A quarter of people in the UK believe Covid was or was probably a hoax (as well as believing other conspiracy theories)

[cakeorwine]

Quarter in UK believe Covid was a hoax, poll on conspiracy theories finds | Social trends | The Guardian

"The UK is home to millions more conspiracy theorists than most people realise, with almost a quarter of the population believing Covid-19 was probably or definitely a hoax, polling has revealed.
About a third of the population are convinced that the cost of living crisis is a government plot to control the public, and similar numbers think “15-minute cities” – an attempt to increase walking in neighbourhoods – are a government surveillance ruse, and that the “great replacement theory” – the idea that white people are being replaced by non-white immigrants – is happening."

I guess that there are people out there who believe in conspiracy theories - but I am very surprised by the numbers.

I wonder what the cross over is between theories - in other words, if you believe 1 conspiracy theory, you are more likely to believe another?

People with more independent thinking often like to research where nobody else does . They have an inquisitive mind so that normal.
why would anyone believe the government so blindly these days anyway .

But if you mention the vaccine side effects you are still an anti vaxxer who is selfish for not having it 🤷🏻‍♀️and probably called a conspiracy theorist.

Oh look Mr Chips is here! 😀

Doesn't sound like it was a suitable vocation for you, though, describing children as stupid, so you're better off out of it.

. Note: 2,274 UK adult respondents aged 18+ online between 28 and 30 April 2023. Data weighted to be representative of the UK by age, sex, region, and social grade.

😂

The policy Institute can sue wry as many people as they like, it’s the bogus claim of “a third of the population” I object to

Try most of the other newspapers behind their paywalls instead then or that bastion of the truth the daily mail

I think you may have a wobbly understanding of the term 'average'.

Well, I suppose it all depends on whether the average has been calculated using the mean, the mode or the median...

Whatever - there are a heck of a lot of people out there who are as thick as shit.

It’s so easy (& nasty) to label people as ‘thick’ and ‘stupid’ and to not look at WHY so many people are so mistrustful of governments and systems today

It’s also easy to label people as ‘conspiracy theorists’ when a lot of this is what a PP called ‘skeptism’. (Yes I’m aware full blown conspiracy theorists do exist but like all things it’s not black and white but a spectrum of grey).
When someone questions the lockdowns for example, or that we were lied to over Brexit or questions MSM and their reporting tactics, it doesn’t mean they are conspiracy theorists! Maybe they’re the critical thinkers 🤔
FWIW, I do believe covid is real but I also believe the government used their power to keep us in fear and in line and exaggerated the threat to most of us.

I think the question we should all be asking is why so many people are so skeptical these days without resorting to name-calling.

Ah see I was trying to see if it was voluntary or not I couldn’t find it but yes a certain type of person gravitates to ‘conporacy theory survey’

According to this survey, a half of Britons think aliens exist: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/06/25/half-britons-think-aliens-exist-and-7-claim-have-s

Groan. My BIL is currently spamming up my inbox with dozens of videos about the WEF , chemtrails , vaccines and the dangers of vegetables ( I can't remember why but apparently we should eat meat exclusively then there will be no cancer or heart disease) .

The worst thing is the fear imo. He's a nice guy and is genuinely scared for his friends and family. But there's an awful lot of money in fear mongering - if you can get 2 million + YouTube subscribers. That's not going to happen if you say : -
On the balance of probability the vaccine will protect most people from serious illness or death. You need something more exciting.

And you need to ramp it up every week.

Of course - just make sure you use a range of sources from the spectrum so you're not reading within an echo chamber. (For example, not all right-wing twitter - add some centrist and left voices, or the reverse.) You may not agree with what you read, but if your mind is inquisitive like you say you'll be able to take the information on board critically.

The truth is in the middle somewhere.

The threat of covid was intentionally exaggerated to ensure compliance with rules. Some of those rules were a bit mad and contradictory.
What was reported didn't match peoples realities (unless you were working in hospitals) People were trying to make sense of it.

Neuralink is a chip implanted in the brain and is undergoing human trials. Currently, the hope is to treat disabilities but there's both positive and negative potential.

15 min cities great idea but again, the monitoring required makes people feel uneasy and controlled. We've heard how China uses facial recognition to control behaviour. Again it's the perceived potential.

It would be silly to dismiss WEF. Many countries and corporations attend Davos meetings. Having corporations involved in global governance is something to keep an eye on.

Also read up the peer reviewed sources. Academic discourse is robust because they are constantly testing out hypotheses. It is more comfortable to think there are people out there who know the truth and are in control whereas reality is working with the best hypothesis for now which may well be wrong in the face of new information. I was on standby to work up at the crematorium because the death toll was based on projections from the flu models. It turned out that the flu model was wrong which was a huge relief but I was still doing the funerals of the elderly who had had covid and then died months later because it had knocked the stuffing out of them.

I can’t see how it would be compulsory, unlike the census, for instance. (I think?)

So, self selecting for people who are already interested in the questions but also for people who are bored or procrastinating, who might be passively open to counter-narrative or indeed might just be trolling or indeed, in this day and age, bots? Trolling bots. Who would ever have imagined all this white twenty years ago.

😅. This only shows that half of britains will answer YES when asked a silly question. It says more about the British sense of humour than anything else

33% is generally considered to be quite close to a third

My BF works in the NHS on the front line. She believes it is all a hoax! And she was treating ppl at the time! Why? God knows!
She firmly believes the whole thing was "cooked up" and that the ppl who died had underlying issues anyway and covid was just pneumonia.
It nearly broke our friendship.

😂Yup

I dunno. I love a life where people did get sick from COVID, and the elderly woman who didn't trust the vaccine died of it, so I don't dispute how serious it was.

I think my main issue with people who go down the conspiracy route is, the ones who shout the loudest usually agree on the same conspiracies. Unless it's all one big interlinked conspiracy? The ones I my life believe the most stupid 'facts' from anyone dressed up like a doctor, so they've lost credibility. It's not impossible to think some lies were pedalled, but people I know were affected by COVID (not me, I had it and my hayfever is 100x worse) so it wasn't a hoax and no one can convince me otherwise.

And my issue with the angst against the lockdowns... If those in charge took a more relaxed approach and more deaths did occur, another mainstream conspiracy would be borne anyway, so I can't even get too invested anymore.

Live a life*

The people who believe in these ‘conspiracies’ clearly have a lot more faith in this government to be able to actually coordinate this ‘conspiracy’ than I do! The government couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery, could they really orchestrate this level of conspiracy over the public? I don’t think so!

I was describing their parents as stupid, dear. There was still hope for the children.

So why did she think of it was just pneumonia people were becoming ill.and dying in such unprecedented numbers ?
My oldest son spent three weeks in critical care in February( not covid) whilst there i spoke to some staff about what it was like during the peaks ,and they all.said they had never seen anything like it and people were getting sicker and sicker,the youngest person to die with it was only in his 30,s ,apparently there were still some staff members.who caught covid,at the peak who have never been well enough to

return to.work
I see know reason why they would lie to me