DEAR editor - re the Vax Information Hub in Stroud. 

It is with no pleasure that a small group of local citizens has felt the need to take to the streets over the Covid-19 vaccines.

In recent weeks and months, we have been subjected to a relentless propaganda narrative from government, scientists and the mainstream media about the beneficence of vaccination in general, and about the Covid-19 vaccines in particular.

The substantial minority of people who strongly contest the need for, or appropriateness of, mass vaccination have been given no voice – and indeed, censorship on an unprecedented scale in what is meant to be a “democracy” is determinedly tying to silence any voices that put an alternative view.

Having just read and reviewed the 480-page 2018 book

Ideological Constructs of Vaccination by Dr Mateja Cernic, I know there is a very different scientific story to be heard about vaccination from the one we’re being told by the scientific and media establishment.

This silencing is symptomatic of the authoritarian mentality that is on the march globally, and is even manifesting in this county to such an extent that our media sector – with the BBC leading the charge – is starting to resemble an East European Communist state pre 1989.

It is democracy that is at stake here – and I’m personally far more terrified by the assaults on our freedoms and democracy than I am of the virus. Democracies can only thrive when we have open discussion with all viewpoints heard and shared – and that process also minimises the possibility of huge errors being made – not least by “the science” on the vaccine issue.

The result of the pro-vaccine propaganda assault is that citizens are currently not in any position to make an informed decision about this vaccine, given that the mainstream media, including the BBC, has been one-sidedly euphoric about it, and no space has been given to people who hold a different evidence-based view.

Given this situation, our stall will be out in Stroud on a regular basis in the coming weeks and months – do come and have a mutually respectful conversation with us and be informed that there is a different view.

Finally, in contradistinction to the “anti-vaxxers” trope promiscuously being deployed by our opponents, we are emphatically not “anti” anything.

Rather, we are pro-democracy and believe in open discussion with all views heard and thought about; and we are pro-nature and pro-humanity. It is the vaxxers who are anti-nature, and whose patriarchal “scientific” approach to illness and its prevention is underpinned by a war mentality against nature, rather than one that seeks to find ways to work in a complementary way with its grain.  

Dr Richard House

Stroud