Covid and conspiracies: Disinformation that kills

03/19/21 • 28 min

As the Covid vaccine is offering new hope around the world to end the pandemic, the biggest growing threat to people’s health is the surge in disinformation, conspiracy theories and fake news.

Anti-vaxxers and vaccine hesitant voices have become even louder. As many countries in Europe resume the rollout of the AstraZenaca vaccine after having paused it for some days, the damage in people’s confidence in the jab will be hard to heal.

Having spent time hearing from people who don’t trust the vaccine for various reasons and others who deny Covid’s existence altogether - Ayshah Tull and Paraic O’Brien chat about the potentially devastating impacts on these views.

As the Covid vaccine is offering new hope around the world to end the pandemic, the biggest growing threat to people’s health is the surge in disinformation, conspiracy theories and fake news.

Previous Episode

The murder of Jamal Khashoggi: will justice ever be served?

On Friday 28th September 2018, Jamal Khashoggi visited the Saudi consulate in the Turkish capital to get some documents so he could marry his fiancée. He was told he would have to return to pick up the document a week later. He visited the consulate again on 2nd October but this time, he did not leave.

Today’s podcast is about justice. If a man is cut into pieces inside a government building - if his body is still yet to be found - if it is beyond reasonable doubt who did it and who ordered it - why is it that justice still eludes his fiancée and his family? Our foreign correspondent Jonathan Rugman is the author of The Killing in the Consulate and explains why despite a recent US Intelligence report revealing that the order to capture and to kill came from the Crown Prince - he will not be sanctioned.

Sources: Axios, CNBC, C-SPAN, Sky News, BBC News

Next Episode

The women trapped and traumatised by Poland’s near-total abortion ban

Poland already had some of the strictest abortion laws in Europe, but new changes have effectively banned them completely.

Many women now have to travel abroad to seek abortions or risk performing them at home.

It is the latest move by the ruling Law and Justice Party, that the EU has accused of a “political takeover of the judiciary and the systemic collapse of rule of law”, in a throwback to the days of communist rule.

Anja Popp has been to Poland to speak to those affected by this ban - and the politicians pushing it through.