Anyone else with family like this?

[PumpkinP]

My sister doesn’t believe corona virus is a real thing and is even off to meet up with friends today (one who has travelled down from Manchester) any time I mention it she tells me to “do my research” and that it’s not real. Does anyone else have family members or friends that don’t believe it’s real?

I don’t think she’s saying it to the students tbh, I’m sure she would remain professional. Although she told my children it wasn’t real at one point

I have a family member like this. Calls it a plandemic- thinks it's a man made virus, believes 5g is killing people, is against vaccinations, loves trump now. They comment on Facebook and follow lots of people with very strong opinions. I've had to unfollow then as I find it irritating. They tell me to educate myself. I am educated ffs. I do read research- proper evidence based research, I don't go off one single persons opinion with an ulterior motive. This person does not work and has too much time on their hands imo.

She also loves trump now, she thinks he is great, he knows the truth apparently. Seriously glad it’s not just me dealing with this.

I think there’s probably a couple of things here-

There are definitely things going on in govt around the covid response that are dodgy and most people can sense this (privatisation, “dead cat” news to deflect from real stories... the Cummings debacle... the almost unbelievable mismanagement of PPE supply chains) - I’m not saying covid isn’t real by any stretch- it is, I’ve had it- but there is also another agenda unfolding alongside/ under the guise of covid that to me just looks like opportunism as they move to privatise and reform swathes of the public sector without scrutiny.

Some people can’t cope with an existential threat on this scale and are unwilling to accept reality.

If you’re perhaps not terribly political literate, or engaged with politics, I can see how rather than say “something isn’t right- what’s the underlying political agenda here” you’d be tempted to go to mad conspiracy theories that have a narrative you can make sense of without needing to suddenly gen up on how an entire capitalist political system is structured and works in reality.

lizard kings, dodgy vaccines and NWOs are sadly easier narratives to get to grips with than the dishonesty of British politics.

Agreeing with @SimonJT
Her school needs to know.

Op, it's not just her telling her students a load of dangerous rubbish.
She also poses a physical threat to her students, colleagues and the wider public.

Yes, my SIL.

She’s been seeing friends throughout, having parties at her house every weekend.

She’s a teacher still working two days a week in the school and posts all over Facebook about how they shouldn’t be going back as it’s not safe for children She’s baffled as to why loads of people have unfriended her, she can’t see the irony of posting one min about how everything is over blown with photos of friends at her house and the next how she shouldn’t be expected to be teaching 5 days a week.

Well I’m not going to report her as she wouldn’t speak to me again. If the school have concerns they will act on it but apparently loads of them agree with her. I don’t even know the name of the place she works or any of the details as it’s not something I have ever asked.
How does she pose a physical threat?

So it seems it’s not just my sister then OhArsebags whose a teacher.

People can have personal opinions it doesn’t mean they share them at work.

I don't know anyone who believes this.

To be fair, though, social media outlets censoring any kind of lockdown scepticism is a gift to conspiracy theorists. Congratulations YouTube.

Because the world's governments would destroy the global economy just so they can check on Aunty Mabel's whereabouts...

Tell her to have a chat with my friend whose father died of it this week.

FFS.

Yes I also know people who think it's linked to 5G and that the virus was purposefully released by the Chinese so that they can dominate the world..also that the vaccine will secretly contain contraceptives in order to limit the population and that Bill Gates is funding it because he believes in depopulation...

She poses a physical threat because she is not following guidelines, because she doesn't believe the virus exists.
Therefore there is a very good chance of catching and spreading the virus. In a school. Full of hundreds of people.
Is this not obvious op?

I don’t know a single person following the guidelines irl, if she goes to school and mixes with hundreds of people then she doesn’t see the difference in mixing with other people outside of school and I actually agree with that tbh.

Bloody hell. If this is the case, schools really should not reopen.

This Bill Gates conspiracy theory has really taken hold, we've got a family member also going down that route, and I've got a friend who's also being told to 'do your research' - and she's one of the most well-informed people I know so it's rather comical!
But the whole Bill Gates/5g/plandemic/vaccines in order to take over the world thing, oh dear, I wish I could think how to easily refute it all but once it's got hold of someone they have so much 'evidence' at their fingertips it's frightening. And we are all 'sheeples' of course.

Well when our own government won’t stick to the rules it’s not hard to see why others won’t take it seriously. My neighbours have never stuck to the rules and have always had family over but the opinions here seem to be keep your nose out!

I don’t know anyone in real life who has broken the rules. A neighbour returned from New York at the start of lockdown and he isolated completely for 14 days.

@PumpkinP are you sure that you don’t agree with your sister just a little bit? Because you are doing a fine job here now of justifying her outrageous behaviour!! And to state quite clearly that you don’t know ‘anybody’ in real life following the guidelines? Really? Not a single person?? So every single person that you know (and let’s be honest here...we all know hundreds of people!!) you can say for sure are definitely not following the guidelines? Because I don’t know anyone who would ‘openly’ admit to NOT following them 🤷‍♀️ Of course this does not mean that they are following them to the letter...I’m sure some might have had the odd blip! But nobody is admitting it because at heart, most people are trying to do the right thing!

I simply can’t believe that every single person you know is openly flouting the dukes OP...and you are way to quick to defend your sisters strange, and frankly unsafe, behaviour!

This government can't hide one man driving to his parent's house. Pretty much every world government has its people criticising its response in one way or another. Many of us know real doctors and nurses, or at least everyone knows someone who does. So how the fuck anybody thinks a global conspiracy would hold together is the biggest mystery of all.

Dramatic world events nearly always seem to tip over into conspiracy theories. Believing in them may be a way in which some people process shocks; perhaps something in their nature where they can't handle the uncertainty so it's easier to believe in a conspiracy. I know one person who's followed many conspiracy theories in recent years, sometimes I hide him on Facebookc when he's too annoying. DH knows one who recently has been following David Icke of all people. He went a bit quiet when DH looked up and recited back previous mental Icke ideas, but then started up again a few days later.

Well she’s my sister so of course I’m going to defend some things, I believe 100% there is a virus, I’m not sure I believe everything we are being told though as some things don’t add up but I certainly believe there is a virus.

Also of the people I know none of them are sticking to it, that’s neighbours, friends and family. Where I am I’m actually shocked at how openly people are ignoring the rules, my neighbours were on the bench yesterday opposite my house with loads of family members who they don’t live with, there was at least 10 people out there. I spoke to my ex recently who still meets up with friends and family.

When I say I don’t believe everything we are being told I mean in the sense that I don’t think the virus is as deadly as it’s been made out to be. Looking at the stats of those under 45 with no health problems.

It’s bizarre really. I follow some conspiracy forums, mostly for entertainment purposes I should say, and the popular conspiracies earlier in the year were all focused on governments (and the NWO ) covering up the existence of the virus at all....

People just like to think they’re cleverer than everyone else, often without anything to back that up. They seem happy to overlook their lack of qualification or the fact they have the luxury of hindsight where our governing bodies didn’t, or the fact their opinion has no consequences.

We really need to teach critical thinking skills and cultivate a culture of recognising your own limitations. I can have all the opinions I want but you wouldn’t want me in charge because I don’t know shit!

OP I have a friend who had occasionally suffered from depression but nothing more serious than that. About 7 years ago she very suddenly began to suffer from paranoid delusions. It took me weeks to realise what was going on (she is a very clever woman who is one of my best friends). She believed that there was a drug dealing ring infiltrating the internet service providers of our village. For many weeks I talked to her about all sorts of other things and just changed the subject when she started talking about drug dealing I would have sworn blind she was just being a bit daft. Then one day she came to my house and started drawing huge Venn diagrams on large bits of paper on my kitchen table. I had a lightbulb moment and realised that she was in the middle of a full blown psychotic episode (have you ever seen A Beautiful Mind?). She was subsequently sectioned and was very very unwell and yet all the time she seemed, well, just a bit overwrought. I think that it is inconceivable that this level of delusion from your sister is not very worrying. It is entirely possible to have widely varying views about the extent to which the government response is right or wrong, to argue about the seriousness/fatality rate etc. But to believe that it is not real is in no way shape or form healthy or rational behaviour.

My Sil is a community councillor and she was rung up this week by a worried person in her village who wanted to report to her that the virus isn’t real and that people in her village were dying because of led street lights and 5g (rural Wales, they have neither) all orchestrated of course by our lizard overlord Bill Gates. My poor Sil is so lovely and she didn’t know what to say so she just said thank you very much for telling her and she would pass the message on 😆