Senior advocate Prashant Bhushan’s tweet about the efficacy and safety of the Covid-19 vaccine was marked as “misleading” by Twitter, prompting the 64-year-old to post an explanation to double down on his stance against what he called “indiscriminate” vaccination.
On Monday, sharing a news article about a case where a man who allegedly vaccinated his 45-year-old wife, after 10 days of receiving COVID-19 vaccine, his wife is died.
Mr Bhushan had tweeted on Monday morning that it was “irresponsible to promote universal vaccination of experimental and untested vaccines especially to young and Covid recovered”.
Bhushan also said the government was not monitoring the incidence of vaccine-negative incidents and was not releasing statistics.
He further tweeted that “The healthy young have hardly any chance of serious effects or dying due to covid. They have a higher chance of dying due to vaccines. The covid recovered have much better natural immunity, than the vaccine gives them. Vaccines may even compromise their acquired natural immunity.”
The healthy young have hardly any chance of serious effects or dying due to covid. They have a higher chance of dying due to vaccines. The covid recovered have much better natural immunity, than the vaccine gives them. Vaccines may even compromise their acquired natural immunity.
— Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1) June 28, 2021
It was this tweet that earned him through social media platforms, which slapped warnings that its content was “misleading”, as well as Numerous posts criticizing their views from other users.
Bhushan’s tweet drew a strong response from social media users for spreading hesitation and panic over the vaccine. Several people, including actor Siddharth and journalist Nidhi Razdan, demanded Twitter to take action and called the tweet misleading.
Strongly disagree with @pbhushan1 on this one. @Twitter ought to mark it as misinformation.
— Siddharth (@Actor_Siddharth) June 28, 2021
At a time when everyone needs to get vaccinated ASAP, this is a reputation destroying outpouring from Bhushan. https://t.co/YlD8dgBScX
This is a dangerously irresponsible statement from you @pbhushan1. Twitter should act on this. Folks, please listen to doctors across the world and get vaccinated. Listen to science, not to this fear mongering https://t.co/jkj5gr7WQ1
— Nidhi Razdan (@Nidhi) June 28, 2021
Undeterred by the criticism, Bhushan published a two-page explanation on his “vaccine scepticism”.
Senior Advocate wrote, “I have been attacked by many for tweeting about my views on Covid vaccines. The piece below summarise my vaccine skepticism & the reasons for this. Apart from the vaccines being untested & having serious adverse effects, I am shocked by attempts to censor such contrarian views.”
So Twitter flagged the tweet below where I have explained my reasons for being a Vaccine skeptic (with references) as ‘misleading’ & blocked my account for 12 hours. This shows what I have said about the Congruence of interests of Big Pharma&IT platforms to allow just 1 narrative https://t.co/lK8zjCuvjm
— Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1) June 29, 2021
He said he was not anti-vaccine or anti-science, but he was “aware of several instances where scientific views on several subjects have been driven by commercial, political and media vested interest.”
He also claims that many scientists have pointed out that the serious negative effects of vaccines and adverse events due to the use of drugs and vaccines are “underreported”.
