Twitter Bans UK Doctor Skeptical of COVID-19 Vaccines
A British doctor known for questioning the efficacy and safety of COVID-19 vaccines has had her Twitter account permanently suspended without explanation.
Dr. Clare Craig, a diagnostic pathologist who contributes to the Health Advisory and Recovery Team, a group of skeptics about the policy and guidance relating to the COVID-19 pandemic, told The Epoch Times on Tuesday that she doesn’t know the reason for her account’s suspension, but someone may have reported her over fabricated “hateful conduct.”
Craig said that she realised on Monday that her account, which had 144,000 followers, had been suspended, but believes it happened on Sunday. After appealing the suspension, Craig was told by Twitter on Tuesday that her account had been “permanently suspended due to multiple or repeat” rule violations.
Before receiving Twitter’s reply, Craig told The Epoch Times she didn’t know why she was suspended.
“I don’t know. I’ve never been suspended before, and people who have been [suspended] have told me they normally get an email from Twitter explaining why, and I never got an email,” she said.
She then said there may be evidence that she was reported to the social media platform for “hateful conduct” by online trolls.
“One of my friends found somebody gloating that they had got me kicked off, saying, ‘oops, my finger slipped,’ and then sharing this screengrab which said to them: you can’t view @ClareCraigPath’s Twitter because she has been removed for hateful conduct,” she said.
Craig said she doesn’t know what processes Twitter uses to deal with such reports, but denied having been hateful.
“I haven’t said anything rude to anybody or about anybody, let alone hateful. So I think it’s potentially this troll has fabricated something, and I’ve been removed without due process because it was hateful,” she said, adding that she had appealed to Twitter about the suspension of her account.
Craig later received an email from Twitter, saying her account had been “permanently suspended due to multiple or repeat violations of our rules.”
In the email, reviewed by The Epoch Times, Twitter said it doesn’t allow “the following behaviors on Twitter,” including “creating serial and/or multiple accounts with overlapping uses; evading a permanent suspension by creating or using another account; cross-posting tweets or links across multiple accounts; [and] aggressive following, particularly through automated means.”
Twitter added that replies to the email “will not be reviewed as this decision will not be reversed.”
Craig told The Epoch Times that she still doesn’t know what she had been accused of after reading Twitter’s reply.
She said she has an old work account that she hasn’t used since 2013 and another one she applied for so she could download the app onto a U.S. mobile phone, and she has never posted anything with the account.
On Twitter’s website, users have the option to “add an existing account” or “manage accounts,” suggesting it does allow multiple accounts.
Educated at the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, Craig was formerly a consultant cytopathologist for the National Health Service. She has been a vocal critic of the UK’s COVID-19 pandemic policies, such as mandatory vaccination for health workers, a policy that was ditched at the eleventh hour before it was due to come into force.
She is one of the 76 doctors who wrote to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, and other government officials in June, questioning what they said were “huge gaps” in the documentation submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by Pfizer on its COVID-19 vaccine trial for children aged between 6 months and 4 years, and saying it’s “totally inappropriate” to inject small children with mRNA vaccines given the balance of benefit and risk.
The Epoch Times has reached out to Twitter for comment.
Follow
Lily Zhou is a freelance writer mostly covering UK news for The Epoch Times.
This article has been archived for your research. The original version from Epoch Times can be found here.
