Sue Grey misinformation tsunami, and who is Maxine?

We’ve mentioned Sue Grey in the past. She’s the Nelson-based lawyer and co-leader of the NZ Outdoors party, and full on conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer.

Her Facebook page is where she seems to spread the majority of her misinformation, and she’s posting many times a day. 

Annoyed by Facebook’s labelling her posts with their COVID-19 warnings, she recently took to experimenting with different combinations of text to try to figure out what words caused Facebook’s algorithms to label her posts with warnings. I actually think she shouldn’t really be concerned as, from seeing the reactions from commenters, she’s pretty much preaching to the choir anyway. Facebook’s warnings are likely to fall on deaf ears. But, in an effort to side-step the algorithms, the COVID vaccine is now being referred to as Maxine! Is this a new cockney rhyming slang?

Sue’s other gems this week included a link to a video that purported to conclusively prove that viruses aren’t real, and that they’ve never been demonstrated to exist.

She posted a claim that the COVID vaccine causes Stevens Johnson Syndrome which causes peeling skin, amongst other symptoms. The claim was fact-checked by Reuters and determined to be false. In a now familiar technique, anti-vaxxers will take shocking pictures off the internet (pre-dating the release of the COVID vaccine) and falsely claim that they’re the result of the vaccine. 

Also this week she wrote an open letter to the prime minister and other cabinet ministers with the subject line screaming: 

OPEN LETTER No 2- An URGENT REQUEST FOLLOWING RESEARCH SHOWING THE "S PROTEIN" IN THE PFIZER JAB IS A TOXIN

In the letter she refers to the latest anti-vaxxer talking point about the spike protein (or S Protein, as they call it) supposedly being a dangerous toxin found in dangerous quantities in the bloodstream of people who’ve received the mRNA-based COVID vaccine (hint: it’s not - and the studies don’t show what the anti-vaxxers think they do. See David Gorski’s refutation of the claims.)

Shockingly, in the letter, she goes well and truly off the deep end, quoting the legal definition of homicide and implying that government ministers would be guilty of this by allowing the COVID vaccine rollout to proceed.

In a stunning demonstration of a complete lack of self-awareness, she concludes her letter with the following:

“Please find the courage to challenge whoever is driving this, and any who act on dogma rather than evidence, reason or ethics.

The future of New Zealand depends on your courage to step up and make this critical call for our people.

I urge you to listen,  engage and act in the public interest.

Please put aside your pride and the dogma, and suspend this program.

I am happy to assist however I can.”

Sue Grey lists a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and Microbiology amongst her qualifications. It seems to me that little of that study has actually sunk in!

Danger for scientists

We should be worried about the consequences of far-right conspiracy theories. In Belgium, Professor Marc Van Ranst has been the public face of science related to the COVID pandemic and the Belgian government's response.

Far right rogue soldier Jürgen Conings has a vendetta against virologists and COVID lockdowns. Conings is a military shooting instructor and has gone on the run with a rocket launcher and machine gun for the past three weeks, currently evading police capture.

Professor Van Ranst is in hiding. Let’s hope that nothing like this happens here, though as we’ve seen far-right ideas have had deadly consequences recently in the Christchurch Mosque shootings.

FACT (Fight Against Conspiracy Theories) is a grassroots organisation that’s opposing conspiracy theories, doing some great skeptical activism work. They’ve recently worked on contacting venues hosting the likes of Sue Grey. Some may refer to this as “cancel culture” but in my mind, preventing dangerous and outright wrong ideas from gaining wide traction is the responsible thing to do.

Anti-vaxxer blood transfusions

Sorry to harp on about anti-vaxxers, but there’s another story this week that has emerged about prominent American anti-vaxxer Del Bigtree. Bigtree runs ICAN - the Informed Consent Action Network, and has a slickly produced video podcast called The Highwire.

It turns out that Bigtree has been out of action for a couple of weeks due to a health condition. Bigtree revealed on his podcast that he nearly died from blood loss due to internal hemorrhoids. His blood pressure was dangerously low and he required a blood transfusion.

It appears he has some friends who are doctors. and they strongly advised that he seek medical help (i.e. go to hospital!) when the symptoms of his low blood pressure became  apparent.

When it was discovered he would require a blood transfusion, being an anti-vaxxer, he decided he didn’t want to receive blood from anybody who’d been vaccinated with the COVID vaccine. Somehow, their blood would be contaminated with those dangerous spike protein toxins!

Bigtree reported received a small transfusion in the US from blood that was identified as not being “contaminated” by the COVID vaccine, then travelled to Cancun in Mexico (by private jet!) to receive a further blood transfusion of uncontaminated blood. What a waste of resources!

All of this is nicely and amusingly reported by David Gorski (aka Orac).

While none of us should wish harm on anybody, even those who wilfully promote and profit off misinformation, the story does show how dangerous misinformation can be.

An alternative to Botox

I rarely watch broadcast TV, but on Wednesday night I happened to see a little of TVNZ’s Seven Sharp programme. They featured a segment on acupuncture as an alternative to botox for reducing facial wrinkles.

There was no skeptical angle and the piece looked a lot more like an advertorial than an actual piece of journalism. 

The reporter, Te Rauhiringa Brown (who looked quite young, and really didn’t have any particularly visible wrinkles) asked how it worked. The acupuncturist gave the following explanation:

“So the trauma from the needles sends a signal to your brain saying that there has been some damage and so your body actually sends the protein which is your own collagen to your face and that helps repair your fine lines and acne, scaring…”

Yeah right! 

The segment then went on to claim that the practise has been around since the stone age - and that the WHO recommended the practise.

Laughably after the acupuncture was administered, the final process was some “facial cupping” and a “rejuvenating face mask” to round off the treatment. I think perhaps the face mask at the end might well have had more to do with the final result than acupuncture. 

The piece cemented its purpose by quoting the price as $100 for the acu-facelift, and the name of the business to customers viewers! 

Well done Seven Sharp for promoting more pseudoscience!