Ever since India started its ambitious vaccination programme, notorious far-left propagandist and PIL ‘activist’ Prashant Bhushan has been pushing anti-vaccine propaganda on social media platforms in an attempt to create vaccine hesitancy among the masses.
For the last few months, Prashant Bhushan has been pushing anti-vaccine propaganda on Twitter by raising doubts about the efficacy of Indian-made vaccines. His anti-vaccine bile had come after Twitter had removed Prashant Bhushan’s anti-mask tweets for spreading misinformation.
Prashant Bhushan, who has a history of spreading misinformation on social media platforms, had come up with conspiracy theories to claim that vaccines did not work in reality. Pushing vaccine hesitancy in the society, Prashant Bhushan had claimed that the Indian government was funding private enterprises in the name of vaccine development.
In one of the tweets, Bhushan had claimed that the younger population has a higher chance of dying through vaccination than suffering severe complications or even death due to coronavirus. The far-left activist had said he has not taken any vaccines and he does not intend to take one in the future.
Similarly, he had shared a news report hinting that people are dying of Covid-19 even after taking vaccines. A few weeks later, he had gone on a ranting spree against Covid-19 vaccination, claiming that he is not anti-vaccine but against the promotion of universal vaccination.
In response, Twitter had marked his tweet on the Covid-19 vaccine as ‘misleading’.
“This Tweet is misleading. Find out why health officials consider Covid-19 vaccines safe for most people”, read the disclaimer published by the microblogging site below Prashant Bhushan’s tweet.
Despite the warning, Prashant Bhushan decided to continue with his rant against the Covid vaccines in India. In a Tweet posted a few hours ago, the SC lawyer wrote: “I have been attacked by many for tweeting about my views on Covid vaccines. The piece below summarises my Vaccine scepticism & the reasons for this. Apart from the vaccines being untested & having serious adverse effects, I am shocked by attempts to censor such contrarian views”.
Yet again, Twitter flagged the dangerous anti-vaccine tweets put out Prashant Bhushan.
Interestingly, Twitter has been stringent in not allowing its platform to promote anti-vaccine propaganda in the West and suspended people indulging in such behaviour. However, this was not the case with Prashant Bhushan. Twitter has failed to show the courage to suspend Prashant Bhushan for promoting vaccine hesitancy in India, especially at a time when the vaccine has been the only protective measure against the Covid-19.
Prashant Bhushan continues with anti-vaccine propaganda, says vaccine is not working
Well, almost two months after getting flagged by Twitter for spreading his anti-vaccine propaganda, the far-left ‘activist’ Prashant Bhushan has returned on Twitter to put out more conspiracy theories to claim that vaccines are not working.
Sharing a news report from a website, Prashant Bhushan said Sweden has banned travellers from Israel, which according to Prashant Bhushan, is one of the most vaccinated nations.
Further, the far-left lawyer claimed that Sweden allegedly had “zero Covid cases” now, despite no lockdown, no mask and no vaccine mandates. However, Israel, with more than 85% fully vaccinated and its third booster vaccine program is seeing a huge Covid surge.
“Get it?” Prashant Bhushan asked, hinting that vaccines are not working as often claimed.
Bhushan’s claims about Sweden are misleading
While it is true that Sweden had announced a ban on all Israelis coming to the country, it was due to recent surge in infections. Portugal has also imposed a similar ban, even on vaccinated Israelis. The move has come after the EU on Monday removed Israel from the list of nations that are ‘epidemiologically safe’.
Sweden has put an entry ban on US arrivals too. The ban is to reflect from September 6 and continue till October 31. Kosovo, Lebanon, Montenegro and North Macedonia are the other nations that are added to the banned list.
However, Bhushan’s claims about Sweden having “zero Covid” cases is misleading. As of August, Sweden’s have seen more Covid cases per 100 individuals than its neighbouring countries. Even the death rates have been higher than its neighbours. As per a report, its Covid death rate of 145 people per 100,000 population is 3 times higher than Denmark, 8 times more than Finland and nearly 10 times more than Norway, all its nordic neighbours.
Also, though Sweden had not imposed a full-scale lockdown, it did impose curbs, shut down schools and put on restrictions on social gatherings. Vaccination is not mandatory in India too. To put an idea that Sweden achieved some success of “zero Covid” by not following any lockdowns or mandates is a misleading statement.
No, Sweden doesn’t have “zero covid”
Bhushan’s claim that Sweden has ‘zero covid’ now is a blatant lie. Sweden has 27,671 active cases as of September 3. So far, it has registered 1,130,525 cases and 14,651 deaths due to Covid.
Bhushan is trying to create an impression that Sweden is not taking vaccination seriously. This is false too. Though Sweden has not made it mandatory for its citizens to take the Covid vaccines, vaccination has been done at a healthy rate. 12,739,829 doses have been administered so far, roughly equivalent to 62% of Sweden’s population.
Bhushan’s anti-Vaccine rant
Continuing, Prashant Bhushan said he has not taken any of these experimental vaccines, and he does not intend to do so. Promoting dangerous conspiracy theories against vaccines, Prashant Bhushan put out misinformation saying more than 67 per cent, i.e., two in three Indians, have had Covid-19, including him, who, according to him, are better protected than those vaccinated ones.
“Covid is rarely serious for the healthy, & effective treatments are there,” declared Prashant Bhushan.
Strangely, Twitter is yet to take any action against the tweets put out by Prashant Bhushan that could potentially act as a reason for people to stay away from getting vaccinated.
One has to wait and watch whether Twitter would still allow Prashant Bhushan to remain on the platform even after his continuous tweets that peddle conspiracy theories and unverified news reports promoting vaccine hesitancy among India’s masses.
