The BBC’s Blind Spot on Vaccine Hesitancy

The BBC thinks vaccine hesitancy is a ‘paradox’. In reality, it’s the result of nudging, coercion, censorship and broken trust.

The BBC has published one of its misses-the-point-so-hard-its-funny articles.

The article attempts to dissect vaccine hesitancy, attributing it to factors such as low institutional trust and exposure to misinformation.

‘It's the great paradox of the pandemic…One of the most successful innovations in public health history, the rapid development of Covid vaccines, has actually had the effect of reducing public confidence in vaccination,’ said Dr Simon Williams, a public health researcher at Swansea University.

Where to begin…

The vaccine rollout was framed as the triumphant finale to the COVID crisis, the final act in which the world, battered and bruised, emerged into the light, freed from the clutches of a global pandemic. That is what we were told. That is what we were meant to believe. But reality is never quite so tidy.

In the early days of the vaccine rollout, there was optimism, even triumphalism. But alongside the positive messaging was something else: coercion. In Germany, the words ‘Impfen = Freiheit’—‘Vaccination = Freedom’—were projected onto a tower in Düsseldorf. But if freedom is contingent on compliance, is it truly freedom?

The term ‘vaccine hesitancy’ was deployed to pathologise scepticism. Hesitancy implies a temporary condition, a psychological hurdle to be overcome. It was never an acknowledgment that people might have well-founded concerns, or that bodily autonomy is an inalienable right.

Behavioural science, not medical ethics, drove the conversation. ‘Normality can only return for you and others, with your vaccination’ was a common refrain, a carefully designed nudge exploiting social pressure and guilt.

Informed consent became an afterthought. Instead, persuasion turned to coercion.

When common sense and the notion of bodily autonomy died.

Vaccine passports were proposed, not on the basis of scientific necessity, but as a mechanism of compliance. The Sun ran the headline ‘No Jab, No Pint’, encapsulating the shift from medical recommendation to social mandate. These mantras rang throughout the world.

Public health was no longer just about individual well-being — it became a tool of state control. Public health officials and politicians said ‘No one is safe until everyone is safe’ — an absurd falsism. If a vaccine protects the individual, why should the unvaccinated pose a threat?

As time passed, the cracks in the narrative widened. The vaccines, initially promoted as preventing infection and transmission, later proved to be leaky. Those who had expressed early scepticism — scientists, doctors, ordinary people — were ridiculed, censored, even ostracised. But in the end, many of their concerns were validated. The shifting goalposts, the obfuscation, the refusal to engage with legitimate concerns — these are the seeds of distrust.

This is not a joke. This happened.

Do you remember the arsenal of behavioural psychology tactics deployed to get jabs in arms? From free doughnuts to cash lotteries, from paid celebrity endorsements to social shaming, governments blurred the line between persuasion and coercion. In some of the most shocking examples, people were even rewarded with marijuana or prostitutes for taking the jab.

These strategies were not neutral; they actively shaped public discourse, punishing scepticism and rewarding conformity.

Sir Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer of England, once a staunch advocate of mass vaccination policies, has now said he was never comfortable with vaccine mandates, stating that they were entirely political. This volte-face confession raises critical questions about the decision-making process during the pandemic. If one of the UK’s top medical advisors harboured reservations, why was there no space for debate at the time? Why did he not publicly denounce mandates which went against informed consent and were political in nature? Surely that was his duty?

Dissenters were vilified and labeled ‘anti-vaxxers’ regardless of their reasoning. I was labelled a ‘Covidiot’ in a disingenuous review in the Times of A State of Fear for writing about vaccines. A quote from my book was cherry-picked to misrepresent my argument, while also somewhat libellously accusing me of plagiarism.

In fact, I was quoting a question posed in a video we might as well nickname ‘Nudge 101’, which was aimed at persuading ethnic minorities to take the vaccine. The video made claims which could not be substantiated at that time and could therefore go on to damage trust in vaccines — among the very groups with low trust in vaccines.

From A State of Fear

Other problematic claims in that video included:

‘Soon we will be reunited with our friends and family provided we do one simple thing. Take the vaccine.’
This is coercive and undermines informed consent

‘How can you save someone’s life? Take the vaccine.’
Which vaccine did the video mean? At the time the video came out, there were two vaccines being used in the UK, from Pfizer and AstraZeneca. At the time of releasing this video it would not be possible to definitively prove that the vaccines interrupt transmission, which would help others. Therefore this was an unsubstantiated claim as well as emotionally manipulative.

‘There are no cases of significant side-effects among the millions of people who have received this vaccine.’
There are always side-effects with vaccines and it’s essential to be honest about risks for ethical informed consent. For example, according to Pfizer’s patient information safety leaflet at that time, the vaccine may cause ‘temporary one-sided facial drooping’ (Bell’s palsy) in up to one in 1,000, and ‘events of anaphylaxis have been reported’. In fact there have been many side effects from minor, to extremely serious and even deaths.

‘The vaccine does not include pork or any material of foetal or animal origin.’
Well, again, which vaccine? And what does the video mean by ‘include’? The Covid-19 vaccines were researched and/or developed using cells which had been replicated from the cells of aborted foetuses. Don’t people of faith have a right to the truth?

And that asterisk: Covid-19 vaccines were never designed to, or able to create ‘herd immunity’. Who’s the idiot now.

This video was just one of many troubling attempts to pressure people to take the jab. It contained claims which were unverifiable, emotionally manipulative and even false. And what might that do to public trust in vaccines?

There are countless examples of coercion. Teenagers were lured with free ice cream. Children were invited to pet farm animals while in line for their totally unnecessary jab. Universities dangled scholarships before students. The usual warnings about peer pressure were abandoned in favour of leveraging it for compliance. Was this an appropriate way to encourage a medical decision, especially when the risk-benefit analysis for younger people was far from clear?

The ethical cornerstone of modern medicine — voluntary, informed consent — was often sidelined. Incentives, threats of exclusion, and intense fear messaging all eroded the ability of individuals to make un-coerced, free decisions. A Health and Human Services document on informed consent warns that financial incentives in research settings can constitute ‘undue influence’, potentially interfering with voluntary decision-making. Yet during the pandemic, similar methods were embraced without scrutiny.

Beyond coercion, the rhetoric surrounding vaccination took on a deeply moralistic tone. Those who hesitated were condemned as selfish, ignorant, even dangerous. Tony Blair’s call to ‘distinguish’ between the vaccinated and unvaccinated was echoed across media and policy discussions. Some newspapers went so far as to liken vaccine-hesitant groups to ‘terrorists’ or ‘insurgents’. This dehumanising language used to promote compliance risked deepening social divisions that persist to this day.

The failure to acknowledge these transgressions is a failure to rebuild trust. The ‘paradox’ is not that successful innovation caused vaccine hesitancy. The paradox is that such a ‘successful’ vaccine would require the systematic use of manipulation, exclusion, and fear to make people volunteer their arms.

Since this unprecedented behavioural psychology experiment to jab people, 20,000 British people have applied to the vaccine damage payment scheme to seek compensation for serious vaccine injuries. We now know that the government was aware of the risks and expected vaccine injuries to cost the taxpayer a staggering £1.7 billion, while the pharmaceutical companies were indemnified against these costs. And bear in mind, you have to be left 60% disabled to even qualify, so there will be many thousands more with less ‘serious’ injuries, including teenagers with myocarditis.

This was not unpredictable. In fact, I dedicated a chapter of my book A State of Fear: How the UK weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic explicitly to this —‘Happy endings are not written in the language of coercive control’. Perhaps I’m not such a Covidiot after all.