Eric Clapton claims people vaccinated against Covid-19 are under 'hypnosis'
Eric Clapton has claimed people vaccinated against Covid-19 have been "hypnotised" by public health messaging.
Back in May 2021, the Layla hitmaker declared he had experienced a "severe" reaction to the AstraZeneca vaccine, and later went on to insist he would not perform at venues that require concertgoers to be fully vaccinated against the virus.
During a recent appearance on The Real Music Observer YouTube Channel, Clapton emphasised his anti-vaccination status and discussed his support of the theory that people around the world had fallen victim to "mass formation hypnosis".
"I didn't get the memo... Whatever the memo was, it hadn't reached me. Then I started to realise there was really a memo, and a guy, Mattias Desmet (a professor of clinical psychology at Ghent University), talked about it," he said. "And it's great. The theory of mass formation hypnosis. And I could see it then. Once I kind of started to look for it, I saw it everywhere. Then I remembered seeing little things on YouTube which were like subliminal advertising. It had been going on for a long time: that thing about 'you will own nothing and you will be happy'. And I thought, 'What's that mean?' And bit by bit, I put a rough kind of jigsaw puzzle together. And that made me more resolute."
Elsewhere in the conversation, Clapton spoke about his decision to collaborate with Van Morrison on the anti-mask, anti-lockdown single, Stand and Deliver.
"My career had almost gone anyway. At the point where I spoke out it had been almost been 18 months since I'd kind of been forcibly retired," the 76-year-old commented, referring to the lockdown measures that prohibited concerts. "I joined forces with Van and I got the tip Van was standing up to the measures and I thought, 'Why is nobody else doing this?' . . . so I contacted him... I was mystified, I seemed to be the only person that found it exciting or even appropriate. I'm cut from a cloth where if you tell me I can't do something, I really want to know why."
Experts from the U.K.'s National Health Service (NHS) maintain COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective, and offer the best protection against the contagious virus.
