A Gold Coast doctor has been subjected to death threats and abuse and is living in “utter fear” of anti-vaxxers thanks to false reports that two children died in his clinic after being administered the Pfizer vaccine.
The Pacific Pines GP, Dr Wilson Chin, said “widespread panic” swept through his community when false reports spread online that the two children had died in his clinic.
The girls suffered what Chin described as a “normal” fainting episode while under observation at the clinic a fortnight ago and have since recovered.
But a post to a Facebook page purporting to be a “personal eyewitness account” wrongly claimed the girls had suffered “violent convulsions” and later died in the waiting room.
Another Facebook user posted false information describing the girls as “unresponsive when ambos got there” and encouraging others to share the post.
The backlash ultimately forced the clinic to pull out of the vaccine rollout of five to 11-year-olds after Chin and his colleagues received death threats, which have been reported to police.
Five to 11-year-olds joined the rollout on 10 January after vigorous TGA approval. As of 28 January, 35.98% of the national age bracket had received at least one dose of a vaccine.
In Queensland, though, the figure was 31.39%, trailing behind every state and territory except Western Australia.
The Queensland government has cited misinformation as a key reason for lagging vaccination rates and vaccine hesitancy in some areas.
In a lengthy Facebook post written after the misinformation spread, Chin said the “abuse and utter fear” he had faced via the practice’s phone and social media pages was “unbelievable”.
In one instance, a social media user urged for dogs to be set on staff, while another person encouraged residents to “get” Chin after work, labelling him a “murderer”.
“I have never seen anything like this before and it seemed never ending,” he wrote.
“They did this without attempting to confirm the facts and whether these deaths were real.”
Chin told Guardian Australia it was the “first time in his life” he’d questioned whether he was safe as a practising health worker.
“I am concerned … we’re just trying to keep people safe and follow the guidelines and when things like this happen, there hasn’t been any government support, nothing’s been done,” he said.
“There are a lot of people against the vaccine willing to do anything to jeopardise it, and we have no backup.”
Chin said he was still receiving multiple threatening messages daily, including a death threat sent to his personal Instagram account advising him to hire security and watch his back.
“Our address has been given to the public, and we have no security here. Every time I finish work I look around the car park to make sure nobody is following me.”
Chin has cut down on his working hours and entered counselling since the abuse began.
“We are just doing our jobs – we just want to care for our patients … I’m on the last thread here,” he said.
Dr Karen Price, president of the RACGP, said Meta and other social media companies needed to do more to counter the spread of Covid-19 misinformation.
“A GP receiving death threats simply for doing his job trying to keep his community safe is completely unacceptable and I won’t stand for it,” she said.
“Dr Chin had to stay at a friend’s place because he was so concerned for his safety and there have been sleepless nights for fellow GPs, the practice manager and the other members of the practice team.”
The RACGP has previously urged social media companies – including Twitter and Facebook – to take better accountability for anti-vaxxer content on their platforms.
Price said a nearby practice which hadn’t offered Covid-19 vaccines to children had also received death threats.
“Meta has a real opportunity here to walk the walk and back up their rhetoric by removing anti-vaxxers from the platform and making a concerted effort to counter anti-vaxxer misinformation and threats, including in private Facebook groups,” she said.
“We cannot allow people like Dr Chin to experience threats, abuse and intimidation simply for doing his job.”
Police were investigating the allegations and had tracked down one person who had made a direct threat against Chin, but no charges had been laid.
GP and chair of RACGP Queensland Bruce Willett said Chin’s experience was an “extreme example of a widespread problem”.
“Social media is fuelling this and social media companies need to step up and take some responsibility … particularly the extreme degree of misinformation that is essentially inciting hatred and potentially violence,” he said.
“GPs have been under an enormous amount of pressure … the responsibility for Covid care has fallen back on general practice for mild and moderate cases, at the same time GPs have provided vaccinations and tried to do business as usual.”
Willett said adding a “small, but very loud” group of people opposed to vaccinations attempting to “start a fight” to the mix was only increasing the burden on healthcare workers.
A Meta spokesperson said it was “investigating” Chin’s profile and any content that breached its rules would be removed.
“In addition to our policies on Covid-19, we do not allow death threats, hate speech or bullying and harassment on our apps and we’ll remove this content and work with law enforcement where there’s a credible risk of offline harm,” a spokesperson said.
