MORNING SERIAL
IF SOMEONE isolated themselves when it was not necessary, it could seriously affect their wellbeing and mental health.
Even worse, a letter might not reach a person who needed it and they were risking their lives by continuing to visit the supermarket when they had a higher likelihood of death if they caught the virus.
With thousands dead across the UK, it is hard to believe that anyone could be opposed to the lockdown, especially in the early stages when the virus was absolutely running rampant. And yet this is 2020, a time when people do not vaccinate their children against deadly diseases and well-known public figures think the Earth is flat.
Misinformation is false or inaccurate information, though not necessarily created deliberately.
Disinformation is when false information is created with the intention of misleading, and there were huge amounts of disinformation circulating on social media regarding the virus. These lies (for that is what they are) had contributed to the vandalising of 5G masts earlier in the crisis and now fake accounts on Twitter and Facebook inflamed protests against the lockdown itself, suggesting it was a con.
These accounts are not new, they have been used in the past to help both the leave side of the Brexit argument and on the side of President Trump in the 2016 US election. These shady disinformation factories (which often align with Russian geopolitical aims) went into overdrive, blaming the EU for failing to protect its citizens and stoking resentment with measures put in place to protect the public.
This culminated in a series of protests in the UK against the lockdown, with protesters waving placards against the lockdown, 5G, the wearing of masks and Bill Gates (a long-time proponent of action to prevent pandemics). As the UK death toll neared 36,000 people, 19 people were arrested in London for breaking the lockdown rules. In Cardiff, rather hilariously, only a couple of people attended the rally there, with a similar story across other advertised protests in Swansea and Newport.