Twitter Police Censoring a Member of the UK's Vaccine Confidence Project

After he tweeted why he wasn't vaccinated

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The Vaccine Confidence Project was founded in 2010 in order “to monitor public confidence in immunisation programmes by building an information surveillance system for early detection of public concerns around vaccines”. It is based in the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine’s Vaccine Centre and is a member of the Vaccine Safety Net, led by the World Health Organization.

Yesterday evening a member of the research team, Dr. Alex de Figueriedo, tweeted his reasons for “coming out” as unvaccinated. This tweet, along with his account, was swiftly removed and now all you see is:

An hour before I started typing this post, his tweets had been saved and were available on threadreaderapp.com, now all you see is this:

Alex’s profile on the Vaccine Confidence Project’s website says his background lies in physics (MSci, Imperial College) and mathematical and statistical modelling (PhD, Imperial College; MSc, University of Oxford), so is clearly an intelligent guy.

His reasons for “coming out” were very reasonable, so for Twitter and Thereaderapp to censor him like this, contributes to the decline in the very confidence the Project is trying to maintain. Luckily, I saved the tweets and transcribe them below. Have a read and see for yourself. Obviously, I appreciate it whenever you share my articles but I think this one should be shared far and wide to show Twitter that they can’t censor qualified individuals with sensible opinions, let alone anyone.

As good as time as ever to “come out” as unvaccinated. Here are my reasons:

(1) I took an early stand against vaccine mandates and passports, I refuse to even give the govt an impression that they can dictate to me and others what healthcare we can and can’t take.

(2) At the earliest chance I took an antibody test. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t a threat to people, and the evidence for natural immunity is so damn strong. I had antibodies.

(3) As evidence came out against the ability of vaccines to have any real impact on transmission, and as evidence revealed natural immunity would protect against severe disease to a greater degree, it didn’t make sense.

(4) This evidence also pissed me off, because most Govts are pursuing highly discrimiantory (sic), unscientific vaccine passport policies. I’m not against these policies in principle, but it’s a bloody low bar.

(5) I have researched this topic myself. I know the policy will discriminate against the young and marginalised communities and I absolutely refuse to comply with tyrannical public health measures.

(6) My research also shows that it will drive people away from vaccinating. In particular those groups I already mentioned plus those highly educated and men.

(7) There is plenty of new evidence that suggests that there may not actually be a clear risk-benefit trade off to young men, especially those with prior infection and especially with the Moderna vaccine (and quite possible Pfizer)

(8) where is the individualised risk benefit assessments stratified by age, sex, prior infection. How does this cumulate with more doses?

Do the government want young men to vaccinate for themselves or for society?

(9) … and if the latter, what the hell is the evidence? Two dose efficacy against infection could be negative for Omicron.

(10) Recent data also showed that prior infection was a bloody good guarantor against severe disease if you were to be reinfected. Which I have been and guess what, it was a light cold.

None of the above is advice. People need to be left to make their own decision, supported by the Government and all the available and latest evidence.

People should not be coerced holding freedoms over their head, especially not with these vaccines for this disease.

My biggest concern is that we will increase scepticism towards vaccines, in particular childhood vaccines which are one of the most (if not *the most*) valuable scientific discoveries of all time.

A loss of confidence among the young may drive low confidence in childhood jabs.