4 ms·

The Times and Telepgraph have been minimising Covid since day one, even providing a platform for groups such as "us for them". Right now there are no mitigatio

• danjac 5y ago
  The question is why the Times/Telegraph (and their low-IQ equivalents such as the Mail and Express) are so keen to downplay Covid. My hunch is that their owners are losing money on property investments and are desperate to get employees back in the office, who knows.
  • doingtheiroming 5y ago
    It’s only a conspiracy theory when people I don’t like say it.
  • jeofken 5y ago
    > My hunch is that their owners are losing money on property investments and are desperate to get employees back in the office, who knows. This conspiracy theory based on hunch falls with Occams Razor, as both owners and writers at newspapers likely diversify their investments like any other investor.
    • garmaine 5y ago
      You must not be familiar with the intricacies of UK property ownership. Most desirable properties in London are owned by a small group of aristocratic people who really do just hold property, and things which give them political influence like newspapers. Corporate ownership of buildings is not as prevalent as, say, in New York (except in the family business sort of way). Part of this is tradition, but also the quirks of UK property law which makes it very hard to trance ownership of property, and so these people who value their privacy prefer property over other more liquid investments they’d have to disclose.
      • jeofken 5y ago
        If you wish to link something where I can learn the details please feel free
        • garmaine 5y ago
          Here is a start: https://theguardian.com/money/2019/apr/17/who-owns-england-thousand-secret-landowners-author https://theguardian.com/money/2019/apr/17/who-owns-england-t...
  • ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    It fits their general pattern of "anything mildly complicated that involves a government doing stuff to help the average person is a conspiracy to hurt you". Regulations for easier trade of bananas? Regulations to encourage recycling? Human Rights? Health and Safety? Climate change plans? New school cirriculum? You should hate and fear all these things according to them. Because if people saw government as a way to improve everyone's lives, they'd probably use it to stop powerful people doing stuff, like poisoning people, starting wars or destroying the planet for money. So scientists saying the best way to deal with an infectious disease is to pay people to stay home, because we're all part of a society that needs to work together to reach the best outcome for all of us, is scary to them, so they attack it like they always do.
    • simonh 5y ago
      Anything that involves international co-operation and co-ordination is anathema to those with a nationalist or isolationist leaning, because it means you have to work with foreigners to address it. Either it doesn't exist, or it's a foreigner conspiracy anyway, or somehow both at the same time.
  • oliwarner 5y ago
    Definitely property. Get back to normal, back to work peasants. Crowd onto trains and herd yourselves back into the super-expensive office blocks clustered in super-expensive cities. Property underwrites a huge portion of investments and pensions. If we suddenly discovered that 80% of us could work from home, anywhere on the planet, why would anyone pay £1.5m for a house that would cost £400k if it were just an hour away?
• thinkingemote 5y ago
  This sounds like a conspiracy theory. Have you been reading about this on Facebook? J/K but the well of truth has indeed been poisoned hasn't it?
• CryptoPunk 5y ago
  The reality is exactly the opposite. The media has so overblown the risk of COVID that 41% of Democrats now believe that you have a greater than 50% chance of being hospitalized if you contract it: https://twitter.com/PandaTribune/status/1440192783260655618?s=20 https://twitter.com/PandaTribune/status/1440192783260655618?... >>Great clip of Bill Maher citing a survey in which 41% of Democrats said that if you catch COVID, the chances of going to the hospital are >50%... (the correct answer is between 1% - 5%) Maher says the "liberal media needs to take responsibility for scaring the sh*t out of people" Why this matters is that an over-estimation of the risk for low-risk demographics has led to behavioral patterns that are net harmful. For example, the climate of fear around COVID has maybe reduced the very minute risk the virus poses to children (0.003% IFR, or about equivalent to the risk of dying if stung by a bee), at the cost of an unprecedented rise in childhood obesity: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037a3.htm?s_cid=mm7037a3_w https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037a3.htm?s_cid=mm... "Among a cohort of 432,302 persons aged 2–19, rate of body mass index increase approximately doubled during pandemic compared to prepandemic period. Persons w/ prepandemic overweight or obesity & younger school-aged children experienced largest increases." The response to COVID, with respect to children, is going to cause far more deaths in the long run than it mitigates.
  • jonahbenton 5y ago
    OMG stop. In that same survey 30% of non-Democrats agreed that chances of going to the hospital are > 50%. Maybe Fox News stop scaring the sh*t out of people re COVID too. Except obviously that is not what is going on.
    • CryptoPunk 5y ago
      Well, the Democrats are even more misinformed. But yes, the media in general is scaring the shit out of people. That Democrats are the worse afflicted is secondary to that point.
      • hactually 5y ago
        I don't know many democrats backing riots and snarfling horse paste so maybe just stop.
• heurisko 5y ago
  Coronavirus's risk to children is low. It's not true that there are no mitigations for Covid: children in the UK are being vaccinated against Covid, as often happens against winter flu. Measures to protect adults against coronavirus have not come for free for children. Mental health referrals amongst children have doubled since before the pandemic [1]. In more unintended consequences, smoking amongst young people has also surged [2]. Now that we have the vaccine in the UK, and most adults and the vulnerable are vaccinated, I'm against anything that further disrupts a normal childhood, as at this stage, measures would be causing more harm than good. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/23/childrens-nhs-mental-health-referrals-double-in-pandemic https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/23/childrens-nh... [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58317263 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58317263
  • q1w2 5y ago
    No masks in schools - no distancing. They are not even doing the basics.
    • heurisko 5y ago
      The basics are vaccinations. We have a vaccination now: this is the end game. There is nothing more we can do, unless we want to enforce children to wear masks and distance every winter flu season, which comes at a mental and developmental cost for children. Children should not have to wear masks for 6 hours a day, and should be allowed to interact with each other normally. Whilst being the group least at risk of coronavirus, the most has been asked from children and young people, and now is the time when we need to return to normal in society, accepting we balance freedom with risk, and that they will always accompany each other.
    • postingawayonhn 5y ago
      Do you really think it's possible to make kids socially distance? And surely the social effects of that will be much worse than any possible positive benefit for the children?
    • lamp987 5y ago
      Lmao have you ever been in a school? How would that even be geometrically possible?