Spectator Joins Anti-Vax Wackos

After its vigorous promotion of not just Euroscepticism, but rank Europhobia, and its platforming of climate change deniers, it was only a matter of time before the increasingly alt-right Spectator magazine went beyond pushing Covid-19 disinformation and went full anti-vax wacko. And so it has come to pass in no style at all.

What do you think of it so far?

For the UK, infection rates, hospital admissions and those inconvenient things called deaths are all way ahead of mainland European countries, which may be not unconnected with selfish and inconsiderate alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and his Ayn Rand devotee Health Secretary Sajid Javid doing away with common sense restrictions to lower transmission rates, instead allowing the public to please themselves.

But that consideration is not allowed to enter at the Speccy, where routinely dishonest editor Fraser Nelson will no doubt plead FREEZE PEACH when the inevitable criticism builds over an article - which might just be the first of many in the publication - by formerly rational pundit, but more recently literally screaming and intolerant Brexiteer Melissa Kite.

Time was when Ms Kite wrote occasionally thought-provoking and amusing copy for publications as diverse as the Guardian and Daily Mail. Not any more. “My pro-vaxxer friends are changing their tune … The fully jabbed are starting to question whether they ought to have caught Covid” reads the headline. Which makes no sense at all.

But do go on. “My pro-vaxxer friends have been a lot nicer to me since they started testing positive for Covid … I’m most certainly not going to call myself an anti-vaxxer because I’ve had dozens of vaccines, just not this one … As far as I’m concerned, I’m the norm. I’m the rational one. I’m the one taking a logical position”. Of course you are. There is more.

“I’m the one who’s decided to wait and see what the research says about how much protection this new vaccine gives you … I’m looking into the research and wondering whether the odds of this and that make vaccination worthwhile now that I’ve had Covid and recovered well, which would suggest I have the antibodies”. And yet more.

“I wasn’t getting any credit for this rational position until recently, but then my vaccinated friends started testing positive”. The false assumption just had to come sooner or later. Being vaccinated does not prevent infection, although it should reduce the chance of it. But it does make the chance of surviving the experience rather higher.

No comment

As for the lame “I got it and recovered so there isn’t a problem” line, where does one start? Sample of one versus the grim daily death toll. Also, my paternal grandfather was at the Battle of the Somme and recovered with only a few weeks in a military hospital to have his wounds tended. But, although he lived into the late 1980s, I somehow missed his recommending this to others. Ms Kite’s reasoning isn’t making it.

Nor is the idea that becoming infected with Covid-19 is some kind of substitute for vaccination. Nor the “this is what my pals say so I can legitimately extrapolate from there” idea. But good of Ms Kite to let us know that the Speccy will be no doubt giving us more of this less than totally responsible propaganda in the very near future.

The UK is in the mire on Covid. And its media class is becoming a major contributor.

Enjoy your visit to Zelo Street? You can help this truly independent blog carry on talking truth to power, while retaining its sense of humour, by becoming a Patron on Patreon at

https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton