Protesters are accused of spoiling Totnes
CROWDS of anti-vaccine protesters without masks in Totnes are driving shoppers away from the town’s Saturday market, it has been claimed.
The claim was shared during a public question time before a meeting of Totnes Town Council.
Totnes town centre has seemingly become a popular meeting place for the anti-vaccine movement in recent months, and literature casting doubts about the vaccines available has been circulating in the town.
Resident Paul Wesley told the meeting that the number of people not wearing masks in Totnes set it apart from nearby towns.
He said: “At the market, I was one of only three people wearing a mask. By mid-afternoon it was buzzing, with quite a large number of conspiracy nutcases and anti-vaccine cult followers and others.
“On Saturdays, families are not going to the market or the centre of town. When the shops are open, they are losing business.
“People won’t come in to town when there are so many anti-maskers or antivaxxers around in the centre of town.”
Devon Live, sister website of the WMN, recently reported that a Totnes couple were ‘losing’ friends to such Covid conspiracy theories.
The couple – Dr Emily Grossman and her partner, Kimwei McCarthy – moved to Totnes last December, when they joined various online groups in a bid to get to know new people while reaching out to the friends that they already knew.
However, very quickly the pair discovered that, on many of these online groups, dangerous misinformation about coronavirus, the vaccines and facemasks was being floated, including by some of the very same people who they already knew.
At the meeting, Paul Wesley said the phenomenon had started when the main road through the town was closed on Saturday mornings.
“It was an unexpected and unwanted consequence,” he added. “By midafternoon people were sitting ‘shoulder to shoulder’ on the kerb and the market was full of socialising people.
“It’s a situation which should be of extreme concern,” he said. “It’s not
‘On Saturdays, families are not going to the market or the centre of town’ PAUL WESLEY
what you want to happen in the town.
“Totnes is being put on the map for very negative reasons. I don’t want to see the town made a laughing stock,” said Mr Wesley, who urged the council to come up with a strategy for social distancing.
Mayor Ben Piper said police had spoken to a lot of people in the town centre in recent weeks.
“We’re trying to keep the market open,” Councillor Piper said. “It would be a real shame if traders were losing trade due to these people, but it hasn’t got quite as much steam as it had. We’re not getting the organised rallies that we had before.”