A review of BBC's 'Unvaccinated'

An 'investigation' into why people remain unvaccinated.

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Yesterday, the BBC aired a “timely” and “eye-opening” programme called “Unvaccinated”, a show which sought “to understand why so many remain unvaccinated against Covid-19”. Seven unvaccinated participants shared a roof for a week and discussed their “long-held opinions, beliefs and fears that have prevented them from getting the vaccine”. The presenter, Professor Hannah Fry, a mathematician, took them to “meet leading experts, confront the latest science and statistics to emerge in the field and dissect how misinformation spreads on social media”.

Ultimately, the programme was about whether the seven participants would change their mind and get vaccinated.

Even though the promotional material used a disputed figure of four million unvaccinated adults, I watched the programme with an open-mind. I naively hoped that the show would have some high level debate as to why people didn’t want to get vaccinated. I hoped it would try to address some of the many questions I have about the vaccine and at least offer valid counter-arguments. My hope was in vain. The show was patronising, treated the participants and viewers like children but fundamentally, didn’t answer many important questions.

Before the show, I would have said to watch it and give it a chance. But I wouldn’t waste your time. I review and discuss the key points from the show below. I’ve watched it once so that you don’t have to. And I’m re-watching it to write this article.

The show begins with more fear mongering and ominous music. “Covid is on the rise again and we’re facing a new wave of the pandemic. After around 200,000 deaths, there are still around 4 million adults in the UK that remain unvaccinated”. Professor Fry wanted to know why and whether anything can change their minds.

So within the first few seconds there are a number of disputed numbers. Firstly 200,000 deaths. That is the number of deaths with COVID-19 on the death certificate and as almost everyone knows very well by now, this does not necessarily mean they died from COVID-19. Secondly, 4 million unvaccinated adults in the UK. Assuming the UK has an adult population of around 55 million, 4 million people equals around 7%. However, using the UK Health Security Agency data shows that in England alone, over 9 million adults are unvaccinated (around 20%). However, due to the lack of accurate population data, the figures are disputed on both sides of the argument.

Whilst introducing herself, the presenter, Hannah Fry says she worked on the data and models that the Government used to bring us out of the first lockdown. She is keen to emphasise that she helped take us out of the lockdown but I would be interested to know whether her data and models took us into the first, as well as subsequent lockdowns.

On a side note, a spooky coincidence occurred in 2018. Hannah presented a programme called “Contagion: The BBC Four Pandemic”. The show tried to predict the impact of the next pandemic more accurately and therefore needed new data. The nation was asked to download the pandemic app in a “ground-breaking experiment”. Hannah adopted the role of Patient Zero by walking around the streets of Haslemere in Surrey. The spooky coincidence? The first person to catch coronavirus in the UK was in Haslemere, less than two years later.

Anyway, away from coincidences and back to the show. They commissioned “the largest UK-wide survey since the vaccine roll-out” to find out what the nation thinks. The first result showed that 27% of adults were unlikely to want more Covid vaccines. What I found interesting about the survey was that the sample size was 2,558. This consisted of 1,894 vaccinated individuals and 664 unvaccinated. Now, if this was a random sample, their own poll suggests that 26% (664/2558) of adults are unvaccinated.

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After the introduction, the programme introduces the seven participants and gives a summary of their reasons for not being vaccinated.

Nazarin believes that the Thalidomide scandal shows that medicinal drugs can’t be trusted. She says “there are people dying, who have been vaccinated and they’re dying from this vaccine. The amount of injuries and deaths is not normal.”

Chanelle (a black lady) has a long-standing mistrust of the medical establishment. She says “I don’t know what the damage will be, not only to my unborn child, but to me.”

Naomi’s biggest concern is her fertility.

Care worker Mark believes in the right to choose. He says, “really I just don’t like the fact that we were being forced to have it. I work in a care home.” Last November he nearly had to choose between vaccination and his job.

Luca’s sharing of conspiracy theories have got him several bans on social media. He says “I reckon there is a chip inside the jab and obviously when they turn the 5G towers on, which they’re building everywhere in the world, I think a lot of people are going to die.”

Ethan doesn’t believe everything the Government tells him about the pandemic.

Vicky has a deep-rooted mistrust of the pharmaceutical industry.

Other than this short introduction, the reasons for the participants not being vaccinated is not really examined. Vicky and Nazarin have both said, in interviews after the show, that they had many reasons but these weren’t shown.

There are a few snippets throughout the show which give additional information such as Chanelle mentioning poor medical treatment for black people, Vicky not wanting to be part of a trial and Naomi feeling that it has been very rushed and doesn’t want to be a human guinea pig.

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Professor Fry says the vaccine has received some extreme responses around the UK. Cue comedy British “extreme” responses of people shouting “Shame on you!” and an old man knocking over a sign.

Hannah first discusses her challenge (of the upcoming week) with Clarissa Simas, a psychologist from the Vaccine Confidence Project. Strangely she didn’t interview Clarissa’s colleague from the Vaccine Confidence Project! That would have made more interesting TV.

In this conversation, triple jabbed Hannah shows how unbiased this show is going to be. “What did we get so wrong that millions of people still don’t want to take the vaccine?” she asks.

According to the results of their poll, 50% of unvaccinated people were worried about blood clots. However, Hannah says 25% of unvaccinated respondents are also worried about common less severe side effects (e.g. headaches). She then goes on to talk about how people can develop non-severe side effects, if they expect them to happen. This is an interesting phenomenon but was not one of the reasons the seven participants had stated so seemed pointless.

NB. There are some inconsistencies and interesting results from the aforementioned survey but I will look at this in a separate post.

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Next, Hannah discusses Nazarin’s distrust with Pfizer. Nazarin talks about the Pfizer documents that have been released to date, including the one with nine pages of adverse reactions. The camera pans over close ups of Pfizer’s Cumulative Analysis of Post-Authorization Adverse Event Reports. Whilst this isn’t the 9 pages of adverse reactions Nazarin is talking about it is reassuring that the show’s producers had looked at this document. This is the one which looked at all suspected adverse events, from around the world, up to February 2021.

Many people have misinterpreted this data and claimed it shows adverse reactions from Pfizer’s trial. This is not true, the data shows adverse reactions from all countries which had started administrating their vaccines.

Hannah admits that when you look at the Pfizer report it looks terrifying. She understands why people are scared. However, she says the nine page report is not saying that these adverse reactions have been caused by the vaccine. “An adverse event has no proven link to the medication, it’s an event that could just happen to take place afterwards.”

She goes on to give the example of a doctor who was about to give an MMR vaccine to a little boy. The phone rings and there is a 50/50 chance of the doctor picking it up before vaccination. He does so and the boy starts fitting. If the doctor hadn’t picked up the phone, the fitting episode would have been blamed on the vaccine.

Professor Norman Fenton says this deliberately creates the false impression that there’s also a 50:50 chance any adverse reaction after vaccination is purely coincidental.

We are told the only way to see if something is genuine or a chance event is to carefully record and monitor and see if something happens more often than you would expect in everyday life. The show says there have indeed found some rare side effects. Anaphylaxis, myocarditis, Bell’s palsy, Guillain-Barre syndrome and blood clots with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

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To help participants try to find answers to individual questions about side effects, Hannah enlists the support of GP Dr Arora who works with the British Medical Association to promote the vaccine online. No conflict of interest there then. Completely unbiased.

The GP tells Ethan that all the studies that have been done show that there’s no impact on fertility in male or female patients. She obviously forgot to mention this study which showed that the Covid-19 vaccination BNT162b2 temporarily impairs semen concentration and total motile count among semen donors. However, she does tell Ethan that studies show that having Covid-19 can temporarily reduce sperm quality and count.

Naomi, who has already had Covid and says she has Long Covid, doesn’t want a trial vaccination in her body until she is certain it won’t deplete her fertility. The GP addresses Naomi’s concerns by telling her that they know disruptions to the menstrual cycle happen after vaccination but they are temporary. You might have a late or heavier period at the next cycle but by the second or third period everything will be back to normal.

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Back to Nazarin. She talks about her friend who was perfectly healthy but after one dose had brain fog, a stroke, three suspected heart attacks and seizures. Hannah asks “how can you be sure that was the vaccine and not something that would have happened anyway?” A valid question to which Nazarin responds “If you’ve been completely healthy before, that one thing changed and then, days later you’re suddenly experiencing all these things…the chance of that happening to someone so young…not possible” An equally valid response although “not possible” is a bit too far.

Hannah wanted to help people think about risk, controversially, by using jelly beans. She is correct by saying using statistics is a useful tool to step outside of our emotional engagement and gives us a sense of objectivity but for some, comparing deaths with sweeties was too much. The professor placed 33,000 jelly beans on a table and said one of those beans represented vaccine induced myocarditis.

Nazarin pointed out that other beans could be other adverse reactions but Hannah dismisses her point and says that myocarditis is actually the most common severe side effect. However, she doesn’t point out the stats of having multiple doses.

She does go on to say that 18-29 year olds are most likely to be affected by myocarditis but that your chances of getting myocarditis from Covid are higher. This study showed the cumulative effects of multiple doses made the chances of getting myocarditis much higher. Furthermore, this was for hospitalisations, many cases of myocarditis go undetected. With regard to her comments about getting myocarditis from Covid, she obviously hadn’t read this study.

This section of the show is concluded by saying that it is important to acknowledge that there have been vaccine related deaths (mostly related to a rare AstraZeneca blood clot) which, in the UK up to May 2021, were in the tens, not the hundreds.

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On day three, Hannah wants to address the perception that the vaccines were rushed on to the market. To do so, she took three members of the group (two decided not to go which was disappointing because they could have asked some challenging questions ) to Bristol to meet a scientist called Professor Adam Finn who has “been instrumental in Covid-19 vaccine research”.

On the way, Hannah quizzes Luca about his microchip and depopulation beliefs and tells us that their survey indicates that 5% of the unvaccinated believe there is a microchip in the vaccine. Clearly trying to link conspiracy theories with questioning the speed of the vaccine.

Anyway, back to Adam Finn who they show working at the University of Bristol. Hannah says he lead trials for AstraZeneca, Janssen and Valneva and is therefore an expert. He says the vaccines are very good at protecting you from getting seriously ill but not good at preventing you passing the infection to other people. He explains how antibodies work whilst a visual shows us that unvaccinated people have no antibodies pre-vaccination (obviously, they haven’t been exposed to anything yet!). Professor Finn says they think that vaccination immunity is more consistent and usually stronger than natural immunity unless you get a really bad infection. He also says that people who have had the vaccine and then get the infection have a very strong immune response.

The professor warns us that if we keep getting mild variants that will be fine but more virulent ones will be more of a problem. Does he mean for the vaccinated or unvaccinated? Also, I would have liked more discussion about specific antibody response vs a broad response, non-neutralising antibodies, ADE, OAS, producing too many antibodies etc etc etc. But I forgot, this was obviously a programme for children which didn’t want to address actual concerns.

Whilst trying to remove fears that the vaccine had been produced too quickly, Adam tells us that steps weren’t missed out but instead an enormous financial risk was taken. When asked what is in the vaccine, instead of a list of ingredients, a childlike answer of “the code for the spike protein which allowed us to make the spike protein” was given. This is clearly misleading as later on in the show, one of the participants still thinks the spike protein is in the vaccine. However, for the audience, Hannah gives a voice over explaining in basic terms how mRNA works.

Professor Finn says that people like him and the regulatory authorities exist as a kind of buffer between the pharmaceutical companies and the public. What he doesn’t tell us, as explained by Norman Fenton, is that Adam Finn as actually the leader of the Pfizer Centre of Excellence for Epidemiology of Vaccine preventable Diseases, set up with an initial $4.6 million investment in May 2021.

Clearly not impartial. More undisclosed biasedness going on.

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Whilst the Bristol meeting was taking place, two of the participants visit St George’s Vaccine Institute in London where they meet Professor Khalil to discuss how the vaccine affects pregnancy.

Professor Khalil says “what we know for sure is that the vaccine does not cause miscarriage or increase the chance of stillbirth”. In fact, she says, the vaccine is actually useful for you and the baby, it could reduce stillbirths by about 15%. Once again, Hannah has to offer an explanation via a voiceover saying that the 15% number is if a pregnant woman catches Covid.

The Professor also says that vaccination prevents hospitalisation from Covid, for the infant, in the first six months.

However, Norman Fenton once again points out, that Professor Khalil hasn’t disclosed her affiliations to the audience. She is in fact PI of the Pfizer Covid vaccination in pregnancy trial.

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Hannah talks to the two participants who decided not to talk to the experts. They ask her if the vaccine is an approved drug in the same way as a paracetamol. Hannah replies “yes, it’s exactly the same”. They respond by saying “so it’s not under emergency protocol?”. Hannah says there are different versions of the vaccine and it’s possible for one version to be approved while, simultaneously the companies and researchers are running clinical trials for subsequent versions.

Clearly Hannah is out of her depth here. She confuses the question which is clearly asking about Emergency Use Authorisation and doesn’t seem to realise that the vaccine rollout was based on this. Furthermore, she clearly hasn’t read the latest reports showing the new vaccines for variants don’t need to go through new trials.

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Professor Fry says she realises that the problem isn’t lack of information but about the ocean of misinformation.

To talk about this issue she brings in the founder of Full Fact, a fact checking website. Whilst fact checking websites may have their heart in the right place, they clearly stifle freedom of speech and thought.

Hannah also tries to make the link between Luca’s fake posts about the Ukraine war and his stance on vaccination. This is quickly shut down by Nazarin as completely irrelevant.

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Finally, as a last attempt to change the participants’ minds, Hannah takes them to meet an ICU doctor at Lewisham hospital. The ICU doctor tells the group that about 550 patients were admitted in one month, with Covid, during the Omicron wave. 21 of those were admitted to intensive care and 20 were unvaccinated. Seven of those, all unvaccinated, died.

Hannah, almost ecstatically, declares that when she hears stats like that if feels like such a slam dunk. However, she fails to put the numbers in any context. Were the people who died immunocompromised and therefore couldn’t be vaccinated? Were they old? unhealthy? in a lower socio-economic group? All these things would make it more likely for them to sadly succumb to the disease.

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Ultimately, none of the seven participants decided to get vaccinated after a week with Hannah.

The programme never properly dug into the multitude of reasons the participants had for not being vaccinated. It should have started with, why, with the participants being relatively young, vaccination was even necessary. It should have looked at their statistics of being hospitalised or dying from Covid and then gone on from there. Maybe, Professor Fry should have got the jelly beans out for those stats. But I suppose that would have been a quick show, when the participants realised how small their chances of dying from Covid are.

It would have been far more interesting if the show invited experts on both sides of the debate to argue over the various viewpoints. Actual doctors and professors who disagreed with some of the vaccine narrative. But no, that would be too much to ask.

I went in open-minded, in fact slightly hopeful that some questions would be answered. But I left disappointed, like I had bought tickets to listen to Albert Einstein but he had been replaced at the last minute by Mickey Mouse.

This was dull and patronising. It won’t convince anybody that hasn’t been vaccinated by now to get vaccinated. But I guess that was never the aim. It felt more like a show designed to humiliate the unvaccinated and make them look small and stupid. It hasn’t been getting great reviews in the main stream press either!