THE BIGFOOT COVID CONSPIRACY by C. Phillip Lock

At the other were Covid sceptics or anti-lockdowners, those who thought that the numbers were exaggerated or that the government had an ulterior motive for restricting freedoms. At the most extreme end were outright Covid deniers, those who believed that the virus didn’t exist and the pandemic had been fabricated. During the first few months of the pandemic, a broad movement coalesced online.

“It was to make me feel better, so I wouldn’t be as scared.”Īnna was not the only one to respond this way.

I was looking into that, and how many people who died had pre-existing health conditions,” she said. “Loads of people were saying ‘even if you die from a heart attack, they’ll put it down as a Covid death’. Some of it seemed implausible to Anna, but it was enough to convince her that the media wasn’t telling the full story. On Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, they came across theories about the origins of coronavirus that the mainstream media weren’t talking about – that it was engineered in a lab in China, say, or that it had been artificially spliced with HIV. She considered suicide.įeeling abandoned by the government and frustrated by the daily press briefings, Anna and her partner researched the virus online. Other business expenses – insurance, bills – went on her credit card. The cash grant, when it finally came, fell far short. For weeks, she waited anxiously for news about support for shuttered businesses. “I was in a terrified bubble, having the news on constantly, crying, worrying, panicking,” she told me. Anna was convinced that if she caught Covid, she would die. She could no longer pay for the weekly counselling that had been helping her deal with her troubled childhood. She was forced to close her business, a small tattoo studio that she had opened two years earlier, at the age of 24.

The surgery was cancelled, leaving her in excruciating pain. W hen the pandemic hit in March 2020, Anna, a young woman from Bradford, was waiting for surgery for endometriosis.

THE BIGFOOT COVID CONSPIRACY by C. Phillip Lock