ON Monday, I was live on ITV’s lunchtime show Loose Women when anti-vax protesters tried to storm Television Centre in West London.
We were talking about the menopause at the time, so we weren’t quite sure what we’d done to upset them, but it turns out they thought it was still home to BBC news when, in fact, the news team moved out eight years ago.
Duh.
Doesn’t say much for their “research” skills, does it?
But anyway, there they were, trying to break down the front doors while a line of woefully under-equipped police officers bore the brunt of their geographically misdirected anger.
After coming off air, we spent another couple of hours locked in the studio for our own safety, peering through the doors as hundreds angrily protested about vaccines in general and Covid passports and jabs for children in particular.
One man claimed that the media was circulating “propaganda” about coronavirus, which he said wasn’t a severe threat.
Hmmm.
Tell that to the family of anti-vax solicitor Leslie Lawrenson, who recently died of Covid just nine days after posting that the virus “was nothing to be afraid of”.
His unvaccinated partner Amanda Mitchell also got it but, after being admitted to hospital with pneumonia, she survived.
“I feel incredibly foolish. Les made a terrible mistake and he’s paid the ultimate price,” she says with admirable honesty.
Leslie’s death was followed by that of “super fit” John Eyers, 42, who refused to get the vaccine because he believed he would only suffer a mild illness.
“The only pre-existing health condition he had was a belief in his own mortality,” says his distraught twin sister Jenny McCann.
FALL IN A TRAP
“Before he was ventilated, he told his consultant that he wished he had been vaccinated. That he wished he had listened,” she adds.
Similarly, in the space of just one week, Cardiff-based Francis Goncalves lost both his unvaccinated parents to the virus, as well as his 40-year-old brother Shaul, who, he says, was very fit and “ate a wholefoods, plant-based diet”.
He adds: “They got caught up in a lot of the anti-vaccination propaganda that’s going around. It preys on people who are afraid and they fall into the trap.”
Then there’s anti-vaxxer David Parker, 56, who died of Covid last week after denouncing the vaccine as “experimental” and warning of a “big pharma” and media conspiracy.
He had no underlying health conditions.
Proof, if needed, that the virus remains a threat and no one knows how their body will react to it.
A close friend of Mr Parker’s said his devastated family are urging others to get vaccinated, but will those protesting outside Television Centre listen?
Or will they continue to take the gamble that, unlike those mentioned above, they won’t be seriously affected by the virus that has now claimed around 4.3million lives worldwide.
Watch this intensive care space.
Science dolls will end up in glitter
THE latest batch of Barbie dolls have been modelled in honour of women working in the field of science and technology.
Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert, the British co-creator of the Astra Zeneca vaccine, is one of them.
“My wish is that my doll will show children careers they may not be aware of, like a vaccinologist,” she says.
Lovely thought, and let’s hope it comes to pass.
But Ms Gilbert, and all the other inspiring women now clutching plastic effigies of themselves looking suitably professional, must also accept that, at some point, their doll will end up plonked in a pink plastic jeep while dressed in a glittery leotard and neon leg warmers. Fact.
