Is this the most dangerous woman in Britain? Suspended nurse Kate Shemirani doesn't believe Covid exists, says its symptoms are linked to 5G mobile phone technology... and claims a vaccine is a plot to change our DNA, writes BARBARA DAVIES
Kate Shemirani strides into the hotel where we meet with such confidence that, despite the signs insisting masks must be worn, nobody challenges her lack of face covering.
By the time the receptionist has emerged from behind the desk, the 54-year-old suspended nurse has already swept off down a corridor in her strappy white stilettos.
Had she been stopped, goodness only knows what kind of kerfuffle would have ensued. For anti-vaxxer Shemirani is pretty forthright when it comes to imparting her views on the global Covid-19 pandemic — or 'scamdemic' as she calls it.
Over the past few weeks, this glossy mother-of-four from East Sussex has emerged as the new face of the UK's anti-vaccination movement. At the end of last month, she joined conspiracy theorists David Icke and Piers Corbyn, older brother of former Labour leader Jeremy, at a protest against coronavirus restrictions and plans for a Covid-19 vaccine.
A couple of weeks ago, she popped up again outside Downing Street where she gave a speech to the assembled masses about the 'Covid-19 myth' before being briefly arrested. This weekend, she will appear centre-stage at another rally in Trafalgar Square.
Over the past few weeks, Kate Shemirani, a glossy mother-of-four from East Sussex, has emerged as the new face of the UK's anti-vaccination movement
Covid-19, says Shemirani, doesn't exist. Its symptoms are linked to the roll-out of new 5G wireless technology. There is no pandemic — it's a conspiracy to control the masses.
The upcoming Covid-19 vaccination is, in reality, a political tool to gain access to and to change people's DNA. She likens the ongoing lockdown restrictions to the Holocaust, asking whether the public will wake up 'on the cattle truck? Or in the showers?'
These outlandish claims have landed her in hot water with the Nursing and Midwifery Council , who suspended her registration in July, and seen her kicked off Facebook and Instagram for spreading misinformation. But they've also seen her Twitter following treble in the past three weeks.
And despite 35 years as a registered nurse, Shemirani couldn't give two hoots about the NMC suspension because the organisation is a 'criminal governing body' with a 'terrorist agenda to commit genocide'.
'These are not views. This is the truth,' she snaps, adding — not for the last time — 'I've done my research and if you slander me, I'll sue you.'
Within minutes of sitting down, the conversation gets really weird. The new Covid-19 vaccine, she says, contains particles powered by military-style 'Darpa' technology. 'They will be able to look at every aspect of what is going on in our brains,' she says, 'Not only can they pick it up, they can download into us.'
The big question, of course, is who on earth would want to do this? Her reply is to talk about a global 'narrative' — a powerful elite using the pandemic to create a new world order.
Next comes her most astonishing claim of all: 'No vaccine has ever been proven safe or effective,' she says.
This is preposterous. Take polio, for example, where cases dropped following a mass vaccination programme in the 1950s, with no UK cases since the mid 1980s. 'What is polio?' she says, before launching into a conspiracy theory about it being caused by the insecticide DDT.
Conversing with Shemirani is an unsettling experience. On one level, she's the epitome of conventional middle-classdom — a former NHS nurse and stay-at-home mother with an ex-husband who worked in the City and four children, now between 17 and 21, who were privately educated.
At the end of last month, she joined conspiracy theorists David Icke and Piers Corbyn, older brother of former Labour leader Jeremy, at a protest against coronavirus restrictions and plans for a Covid-19 vaccine
When she is addressing the crowds at a rally, she can also call upon her working-class roots.
The postman's daughter from Nottingham, who left school before completing her A-levels, worked variously in a factory, a bar in Spain and in Argos and, after qualifying at Glasgow Royal Infirmary in 1984, supplemented her salary as a theatre nurse with modelling assignments. From 1990 to 1998 she worked as a long-haul BA air stewardess.
After her children were born, she briefly set up her own business administering Botox, fillers and peels, and it was only a diagnosis of breast cancer in 2012 that saw her perform a complete volte-face in terms of her attitude to conventional medicine.
After undergoing a double mastectomy and reconstruction, she refused chemotherapy on the advice of her then husband, himself a conspiracy theorist who believed 9/11 was an inside job.
She embarked on a fat-free, salt-free, sugar-free vegan regime including high doses of vitamins as well as 13 juices a day, five coffee enemas and mistletoe injected into her stomach. Nine years on and still largely following that regime, she has had no recurrence of disease. Now describing herself as a nutritionist after taking an online diploma, she recommends the same treatment to other cancer patients.
She is unperturbed by the fact that there are no clinical trials to support her recommendations and rebuts any attempt to provide evidence, with the counter-claim: 'There are no studies in oncology that tell you that you are going to die if you don't do the treatment.'
There is, however, an abundance of evidence showing cancer patients' survival rates improve when they do have it.
During our interview, I notice how she often takes isolated pieces of information and puts them together to present a new 'truth' of her own. Vaccines, for example, do indeed contain aluminium. But the amounts are too small to be harmful — aluminium is one of the most common metals found in nature and is present in air, food and water.
In Shemirani's world, anyone who disagrees with her is lying, misinformed or jealous. Overweight, envious nurses come in for particular criticism.
'The fact that I was always graced with decent looks and I'm always very slim has generated jealousy throughout my career,' she said in another interview.
This weekend, the campaigner, pictured, will appear centre-stage at another rally in Trafalgar Square
And she certainly has no time for official health organisations or their peer-reviewed studies. Public Health England is 'just a bunch of criminals'. Cancer Research UK 'crooks' and the NHS is 'the new Auschwitz'.
It was in March this year that her claims finally landed her in hot water. As the resident 'health and wellness' expert on her local Sussex radio station Uckfield FM, she spent 20 minutes telling listeners 'the truth' about Covid-19.
Her summary of this broadcast is baffling: 'I talked about Covid-19 — how there was an inversion in the genome sequence, indicative of vector technology.
'That Wuhan, according to the telecommunications network in China, had been the test city for 5G from autumn of 2019, that mandatory vaccinations came into force in December of 2019 in China.' After complaints from listeners, Uckfield FM was reprimanded by Ofcom and ordered to broadcast an apology.
Anti-vaxxers, of course, have been coming out with this kind of stuff for years. Britain has been a hub of bogus claims about vaccine safety ever since Andrew Wakefield falsely claimed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism in the late 1990s. He was later struck off for serious misconduct and research fraud.
And yet Shemirani describes 61-year-old Wakefield, who continues to promote his views in the U.S., as an 'amazing' man. This weekend, he will join her at the Trafalgar Square rally.
But while she and other conspiracy theorists continue to dismiss the current health crisis as a 'scamdemic' designed to engender fear among the populace, surely the most terrifying prospect of all is the outlandish world she believes in.