[ad_1]
Along the houses of Portobello Street in London, a new message was sprayed on an old drawing with the words: “Take off your mask.”
The message went viral when thousands of unmasked protesters gathered in Trafalgar Square in the heart of the capital. London England, September 26. At least four policemen were injured in clashes with mobs protesting this Covid-19 deterrent.
A week earlier, the campaign against the Covid-19 restrictions imposed by the British government also took place. Many call the pandemic a hoax, even as the global death toll from nCoV has exceeded one million. “No more lies, no masks, no more blockades,” wrote a slogan brought up by the protesters.
Protesters against Covid-19 preventive measures in London, UK, on September 19. Image: Reuters.
According to Daniel Jolley, Senior Professor of Psychology at the University of Northumbria, UK, the fact that more and more people think their government is being dishonest about Covid-19 is not surprising.
“People are often drawn to conspiracy theories in times of crisis. When something happens, like a virus outbreak, political situations change rapidly, celebrity deaths or attacks. With terrorism, theories the conspiracy have resurfaced, “explains Jolley.
The protracted nature of the pandemic and the government’s ability to continue to impose restrictions have deepened suspicions and could ignite the ire of protesters, he said.
Over the summer, a nurse named Kate Shemirani was suspended from work by the British Council of Nursing after she declared nCoV to be false or connected to a 5G mobile network and strongly opposed vaccination. . “They want everyone to wear masks, but there is no scientific proof. They will make them sick,” Shemirani told the crowd of protesters in Trafalgar Square two weeks ago.
Science has long shown that wearing a mask can help prevent people from spreading airborne diseases. The new studies also show that the mask protects its wearer. However, Shemirani and many others decided not to change their minds.
The movement against Covid-19 preventative measures in the UK attracted several influential supporters. This month, famous singer Van Morrison released three new songs to protest the blockade, to criticize the government’s efforts to prevent epidemics, while saying that scientists “are making up lies.” about nCoV.
In a recent interview, Northern Ireland health official Robin Swann called the songs “dangerous.” “I don’t know where he got the information from. I understand the source of this emotion, but I have to say that the message is dangerous,” Swann says.
Not just in the UK, the movement to remove anti-Covid-19 measures appeared in cities across Europe, against the backdrop of a spike in the number of nCoV infections in most of this region. In FranceWhere an average of 12,000 new infections were recorded each day in the past week, many question the effectiveness of face masks and new disease control measures. One department even urged the community to ignore the government’s instructions.
According to research published earlier this month by the Institut Fondation Jean Jaures in Paris, many protesters wearing masks called the item useless, threatened their health or was a tool of government repression. 90% of anti-mask people, equivalent to 43% of French respondents, said that the French Ministry of Health is in collusion with pharmaceutical companies to hide the harmful effects of vaccines.
Antoine Bristielle, the sociologist who conducted the study, said the pandemic created “extremely fertile ground” for conspiracy theories because much of it is uncertain.
In the Belgian capital Brussels Earlier this month, some 200 people also protested against measures to prevent nCoV, especially the request for masks. This was the second demonstration in Brussels organized by an extremist group called Viruswaanzin, but it was quickly broken up by the police.
The group has also started similar demonstrations in the Netherlands. They do not deny the existence of Covid-19, but believe that the measures taken by the government are excessive given the scale and threat of the pandemic, according to lawyer Michael Verstraeten, one of the organizers of the event. love.
Verstraeten represented a group of Belgian citizens who sued the government for violating their freedom to impose Covid-19 preventive measures. The presiding judge dismissed the July lawsuit, saying “the lack of understanding in his complaint is hard to imagine.”
The protest movement against the anti-Covid-19 measure also spread Sedan, with a protest of some 50,000 people last month, including the far right. However, Querdenken-711, the group that organizes this event, has a more moderate trend. Most protesters believe that the severity of Covid-19 is being exaggerated or that the pandemic is a “hoax.”
Protesters gathered in Berlin, Germany, on August 29 to protest against the government’s measures against Covid-19. Image: Reuters.
Slovakia, which recorded a daily record number of nCoV infections on June 25, also struggled to cope with conspiracy theories. The Ministry of Health of this country in the summer must appoint an expert to combat false information about the pandemic. Vladimir Snidl, a fake news columnist at the Dennik N newspaper in Slovakia, said that those who do not believe in nCoV find sympathetic voices in groups that are popular on Facebook.
“Among anti-vaccine, anti-government and self-proclaimed ‘patriotic’ groups, the suspicion of Covid-19 is becoming a new trend,” Snidl said. This appears to result in only 62.5% of Slovaks supporting the recommendation to wear a mask in public, compared with 94% in March, according to the survey by the Markiza TV channel.
Growing support for these hypotheses, once marginalized, suggests that the threat is growing, experts warn. According to Jolley, although hypotheses are easily disproved, those who believe them run the risk of having a real impact on public health.
“The fact that they don’t have vaccines or don’t wear masks affects all of us, not just a few people,” Jolley says.
Gloss (Follow The Times of New York City)
