aberdeen with 83.1%. Two (unrelated) cases of measles were reported last year [2023], in October.'
With MMR, Britain never recovered from the Andrew Wakefield scandal. Wakefield was the doctor behind false claims linking MMR to autism. The claims were given front page treatment by gullible journalists. Wakefield was eventually struck off in 2010.
The scandal left Britain extremely vulnerable to anti-vaccine conspiracy. Many journalists who amplified Covid conspiracies had pushed Wakefield's nonsense to the top of the news agenda in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Back then, however, the media landscape was radically different. A few foolish hacks regurgitating nonsense were as nothing compared to the tsunami of conspiracy which would wash across the internet during Covid.
Donald Trump, who rode to power on the back of conspiracies related to Covid and QAnon, installed the vaccine conspiracist Robert Kennedy Jnr as his Secretary of State for Health.
This month, there's around 1,300 Americans infected with measles. Three have died.
Joe Rogan, whose podcast has a global audience of around 15 million, has pushed anti-vaxx nonsense.
Remarkably, this former mixed martial arts commentator and comedian is one of the most influential media figures on Earth. As I said: in the age of idiocracy, idiots rule.
Rogan has made comments including: 'If you're like 21 years old, and you say to me, should I get vaccinated? I'll go no.'
He once claimed his show had been cancelled in Vancouver because Canada required proof of vaccination during Covid for live events. 'I'm not gonna get vaccinated. I have antibodies, it doesn't make sense,' he said.
When Rogan contracted Covid, he told the world that he was taking the drug invermectin, used to treat parasite infection and proven to be ineffective against the virus.
At one stage, 270 scientists wrote to Spotify, which distributes Rogan's show, citing 'false and societally harmful assertions'. They asked Spotify to 'establish a clear and public policy to moderate misinformation'.
A child with a measle rash (Image: PA)
Before the US election, JD Vance appeared on Rogan's show and voiced scepticism about the Covid vaccine.
When the most powerful people on the planet speak on the most widely listened-to show on Earth run by the most significant media figure in the world, then real-life consequences are inevitable.
We can see that now, with deaths and disease which could have been prevented if vaccine conspiracists hadn't fed unfounded fears.
It's important to note that often those suffering in current outbreaks are themselves at no fault – indeed many are victims of the conspiracists.
Renae Archer, from Manchester, died in 2023 after complications from contracting measles as a baby.
Her mother Rebecca now campaigns for parents to have their children vaccinated. 'If other people were vaccinated, Renae might not have got the measles in the first place,' she said. 'She was only five months old.'
At such an age, Renae was too young for her vaccination when she was infected by others.
Once the future history of this era is written, after the chapter on the rise of the idiots and the real-life consequences of their reign, one hopes the book closes with an account of how these fools were called to a reckoning for what they did in pursuit of fame, money and power.
Every unnecessary death is on them.
Neil Mackay is The Herald's Writer at Large. He's a multi-award-winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics.