To think that Mumsnet should clamp down on the scaremongering threads?

[callmeadoctor]

Thats it really, you come on Mumsnet and anxiety levels are ramped up. Surely thats not safe?

People have been saying ridiculous things though. So far I’ve seen:

“I’ve got a really bad feeling about this”
“This WILL start a war”
“Life is never going back to normal ever again”

Sorry but none of those statements are based in scientific fact and they aren’t just people “being realistic”.
They are emotional and catastrophising statements and people need to bloody cut it out. It’s clear they have their own psychological motivations for being like this but that doesn’t mean the rest of us need to hear it.

YANBU

If people want to post scaremongering crap, they could at least have decency to restrict it to the Coronavirus board.

aupresdemonarbre - totally agree with your post. I think many people are understandably frightened, and we are experiencing something that none of us have ever seen before. Most people are just doing their best - but have slightly different ideas about what that looks like. I am also fed up of the very angry fuck off type threads and comments. It really doesn't help as far as I can see. Understand the need to rant maybe, but it just isn't useful. Part of the problem is the uncertainty as well as the fright

Apart from the scaremongering, the aggression towards posters is appalling- that should be stamped on too

I’m trying hard to find threads that don’t ramp up my anxiety.

Even hiding the CV thread hasn’t worked, they’re everywhere.

I am looking at Mumsnet less and less, which is a pity.

We need happy threads, come on everybody Lets see if we can change things x

I've hidden the board - I'm not even a particularly anxious person, but it was just too much. Some of the stuff on there!

YABU. People aren't taking this seriously enough. Spreading non evidence based opinion is just stupid though. I spoke to a nurse from our only local hospital and the number of patients they already have is frightening.

So yes, this is scary. So stay home, stay safe, protect the NHS.

I’m finding them interesting to read, but I am finding I’m reacting. Yesterday I actually thought I had to stop using mumsent as the hysteria and scare mongering is appalling and so unhealthy.

Today I’ve been trying to put reasonable responses, but it makes no difference, they just keep on, scare mongering, justifying it and posting absolute and utter shit. I find it frustrating and annoying,

It is like the brexit threads on steroids. I’ve never seen anything like it.

People posting it will last years, life will never be the same, their children will be socially stunted, they sit at home and cry, how they will die, relatives will die, how they can’t find a vaccine, how they won’t be able to treat it, how people will be left to die, how clinicians will need to pick and choose, how we will be worse than Italy and to watch videos about it and be very scared, one even posted it would result in world war.

And when you respond and say that’s way further rhan any worst case that any expert is predicting they say well it’s my opinion, or I’m being prudent, or some such shit to justify why they have went so far over the top.

They just egg each other on and then try to shout and abuse you if you say it’s not right. I honestly don’t know how these folks are getting through the day if they really think these things. But I suspect some of them just love the drama of it. Like the potential for no deal brexit, they were the same then, panic buying and egging each other on.

It’s really quite unbearable. Self appointed experts deliberately scaring people.

This is shameful.

I think when ‘this’ is all over there will be a clear correlation between the rates of infection in countries where people panic bought and feared lockdown. London is crammed with people buying supplies. The rest have decamped to out of town, spreading the virus.

I ageee. There is a thread on the virus board at the moment where the relatively young OP is scared her borderline BMI will be an issue for hospital treatment. The likelihood of the perfect storm of catching the virus, and being so ill that she needs ventilation, at a time when there’s 1 ventilator to every 10 million people, is overall pretty damn low. But reading that thread, well half the posters are somehow giving off the impression that she may as well start googling the numbers of local funeral directors. The misinformation and hysteria is not helpful to anyone in the slightest.

A big fat NO, until everyone realises what a threat this is we are all in danger. Please concentrate your efforts on enforcing social isolation. I'm not into scare mongering, protect the NHS workers they may just save your life....

If you aren’t “into scaremongering” then you shouldn’t mind the unfactual scaremongering threads to be removed should you?!
Scaremongering threads actually don’t do anything except reinforce panic and people don’t act sensibly when they panic- just look at supermarket shelves if you need proof of that fgs.

I’m a hair’s breadth away from abandoning MN right now. Some posters have made it become worse than the Daily Mail for scaremongering. Also I’m fed up with the phrase “some people are selfish arseholes” preached by the holier than thou.

Indeed, can we have a suspension of the “trending now” box? It’s CV this, CV that.

I'd appreciate more vigorous relocating of threads about covid to that board. What's the bloody point of a separate board when the threads (including this one!) are being allowed to crowd out everything else everywhere.

I've pretty much stopped using Mumsnet for this reason. I just don't want to read about it, thanks very much. It's like brexit x1,000.

A big fat NO, until everyone realises what a threat this is we are all in danger. Please concentrate your efforts on enforcing social isolation.

Everyone knows what a threat this is. There will be huge numbers of deaths. Many of us believe that unfortunately social isolation will not alter that, and simply creates many separate problems of its own.

I'm going to delete the app now as I'm finding it is making me anxious and is unhelpful.

So Goaty...why don't you feel that social isolation works? Do you understand the mechanisms by which disease spreads..eg...through social contact?

Personally I think aibu should be suspended because that is where unsuspecting people find threads dealing with the virus.

It’s a bloody nightmare.

Thread after thread of be afraid, be very afraid, one doctor said this and another that.

The “there will be riots” and “I predict civil unrest’ posters.

The ones who claim all hospitals are full of young people with no underlying conditions with not the slightest of evidence to back this up.

I’m tired of trying to be reasonable when it’s all a sea of scaremongering.

'The threads/comments I find most chilling are those dividing the nation into us and them - us being virtuous public health guidance following angels who are staying home with our kids and paying our cleaners for not cleaning, them being evil, panic buying scum gleefully ignoring health advice while grabbing benefits to which they’re not entitled. I find this attitude toxic and genuinely frightening. Are so many people really unable to see that most people are neither wholly virtuous nor evil, and that demonising others had historically been as harmful as any disease? I can genuinely see how witch hunts/lynch mobs happen reading some posts on here.'

This.

The successions of people jumping on posters for posting their small sadnesses and worries, too. How is that sort of nastiness helping in the collective effort to get through this period?

I do agree with Bluntness that some are revelling in the drama.

Everyone knows what a threat this is

No they don't otherwise there wouldnt be so many stupid selfish people out socialising last night and today, including all the idiots flocking to sea side resorts.

I haven't seen any scaremongering.

I have seen fear and panic which could frighten others but doesn't seem to have been designed to do so.

I have seen people reporting things that are very scary but are facts we need to contend with. Especially when trying to grapple with ostriches and deniers.

I have seen people discussing probabilities and possibilities that are scary that might not happen, but very well might, and just occasionally I have seen them presented in thread titles as facts which MNHQ has edited.

I have also seen some mistakes posted too, I may even have posted some myself without realising because this is a learning curve. No one should take what they read on here as medical fact without checking the sources anyway. Now more than ever we all have a responsibility to consult good scientific authorities as sources on what should inform our behaviour.

I think maybe the coronavirus board needs its own subsections or will do soon, because it is so fast moving and a bit unwieldy, and it is going to affect every area of life.