NZ Doctors Still Speaking Out with Science

Last week Craig told you all about a parody website I'd built, NZD-SOS, which copied the look and feel of an anti-vaccine site called New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out with Science but changed the wording to point out that there are more doctors called Sarah (or David, Sue, Kate, Michael or Catherine) in NZ who support vaccination than all the doctors who have spoken out publicly about being distrustful of the Pfizer COVID vaccine.

It was a lot of fun building the site. On Friday, when Siouxsie Wiles tweeted about it, the site received a lot of visitors. Many of them enjoyed the light-hearted way it poked fun at how few anti-vaccine doctors there are in New Zealand, including the people who collated the pro-vaccine doctor list.

But others, including some from the Voices for Freedom group, were not so happy and were demanding to know who made the site, and saying that someone had hijacked the original website. It was no secret who was responsible, as I'd added the name of the NZ Skeptics to the site in several places, including the copyright at the bottom of the page - but apparently these anti-vaxxers didn't bother to actually read what I'd written. What's more funny is that these anti-vaxxers have been posting their upset at my website on the Voices for Freedom Facebook page - except Voices for Freedom have been banned from Facebook for spreading misinformation. It turns out that the current Voices for Freedom Facebook page is another parody effort - actually called Voices for FreeDOOM - and lots of anti-vaxxers are posting on the page thinking it's the real deal. Honestly, these people are not paying much attention. The description of the fake page says it all, really:

“Voices for Freedom are a bunch of political candidates and grifters. They provide a platform for misinformation and stand strong to exploit people during the pandemic.”

Since my parody site has gone live, the Voices for Freedom group have updated their NZDSOS website three times, and my suspicion is that the changes are to try to make the site look different to my copy. But each time they've done this, it's just taken me a few minutes to make some changes to my site, and it's back to looking identical again. It's a cat and mouse game - one I'm determined to win.