Top Oxford scientist Professor Sir John Bell has slammed politicians who “damaged the reputation” of the AstraZeneca vaccine and accused them of “probably kill[ing] hundreds of thousands of people“. No prizes for guessing who he’s talking about.

Speaking on the BBC’s “AstraZeneca: A Vaccine for the World?” which airs tomorrow, Bell lays into leaders across Europe – including France, Germany and Spain – for spreading misinformation about the vaccine’s efficacy:

“They have damaged the reputation of the vaccine in a way that echoes around the rest of the world… I think bad behaviour from scientists and from politicians has probably killed hundreds of thousands of people, and that they cannot be proud of.”

Macron spent the first half of 2021 completely undermining the AstraZeneca jab – baselessly calling it “quasi-ineffective in the over 65s” – purely out of spite. At the peak of the Alpha wave, 61% of French nationals distrusted the vaccine, and a damning report later inevitably laid the blame on Macron’s doorstep. Germany and Spain also delayed the jab over a minuscule number of blood clots. Surprise surprise, it now looks like that same jab spared Britain the worst of the Omicron wave…