A largely offline anti-vaccination campaign encouraging both schoolchildren and their parents to refuse the Covid-19 vaccine has been operating at UK schoolgates, according to a new report.
Future Z has created online campaign materials in the style of BBC Bitesize revision guides designed to encourage vaccine hesitancy among children and teenagers, misinformation detection organisation Logically has found.
The campaign likens accepting an mRNA vaccine – injections that protect against infectious diseases including Covid-19 – to installing “a trial app that could screw up your £800 iPhone” in a bid to convince younger people it is safer to wait than to receive a vaccination against the virus.
The website appears to have been registered under the organisation Spadina Limited, which is registered to cosmetic tattooist Nichola Hindle-Marsh and her husband Peter.
A phone number Mrs Hindle-Marsh provided on LinkedIn also appeared in the private Future Z channel on messaging app Telegram, where she appears to be a key organiser of the group’s activities, Logically alleges.
She has also boasted about sending her children to school with leaflets and letters to “plant seeds” and find other parents to “join me to stand up against the school measures”.
Mrs Hindle-Marsh has been contacted for comment.
Visitors to the Future Z site – which advises children aged both under and over 16-years old on how to refuse the vaccine, even if their parents have consented to them receiving it – are encouraged to download and print flyers for distribution.
A video from Canadian physicist Dr Charles Hoffe, who wrote to anti-vaccine group Vaccine Choice Canada in April to falsely claim the vaccine was “quite clearly more dangerous than Covid-19” is also available on its webpage.
Joe Ondrak, Logically’s head of investigations, told i: “Anti-vaccine organising is a real concern, we’ve seen tactics evolve over the course of the pandemic to involve slick, convincing branding and wide-scale member distribution offline as well as online, as is the case with Future Z.
“Distributing in schools and among children though is a new and alarming development. These campaigns have the power to cause significant damage to public health, and it’s important that they are exposed and mitigated wherever they crop up.”
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Children as young as 11-years old at Goldington Academy in Bedford were handed leaflets discouraging young people from accepting the vaccine last month, according to local site Bedford Independent.
“I was furious when my teenager was handed this letter on her way out of school,” one parent told the Bedford Independent.
“Freedom of speech is one thing, but I think it is wholly inappropriate of anti-vaxxers to hang outside of schools, actively spreading misinformation to young, vulnerable and impressionable children.
“This is underhand behaviour and quite appalling when the rest of us are pulling together to stay safe. Now I have a child who is more confused than ever and even worse, scared to get the vaccination.”
Supporters of the group behind the leaflets, named Safer to Wait, have been crowdfunding online to raise funds to print and distribute the sheets in Basingstoke and Alton. A section titled ‘Safer to Wait’ is accessible on Future Z’s website.
