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Media Coverage of COVID -19

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Tezza1978

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kez19

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Has anyone seen this article? This is one of the worst, most appalling piece of panic-mongering I have ever read. In it Peston states that harsh lockdowns are permanent and normal life is over and its time to get used to it. Designed to spread fear and trash mental health, I'm so furious about that I'm going to make a formal complaint to ITV

Why it really matters that the UK Covid-19 strain has already mutated to resemble the Brazil and SA strains | ITV News


Just seems most of the media have forgotten what life was like in 2019 but happily champion lockdowns and the new normal (quelle surprise)!
 

yorksrob

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Has anyone seen this article? This is one of the worst, most appalling piece of panic-mongering I have ever read. In it Peston states that harsh lockdowns are permanent and normal life is over and its time to get used to it. Designed to spread fear and trash mental health, I'm so furious about that I'm going to make a formal complaint to ITV

Why it really matters that the UK Covid-19 strain has already mutated to resemble the Brazil and SA strains | ITV News

I've not said this before, but I predict unrest if this comes to pass.
 

Tezza1978

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I've not said this before, but I predict unrest if this comes to pass.
100% agree mate. Mass civil disorder - people are not and will NOT be prepared to live under a sword of Damocles of regular harsh lockdowns and continuing restrictions "in case" new mutations and variants appear
 

Bertie the bus

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Has anyone seen this article? This is one of the worst, most appalling piece of panic-mongering I have ever read. In it Peston states that harsh lockdowns are permanent and normal life is over and its time to get used to it. Designed to spread fear and trash mental health, I'm so furious about that I'm going to make a formal complaint to ITV

Why it really matters that the UK Covid-19 strain has already mutated to resemble the Brazil and SA strains | ITV News
Peston is an idiot who is full of himself. You only have to look at some of the questions he's asked at the press conferences to see he is absolutely loving all of this and wants it to continue as long as possible because it is probably the biggest story he will cover before he retires.
 

6862

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Has anyone seen this article? This is one of the worst, most appalling piece of panic-mongering I have ever read. In it Peston states that harsh lockdowns are permanent and normal life is over and its time to get used to it. Designed to spread fear and trash mental health, I'm so furious about that I'm going to make a formal complaint to ITV

Why it really matters that the UK Covid-19 strain has already mutated to resemble the Brazil and SA strains | ITV News

An appalling piece of journalism, but one that I fear may be rather accurate, as it so nicely matches the clear agenda of our leaders. Journalists seem to have just become the mouthpiece of the government!

I've not said this before, but I predict unrest if this comes to pass.

I've said this before and I'll say it again, most people will be too terrified to break the rules. If unrest was going to happen it would have happened by now.
 

yorksrob

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An appalling piece of journalism, but one that I fear may be rather accurate, as it so nicely matches the clear agenda of our leaders. Journalists seem to have just become the mouthpiece of the government!



I've said this before and I'll say it again, most people will be too terrified to break the rules. If unrest was going to happen it would have happened by now.

Terrified of the virus ? I think most people would rather take their chances.

The only thing I'm terrified of is the Government/medical establishment at the moment.
 

6862

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Terrified of the virus ? I think most people would rather take their chances.

Yes, I think a majority of people are terrified, or at least scared, of the virus. And that terror can and will easily be added to by the media acting as the government's mouthpiece and ramping up the fear mongering.

The only thing I'm terrified of is the Government/medical establishment at the moment.

I feel much the same. They are the greatest threat we face.
 

Silverlinky

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Cases down 26.9% in the last 7 days
Deaths down 9.7% in the last 7 days
Hospital admissions down 22.3% in the last 7 days
Patients in hospital on ventilators down 8.61% in the last 7 days
Over 10 million vaccinations administered....

Just in case you missed those numbers in amongst all the news about "possible mutations" and the possibility that those possible mutations might be a little more resistant to some vaccines......
 
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brad465

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Does anyone know the current R rate?
Last Friday they estimated 0.7-1.1. The ZOE study does it's own estimates more frequently and on a regional basis: the latest range from 0.8-1:


Reassuring to see daily cases continue to decline across the country (22,400) despite new variants and that the high rates of Covid hospital admissions also dropping in many areas. Still around 420,000 people out there with Covid who should be isolating at home. Thx for logging!
1612301441421.png
 

Skimpot flyer

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The R rate only makes the news when it goes up.
True.
Case numbers yesterday were under 20,000 compared to a peak of nearly 50,000.
You can bet if the numbers were an increase from 20k to 50k, we would have screaming headlines that infections had increased 250%
:'(
 

DB

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The bbc has described the woman who was arrested for filming empty hospitals as a conspiracy theorist.
Anyone who questions the approved narrative is a 'conspiracy theorist', just as anyone who expressea concern about vaccines developed quicker than usual is an 'anti-vaxxer'.

People using dismissive labels like this frequently do so to avoid addressing the points actually being made!
 

MikeWM

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Anyone who questions the approved narrative is a 'conspiracy theorist', just as anyone who expressea concern about vaccines developed quicker than usual is an 'anti-vaxxer'.

People using dismissive labels like this frequently do so to avoid addressing the points actually being made!

And anyone querying whether lockdowns are a good idea is apparently now a 'lockdown denier', whatever that is supposed to mean - I think you'd have to be rather out of it to deny the *existence* of lockdowns!

I do find it amusing and/or alarming (depending on my mood) that the people who argued for overturning all established epidemic protocols - and got their way, with incredibly poor results - seem to be the most likely to point fingers at those who question whether they were right to implement their 'strategy'.
 

WelshBluebird

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The bbc has described the woman who was arrested for filming empty hospitals as a conspiracy theorist.
Anyone who questions the approved narrative is a 'conspiracy theorist', just as anyone who expressea concern about vaccines developed quicker than usual is an 'anti-vaxxer'.

People using dismissive labels like this frequently do so to avoid addressing the points actually being made!
And anyone querying whether lockdowns are a good idea is apparently now a 'lockdown denier', whatever that is supposed to mean - I think you'd have to be rather out of it to deny the *existence* of lockdowns!

I do find it amusing and/or alarming (depending on my mood) that the people who argued for overturning all established epidemic protocols - and got their way, with incredibly poor results - seem to be the most likely to point fingers at those who question whether they were right to implement their 'strategy'.
To clarify, she is a conspiracy theorist because she is claiming there is no pandemic.
That is a baseless conspiracy theory and should be called out as such.

By all means question the severity of the pandemic and if it warrants the responses it has had from governemtns worldwide, and by all means question specific government policy if you want to. But that isn't what she was doing. She was denying the existence of the pandemic full stop.
As soon as people start going into crazy la la territory (there is no pandemic, or "plandemic", or 5G gives you covid, or the bill gates vaccine microchip BS, etc etc) then they deserve to have that specifically called out.

And that is before you get to the issue of people who do not need to be in a hospital going there to "film" (aka be a nuisance like we are seeing in some news reports where people are claiming patients don't need to be on oxygen etc) and to get in the way of staff who are trying to do their job in difficult circumstances.
 
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MikeWM

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To clarify, she is a conspiracy theorist because she is claiming there is no pandemic.
That is a baseless conspiracy theory and should be called out as such.

I'm not sure how far I want to go down this rabbit hole, but why do we call such people 'conspiracy theorists'? Wouldn't 'wrong' suffice?

And that is before you get to the issue of people who do not need to be in a hospital going there to "film" (aka be a nuisance like we are seeing in some news reports where people are claiming patients don't need to be on oxygen etc) and to get in the way of staff who are trying to do their job in difficult circumstances.

I think that's a tough one to call. Obviously people need to be able to perform their important jobs, and any such video published should take great care to blur out faces etc., but equally I think we should have the right to know and/or investigate what is going on in hospitals too, when that is the reason being given for all the unprecedented laws and restrictions currently in place. And to be blunt, we can't rely on the corporate media to give us an accurate picture anymore, so to some degree we have to be prepared to take such matters into our own hands.
 

nlogax

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I'm not sure how far I want to go down this rabbit hole, but why do we call such people 'conspiracy theorists'? Wouldn't 'wrong' suffice?

No. She's a conspiracy theorist. The same raft of people whom believe Covid is a hoax tend to believe that the vaccines are laden with Bill Gates' personal stash of tracking chips and that we all live on a flat disc.

Call these people out for what they are. There's no need to tiptoeing around this.
 

MikeWM

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No. She's a conspiracy theorist. The same raft of people whom believe Covid is a hoax tend to believe that the vaccines are laden with Bill Gates' personal stash of tracking chips and that we all live on a flat disc.

Call these people out for what they are. There's no need to tiptoeing around this.

Maybe. It seems an unhelpful term to me, I'd prefer a simple 'wrong'. Dismissing people with a label tends not to change minds and may even attract others to agree.
 

WelshBluebird

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I'm not sure how far I want to go down this rabbit hole, but why do we call such people 'conspiracy theorists'? Wouldn't 'wrong' suffice?
There is a huge difference between someone who just happens to be wrong about something and someone who is so far down conspiracy theory rabbit holes that nothing anyone tells them will make them see reality.

Remember many of these people believe things like 5G masts give you COVID etc (and a subgroup of that will be guilty of the terrorist attacks we have seen on critical national infrastructure). We are not talking about reasonable people who just happen to disagree with government policy.

I think that's a tough one to call. Obviously people need to be able to perform their important jobs, and any such video published should take great care to blur out faces etc., but equally I think we should have the right to know and/or investigate what is going on in hospitals too, when that is the reason being given for all the unprecedented laws and restrictions currently in place. And to be blunt, we can't rely on the corporate media to give us an accurate picture anymore, so to some degree we have to be prepared to take such matters into our own hands.
Again to clarify - these are not people who are genuinely want to report as a journalist on the goings on hospitals like you seem to be framing them as.
They are conspiracy theories who are trying to further their own agenda without a care in the world for anything else. No care about the staff, no care about the wellbeing of patients or what would actually give the patient the best medical outcome, no care about the fact that you know, they could actually be bringing COVID into the ward, no care about blurring faces / hiding identities etc etc.

It strikes me as somewhat similar to bloody Tommy Robinson and his elk who were attending court cases under the guise of "journalism" but were actually there just to cause trouble and rile up their supporters. No difference here.

In terms of these videos that these people shoot, from the cases I have watched / read about, they are very deliberately misleading. Filming in areas that are closed at that time (in one case it was a bereavement suite that closes after 4pm), filming in areas closed to the public (in one case they specifically pass clear signs saying "do not enter"), filming in entrances that have been temporarily turned into exit only areas (but still claiming it is an entrance and then asking where are the people) or filming in corridors which are usually quiet anyway as for the most part people are in beds on wards.

These people end up riling up supporters with their lies / misleading stories and then you end up with large groups of yobs outside hospitals abusing staff (like what happened in London on new years eve).

There's also been several where the person filming is shown arguing with doctors and medical staff when they have no involvement with the patient in the first place - how does that help at all? Especially when they make false arguments like the idea that COVID can be treated with vitamins, or that giving patients oxygen will kill them.

Maybe. It seems an unhelpful term to me, I'd prefer a simple 'wrong'. Dismissing people with a label tends not to change minds and may even attract others to agree.
To be blunt - these people and their "beliefs" deserve to be dismissed.
 
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MikeWM

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Perhaps so - I've not looked into this particular case and whether it is particularly problematic or not.

In general I have always felt that it is better to engage people who argue nonsense and shine a light onto what they are saying, rather than banning them. David Irving was an excellent example of that - he suffered far more reputational damage as a result of the court case he lost, than when he was locked up later for holocaust denial. The latter made him somewhat of a martyr to a rather unpleasant group of people; the court case just made him look ridiculous.

I am a very strong believer in freedom of speech for everyone, even if they're talking total nonsense, though of course there has to be a line drawn at some point or other. As ever, the debate is where to draw the line.
 

greyman42

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No. She's a conspiracy theorist. The same raft of people whom believe Covid is a hoax tend to believe that the vaccines are laden with Bill Gates' personal stash of tracking chips and that we all live on a flat disc.

Call these people out for what they are. There's no need to tiptoeing around this.
Or you could just ignore them if you do not agree with them. I don't recall them claiming we live on flat discs.
 
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