John Bye Profile picture
Dec 11, 2022 7 tweets 4 min read Read on X
How disinformation works: HART's Clare Craig posted a Swiss graph showing covid hospitalisation rates by vaccination status. It suggests people who had a booster shot were more likely to end up in hospital with covid. But here's what she's not telling you... 🧵
1) The reason Clare Craig is only showing you 3 months of data is that hospitalisation rates were MUCH higher for unvaccinated people for the rest of the pandemic. Overall, you're much more likely to have ended up in hospital with covid at some point if you *weren't* vaccinated.
2) Booster shots in Switzerland were mostly given to older and more vulnerable people, as they're more likely to get seriously ill from covid. That means the graph she shared is seriously skewed - the vast majority of the oldest people are boosted and most young people aren't.
3) What makes this particularly dishonest on Clare Craig's part is that the page she shared actually breaks down hospitalisation rates by age group. And throughout the last 2 years hospitalisation rates for each group are higher in unvaccinated people and lower in boosted people.
4) Even if we cherry pick the data like Clare Craig did in her graph, and only look at the last 3 months of data available, people who had a booster shot (6+ months earlier) were *still* doing far better than the unvaccinated in the most boosted age groups.
5) Even if we drop down to younger groups, where booster shot uptake is lower and more focused on people with conditions that may make them particularly vulnerable to covid, people who had the booster were still doing slightly (50s) / much (60s) better than the unvaccinated.
So Clare Craig cherry picked a period that fit her narrative, hid the fact that the unvaccinated have far higher hospitalisation rates overall, and used data that's heavily skewed by age, when more detailed data on the same page shows the truth is the opposite of what she claims.

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More from @_johnbye

Jan 12
Reform UK announced today that the former Covid Vaccine Minister Nadhim Zahawi has defected to them. Conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers (who seem to be a big part of Reform's target audience) were obviously less than thrilled about this... 🧵 Image
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Many conspiracy theorists have already abandoned Reform and moved further into the fringes. Amongst those horrified by Zahawi being welcomed into Reform were the likes of Rupert Lowe (Restore Britain), Kathy Gyngell (Advance UK), Laurence Fox (Reclaim) and Calvin Robinson (UKIP). Image
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Racists also took offence to Nadhim Zahawi joining Reform UK, because a) he's a Muslim, b) he came to the UK (legally) as a refugee when he was a child, and c) he said that immigration can be good for the country.

None of which should be that contentious, unless you're a racist. Image
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Read 6 tweets
Nov 9, 2025
🧵 NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya is speaking at Together's 4th Anniversary event. The group's co-founders include an anti-Semite and an anti-vax homeopath, and the group is full of chemtrail nuts and other conspiracy theorists.

Here are some of the other speakers at the event... Image
Adam Brooks is a member of Together's executive board and a regular contributor to GB News. He's recently spent a lot of time "reporting" on anti-immigrant protests in Epping while actively taking part in them, and posting angry rants about immigrants on his X account. Image
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Montgomery Toms is Together's youth ambassador. He spends his time harassing people at the National Covid Memorial and calling trans people at Pride events mentally ill. He was also in Epping recently, claiming immigration's a plot to bring in digital ID.

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Read 14 tweets
Nov 2, 2025
🧵 Within a few hours of yesterday's horrific knife attack on a train, all the people you'd expect were furiously speculating about the identity of the suspect(s), and demanding that the police immediately release all the information about an investigation they'd just started. Image
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Former GB News presenter Dan Wootton was amongst the loudest voices demanding that police immediately release everything from the identity of the suspect(s) to footage of people being stabbed. 😳

He says anything less than blowing the entire investigation would be a "cover up". Image
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As news broke of the knife attack, Together founder Alan Miller was also immediately demanding to know "what the hell is going on" and who was arrested, complaining about police and politicians urging people not to speculate, and asking if we need vigilante mobs on the streets! Image
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Read 16 tweets
Aug 30, 2025
Aseem Malhotra has been confirmed as a speaker at next weekend's Reform UK conference. The increasingly anti-vaccine cardio crank is already Chief Health Advisor to Farage's anti-WHO "Action on World Health" campaign, and now seems to be angling for a job with Reform too. 🧵 Image
This intersection of far right politics and anti-vaccine health contrarians in the UK is no surprise, after Reform's 2024 manifesto pandered to conspiracy theorists, many of whom helped out on their campaign or even stood as candidates for the party.

Reform's links to anti-vaxxers in the UK go back years. Richard Tice was in contact with ivermectin pusher Tess Lawrie and pandemic denier Jonathan Engler in 2021 and several Reform / Brexit Party veterans were involved in the covid conspiracy movement.

Read 4 tweets
Aug 28, 2025
Advance UK recently announced its committee, which includes anti-vax data mangler Norman Fenton, racist conspiracy theorist Jim Ferguson, climate change denier Paul Burgess, and conspiracy theory website editor Kathy Gyngell. 🧵 Image
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Paul Burgess was environment spokesman for the far right For Britain Movement (a UKIP splinter group which, like Reform splinter group Advance UK, was backed by Tommy Robinson). He's also appeared on GB News as a "climate commentator".

Kathy Gyngell is the editor of Conservative Woman, a right wing website which during the pandemic went from attacking gay and trans rights and other culture wars nonsense to spreading anti-vaccine propaganda, covid conspiracy theories and AIDS denialism.

Read 5 tweets
Aug 20, 2025
The co-founder of "Operation Raise the Colours" (the recent spate of people putting English flags on lamp posts) is an old friend of Tommy Robinson who says he's been "16 years by his side", and had breakfast with Robinson after his release from jail earlier this year. 🧵 Image
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Tommy Robinson's mate Andy Saxon and his "Operation Raise the Colours" have also had support from UKIP leader / Turning Point UK COO Nick Tenconi (recently seen giving what looked like a Nazi salute), far right Britain First Party and its co-leader / ex BNP member Paul Golding. Image
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Before his "Operation Raise the Colours" gained momentum recently, Saxon posted support for Britain First and its "remigration" campaign to remove immigrants from the UK, as well as offensive and sometimes threatening Islamophobic content.

This is who's supplying those flags. Image
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Read 9 tweets

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