Thread by @karamballes

🧵Westminster Hall debate on vaccinating secondary school children

1 speaker besides Gov minister spoke in favour, the rest argued for a halt to roll out.

Might aswell have invited the GBD, all the Tory MPs did was repeat their lines

#edutwitter
parliamentlive.tv/event/index/c4…

Felt like dress rehearsal for tomorrow Ed Select, Miriam Cate basically covered the UsForThem letter, mentioning 3 petitions, which I believed were all organised by different people in the same network

Almost same points in the same order

No recognition of covid harm
Long covid wasn't mentioned by anyone at any point

Typos 😞still not well

Lots of talk about segregation in schools, UsForThem regularly claim this but I don't know any schools
that does

Rather than vax for kids we should get adults to lose weight

She agrees with the obesity comment. There was a theme of personal responsibility for health and "only underlying conditions" need to be worried

Caimed forced testing and masks needs to stop, forced testing? Where? More UfT crap

Children don't infect others, schools not hubs

Next.up McCartney, kept repeating do no harm
50-70% antibodies in children kept getting quoted, he's saying it was ONS, this is not an ONS stat!

Tories repeatedly said vaccines don't stop transmission or infection, no acknowledgement that they reduce this

I also need to draw notice to his comments about variants, seemed dismissive of the concept as if the gov would invent a variant as an excuse for actions, this got a lot of support from those in the room.

He then goes onto garbling gilick

Straight from Gupta, no one under 40 should be vaccinated!
Don't test kids, makes out its a con
Goes off on one about fear mongering zealots
Then warns about heart and reproductive problems from vaccination.

This will be quoted by anti vaxxers

Next up from Northern Ireland
His mates child had 26 out of a class of 28 test positive and he says there is NO medical evidence for child vax

Claims natural immunity is 13 times higher and this should be the key to ending school disruption

Once again comments about obesity, and schools pressuring and segregating children.

Where is this secretion happening? Which schools plan on segregating vaccinated from unvaccinated?

Westminster Hall appears to be overrun with straw men

Someone intervenes just to say how good it is to have everyone back on person

Chris Green
Again they make out vaccines have only ever been meant for the vulnerable that gov is changing goalposts
"Relationship between cases and deaths broken" This is said on many occasions

More talk of school peer pressuring students and parents.

Accusations this is about supporting big pharma
Where will it end? When do we start treating it like flu?

As with others he seems to think the pandemic ends when the government decides to stop having any measures

Talks of informed choice while calling to halt roll out?!

Misquoted JCVI
The nerve to say fake news and inconsistencies plays to anti vaxxers when he's just accused the gov of alternative motivations for approving child vax.

Then goes on to say more fake news, antivaxxers will see this speech as approval of their views
⛽🔥

*Above he said shouldn't risk harm from vaccination

Next speaker talks of children potentially dying from the vaccine then speaks of concerns about schools being threatened

You just suggested children could die, that really going to calm the mob
⛽🔥

Another Conservative talking about freedom of choice while arguing to stop parents being able to choose vaccination
Talks of coercion and peer pressue
Stop testing children
Vaccined should only be for the individual

3 Opposition MPs present
Liz Kendal, actually does alright.
Compares us to other countries and how our vaccination programme is being overtaken by others
Tories don't like this keep trying to interrupt or call out

Cates again claims link of cases and deaths is broken

Ignoring Kendal listing off countries with higher vax rates Cates says as we are ahead of other countries so have 6-9 months to spare, by which time every kid will probably have been infected.

Liz corrects Tory misrepresention of JCVI and CMO decisions

Kendals speech was not popular.

Onto vaccine minister. Questions to her are repetitions. Pointed out that only 1 person in the whole debate spoke in favour of offering the choice of vaccination

Cates closes with once again making out basically all it takes to end to pandemic is to ignore the pandemic.

Summary
Tory MPs spouted the same misquotes of JCVI that antivaxxers used, made the same accusations that vax had no benefit for children etc

For all their praise of vaccines they repeated the exact lines of disinformation used by those trying to create vax hesitancy.

Its incredibly dangerous for MPs of the governing party to suggest alternative motivations for child vax, of encouraging distrust in the vax, of repeatedly suggesting schools would try and coerce students to be vaccinated.

They blew that dog whistle with all their might

I bet quotes from many of the speeches will end up on disinformation leaflets created by same ppl who set up the petition and provide the HART briefings to MPs.

By repeating the lines fed to them by disinfo groups, the disinfo groups can add more credibility to their narrative

So 2 events tomorrow that the disinformation groups will use

Halfons Ed committee called due to concerns raised with him (by the same ppl behind todays petitions and MPs scripts)

And the courts have decided to have a hearing tomorrow brought by the disinformation networks lawyers to try and stop the roll out to teenagers

Incase your wondering about who C19Assembly are ⬇️ Also check the other orgs
starsofcovid.github.io/org_assembly.h…

Expect there to be a mob outside the courts tomorrow, organised by the same people who provided the MPs lines which are probably being added to leaflets as we speak

All that talk of coercion and no benefits increases the risk of violence to school staff

One thing, I don't know if I mentioned, think it was Cates,
"With our vaccination programme we are leading the way with falling cases and deaths"

Video is at start of the link if ppl think I've exaggerated how much of a skeptic circle jerk this was

Now twittwr search "Miriam Cates MP" and check latest, see the positive comments then check the accounts.

Oh look as predicted, they are using quoting the MPs lines as confirmation of their views

Oh look Ros Jones, UsForThem, HART, Safer to Wait, antivaxxet conspiracy theorist, producer of some of the threatening disinfo leaflets mentioned in the hall

The perversion of democracy is astounding, essentially they turned Westminster Hall into a set piece to platform, promote and add validity to disinformation which is going to further enflame the mob they've been stoking

Sowing distrust of gov and institutions with MP support!

While most the public didn't even know about the meeting, check the disinfo accounts, they've been advertising this since it was announced and now they are dining out.

Its a bloody disgrace

Oh look Ros Jones, antivaxxer, conspiracy theorist, behind safer to wait, producer of many of those leaflets that were mentioned in the Hall is making use of Miriams speech and the anti vax accounts are dining out

The only difference between this lot of Tory MPs and Trump Republicans who fanned flames and then acted shocked at the storming of Capitol Hill is that the MPs have the venner of establishment respectability.

I think we're on course for increasing violence on the streets

To steal their phrase, how does this end?

Do we end up with scenes like St Louis?