A GP has admitted a tweet he posted, in which he suggested overweight people wanted everyone else to be vaccinated because it made them feel better, was not appropriate.
Dr Marcus de Brun, who ran Rush Family Practice in north Co Dublin, gave evidence on Wednesday to a Medical Council fitness-to-practise hearing regarding allegations dating back to the Covid-19 pandemic.
He is facing 10 allegations, each of which contain a number of sub-allegations.
It is alleged that between May 2020 and October 2021 de Brun tweeted comments critical of the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) and the State’s Covid-19 vaccination programme for children and young people.
The council alleges that the factual allegations against de Brun amount to poor professional performance, professional misconduct and multiple breaches of the Code of Professional Conduct and Ethics for Registered Medical Practitioners.
Included in the tweets at the centre of the allegations was one posted in September 2021, which read: “Some fat people want everyone else vaccinated. I imagine it makes them feel less fat.”
In response to inquiry chair Deirdre Murphy, de Brun accepted that tweet was inappropriate, that it did sound offensive and should be removed.
He said it was written in the context of a shift in the initial Covid measures, from protecting the obese, unhealthy and elderly to protecting the entire community. He said this was the general thrust he was trying to portray.
Murphy also asked de Brun whether another tweet he posted in September 2021 was appropriate.
“There’s a certain type of Irish woman who loves being indignant. She wears her mask long after she’s dropped the kids off at the gate, hasn’t had an orgasm in ages and thinks most men are just chauvinists,” it stated.
De Brun also agreed this was not appropriate.
Earlier under cross-examination by Neasa Bird, barrister for the Medical Council chief executive, de Brun said there was a degree of “hurt” in the tweet as he had earlier dropped his kids off at school and was accosted by another parent for not wearing a face mask. He said he felt “a little bit hurt”.
He also told Murphy that over the course of the five years there were certainly times – including this tweet, which he said he deleted – where the language he used was “excessive or inappropriate”.
De Brun was asked by Mary Devins, a lay member of the committee, about another tweet he posted in September 2021. Part of it stated: “Irish journalists don’t like to accept that cherished institutions; the Medical Council or State run media are fundamentally corrupt. They would rather take the Covid cash & tell us the whistleblowers are fanatics.”
De Brun said the word “they” in the tweet referred to the media and Irish journalists, and that he felt the media was “highly subsidised”. He clarified that he meant State-run media was “fundamentally corrupt”.
When giving evidence earlier, de Brun said he and others who were critical of the Covid-19 public health guidelines were “corralled” into expressing their views on social media as there was nowhere else for them to do so.
Bird also cross-examined de Brun regarding a tweet posted in March 2021, in which he said “the reason we are in lockdown is to prevent any review of policy”.
That post went on to reference “Care Home Manslaughter”, which on Wednesday he said referred to the transfer of patients from a hospital setting to a nursing home where he worked without any consultation with him. He said this resulted in “quite a significant” increase in Covid in the nursing home.
It is further alleged that de Brun attended an anti-mask rally on August 22nd, 2020, at the Custom House in Dublin at which he did not adhere to the public health guidelines and spoke out against Covid-19 measures.
De Brun said one of the reasons he attended the rally was to call for a full public inquiry into deaths in nursing homes during the pandemic.
He on Tuesday made three unsuccessful applications to the committee. These regarded the admissibility of the chief executive’s expert report, calling a further witness and that he had no case to answer. There were also four hearings of the inquiry in September.
The committee will reconvene on Thursday to hear the closing statements from both parties and legal advice.