Sue Grey misinformation tsunami, and who is Maxine?

We've mentioned Sue Grey in the past. She's the Nelson-based lawyer and co-leader of the NZ Outdoors party, and full on conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer.

Her Facebook page is where she seems to spread the majority of her misinformation, and she's posting many times a day.

Annoyed by Facebook's labelling her posts with their COVID-19 warnings, she recently took to experimenting with different combinations of text to try to figure out what words caused Facebook's algorithms to label her posts with warnings. I actually think she shouldn't really be concerned as, from seeing the reactions from commenters, she's pretty much preaching to the choir anyway. Facebook's warnings are likely to fall on deaf ears. But, in an effort to side-step the algorithms, the COVID vaccine is now being referred to as Maxine! Is this a new cockney rhyming slang?

Sue's other gems this week included a link to a video that purported to conclusively prove that viruses aren't real, and that they've never been demonstrated to exist.

She posted a claim that the COVID vaccine causes Stevens Johnson Syndrome which causes peeling skin, amongst other symptoms. The claim was fact-checked by Reuters and determined to be false. In a now familiar technique, anti-vaxxers will take shocking pictures off the internet (pre-dating the release of the COVID vaccine) and falsely claim that they're the result of the vaccine.

Also this week she wrote an open letter to the prime minister and other cabinet ministers with the subject line screaming:

OPEN LETTER No 2- An URGENT REQUEST FOLLOWING RESEARCH SHOWING THE "S PROTEIN" IN THE PFIZER JAB IS A TOXIN

In the letter she refers to the latest anti-vaxxer talking point about the spike protein (or S Protein, as they call it) supposedly being a dangerous toxin found in dangerous quantities in the bloodstream of people who've received the mRNA-based COVID vaccine (hint: it's not - and the studies don't show what the anti-vaxxers think they do. See David Gorski's refutation of the claims.)

Shockingly, in the letter, she goes well and truly off the deep end, quoting the legal definition of homicide and implying that government ministers would be guilty of this by allowing the COVID vaccine rollout to proceed.

In a stunning demonstration of a complete lack of self-awareness, she concludes her letter with the following:

“Please find the courage to challenge whoever is driving this, and any who act on dogma rather than evidence, reason or ethics.

The future of New Zealand depends on your courage to step up and make this critical call for our people.

I urge you to listen, engage and act in the public interest.

Please put aside your pride and the dogma, and suspend this program.

I am happy to assist however I can.”

Sue Grey lists a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and Microbiology amongst her qualifications. It seems to me that little of that study has actually sunk in!