Apparently the intended purpose of these auctions is to keep energy prices high, which is just completely disgusting to me. Capitalism is holding back so much progress.

I’m not saying that there isn’t an increase in cases of COVID, I’m sure there are - it’s just that it is still such a small number of cases that it doesn’t matter. The big spikes we had originally in 2020 and 2021 will not reoccur. There are little bumps here and there but nothing significant.

You mean to tell me that we’re looking at this chart:

and we’re meant to be concerned about the growth of COVID? We need to chill out, seriously.

I’d be very happy to address your concerns, if you can point out my errors then I’d gladly address them. Personally, I don’t think “idiots like [me]” are in any way responsible for the damage of COVID - it was entirely the failure of the state to properly address the pandemic. Personally, I have received four doses of the vaccine, always wore a mask in public and encouraged other people to do so. But I am scientifically literate and media aware and I know scare journalism when I see it. I didn’t intend for my comment to upset anyone, but you really must open your eyes to the reality - journalists are sucking desperately at the teat of getting clicks, and COVID was a huge story that has dried up, so they’ll bite literally anything to bring that back into the press.

I don’t have a problem with wearing a mask, honestly I’d like to see it become more commonplace in flu season. But I do have a problem with the article being total bullshit. The source is complete bunk, there’s nothing special about the data trend that I can see, there’s no official guidance from SAGE or anyone notable that we should be wearing masks, just some random Twitter user. So why make that headline? For clicks, clearly, right?

This is really harmful stuff because it means if there genuinely IS a reason to wear masks again then it’s harder to get that message out because of all the noise - I’m reminded of the boy who cried wolf story. It’s also anxiety-inducing and just harmful for people’s mental health.

I’m interested for your source about the boosters/vaccines thing - I have taken every vaccine/booster I’ve been offered but the last one was a year ago I think and I haven’t been offered one since, and it seems like the bumps occur every three months, which seems far too frequently to coincide with booster rollouts - my guess was that the virus was seasonal like the flu, but if you have a source for that I’d love to be proven wrong because it sounds very interesting.

BTW, I didn’t mean to imply that you, personally, weren’t chill - it was more of a general statement aimed towards everyone in the comments, but I wrote it poorly, so apologies for that, you’ve been completely level-headed.

I think the NHS could save a lot more lives if they got funded properly. The government has been working to dismantle the NHS for years so it can be privatised. We need to be angry with the state and capitalism, not with our fellow working class people who are struggling to make ends meet.

Genuinely, I think it’s probably because they feel a little guilty when they see you wearing one, and that’s uncomfortable for people, so they respond by taking it out on you.

Nothing I’ve seen from Labour has inspired confidence that they would fund the NHS properly either. Keir made some vague statement about putting in more money, but also “reforming” and “modernising” the NHS… no, Keir, it just needs to be funded properly. It needs hugely more money, not a pittance thrown at it before leaving it to languish.

Funding for public health is very easy to justify for a state, even under capitalism - improvements in public health means that people are more productive, leading to greater incomes, which result in higher taxes without raising the rate of taxation. Many studies have been conducted into this which show that health and education spending literally pays for itself, and is even a net-positive. That’s just economically, not to mention all of the extra benefits in happiness, health, security, etc. from a good public health infrastructure.

With all of that in mind, I leave as a question for the reader: why would the government effectively leave that free tax income money on the table? Assuming that they are competent and educated (which I do not doubt) and that they are aware of this (as I am sure they are, because this policy is advocated even by Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes), why wouldn’t they take that win?

Because it generates clicks (and thus revenue) for media conglomerates. Capitalism baby, let’s take all that anxiety and depression and turn it into some instant cash!

Old media is already dead. This is new media - clickbait, virally sharable on social media, completely baseless, head-empty journalism. It’s very successful, sadly. Get an ad-blocker, start ignoring these websites as much as you can, use archive.is instead of directly linking to their websites, don’t share articles, take everything written on them with a huge mound of salt. Do everything you can to stop their spread, and do everything you can to support real journalism.