A Covid denier who suggested “whacking” Prof Sir Chris Whitty with a rounders bat has been jailed for five years after being convicted of encouraging terrorism. Messages posted by Patrick Ruane on social media were described by a judge who sentenced him at the Old Bailey as “extremely dangerous” during a volatile time. The trial previously heard that the 55-year-old had targeted individuals including the UK government’s chief medical officer and the chief executive officer of Covid vaccine developer Pfizer in a series of posts during 2021. Ruane had replied to a post about Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, saying: “The weakest point of the scull [sic] is the back of the scull and all it would take is riding a bike very fast and whacking target over the back of head with a rounders bat but a mace [a piece of metal ball and chain] would be way better.” In response to the creator of the AstraZeneca vaccine getting a standing ovation at Wimbledon, he commented: “It’s a shame there was not a sharp shooter to take that fucking POS [piece of shit] out.” An audio producer who worked in films, Ruane also posted images of semtex explosive and called for an “IRA playbook” to be implemented after the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, extended lockdown powers for a further period. Prosecutor Julia Faure Walker said that posts by Ruane spanned months and encouraged serious violence and disruption designed to influence the government or intimidate a section of the public. They reached a “very large audience” through two Telegram chat groups, one of which had 18,000 users. Judge Richard Marks KC said on Monday that Ruane could not be sure people would not act out what was said in the messages. He went on to say that Ruane had a “compulsive and obsessive” mindset about the vaccines and that he often posted the messages while “blind drunk”. The “overwhelming view around the world” was that vaccines were hugely effectively in saving lives, said the judge, who told Ruane that he was entitled to publicly vent dissenting views. “You, however, went very much further and in so doing committed the offences of which you were convicted,” he said. Ruane, of Paddington in London, was cleared of collecting information useful to a terrorist. He had denied the charges against him and claimed his film work gave him a reasonable excuse for having the manual with semtex instructions. Bethan David, head of the counter-terrorism division at the Crown Prosecution Service, said at the time of Ruane’s conviction last month: “This is a dangerous man who was prolific in encouraging violence because of his firmly held beliefs in a conspiracy theory.”