The Canberra Hospital switchboard has been flooded with hundreds of calls from anti-vax protesters in a bizarre move because one of their group was receiving psychiatric treatment.
On Monday, it's understood that more than a thousand calls flooded the switchboard, coming in at the rate of more than a hundred an hour.
The hospital didn't go into detail beyond a spokesperson saying: "We are experiencing an extremely high volume of calls to our switchboard and this is impacting on our ability to respond to urgent calls."
It's believed the torrent of calls meant that other, important calls couldn't get through. There were fears that the protest meant that some doctors might be prevented from communicating essential, life-saving information. Members of the public may also have been frustrated because they couldn't get through.
The bizarre protest by anti-vaxxers came because a prominent anti-vaccination activist, who promotes a range of incredible conspiracy theories, was being treated at the hospital.
It's not known why he was being treated in the psychiatric unit but he is not believed to be there under compulsion. He can leave if he chooses, one person familiar with the situation said.
All the same, the patient's conspiracist comrades outside came to believe that he had been picked up and held in the hospital because of his views. He had been "nabbed", as they put it in one chat page on the Telegram site.
"They drugged him. They can kill him," it continued.
Some of the online conversation appeared incoherent, even deranged.
"Call the hospital. Don't listen to any provocateurs," the anti-vax clarion call said. "This is our chance to change the government."
The massed ranks of the anti-vax movement responded to the online appeal for the telephone bombardment and flooded the switchboard throughout the day. "Can I ask you to get on the phone to the hospital to do a welfare check?" one post urged.
"That let's them know that many are watching and they will release him. I have seen this happen many times over the years of being involved in the freedom movement," the activist said on the Telegram messaging platform.
"It's a tactic they use," the activist said, without specifying who "they" are. "They label someone a fixated person and they snatch them up and put them in a psyche ward and forcibly drug them. The only way we found to get them released is to inundate them with phone calls."
