Many leaders and influencers of protests against COVID-19 public health restrictions are reporting feeling under the weather, sharing stories of symptoms that are consistent with a COVID infection. And in one case sharing what appears to be a positive test.
On Monday, 19 people who had attended Melbourne protests had tested positive, according to the Nine papers. Of those, one unvaccinated person was admitted to hospital.
Although previous protests such as the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 and other anti-lockdown demonstrations haven’t had any known transmission, the emergence of the Omicron variant, the lack of safety protocols at the “freedom rallies” and sheer bad luck means transmission is possible.
Assuming that attendees distrust the health system and are sceptical about the existence or severity of COVID, those numbers are likely to be less than the true number of those who may have caught the virus.
But whether they’ve contracted COVID, the common flu, or are just exhausted from weeks of non-stop protesting over a grab bag of misguided grievances, many of the top figures in the protest movements say they’re not feeling too good. In a picture posted to her nearly 12,000 followers on Instagram, conspiracy talk show host Leila Melki shared an at home COVID test result with the caption: “For everyone’s peace of mind, I don’t have covid.”
But as anti-fascist researcher and YouTube creator Tom Tanuki spotted, the test appeared to show a weak positive response.
Another prominent member of anti-vaccine and conspiracy circles, Matt Lawson, also complained on a livestream of feeling sick after attending the rallies. But it’s not COVID, he claims, but instead “the stuff they are spraying in the sky above Parliament”.
Harrison McLean, an organiser of the Melbourne rallies and someone who reportedly claimed he wanted to use the protests to introduce people to more extreme ideologies, was observed repeatedly coughing and sounding unwell during a stream last week.
And a couple of days after the weekend protests, anti-vaccine activist, prospective United Australia Party candidate and fiancé to the head of Australia’s most active anti-vaxxer group, Morgan C Jonas, also cancelled his online media appearances because “burning the candle at both ends has caught up with me”.
Sounds like this exhaustion — or whatever it is — is contagious.
I’d never been to Melki Twitter page before, but interestingly the tweet about the test seems to have disappeared. Can’t let a little thing like COVID get in the way of the conspiracy narrative.
There have always been people addicted to conspiracies. The worse the plague the more disordered the thinking. This is part of the human condition, what can one expect. If you ask me, the entire concept of the Christian god is just a massive conspiracy. Think about it, a mysterious being that created the universe for its believers. The believers are privy to special messages that only they can understand and this justifies them looking down on the unbelievers who are obviously lesser creatures. They have a special book that was written by this mysterious creature, but you can never see him. Bizarre that any sane person can believe this nonsense.
If you ask a chimp for it’s banana with the promise of unlimited bananas when it was dead, your chances of getting the banana would be nil. This explains most religions and the people who promote them.
Clearly it is not only the mutations that we see occurring in the genome of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that we have to worry about. Mutations that have taken place in the genome of some individuals in the Homo sapiens species are also a worry. Mutations in the latter-mentioned species seemed to have caused the evolution of some kind of bizarre sub-species which is a hideous and grotesque caricature of what preceded it, or, more to the point, what might be considered as ‘normal’ This report supports the view that this new strain of Homo sapiens is not only a threat to us all but a threat to itself as well.
Hopefully the hybrid will be a mule, infertile and unable to further spread.
I assume you refer to Homo moronis?
It would be such a relief, if we could count on this strain of Homo sapiens being a temporary genetic mutation that would eliminate itself due to its obvious lack of fitness, preoccupied as it is with destructive conflicts and deluded self harm. Unhappily, Homo sapiens stands apart from other species in its consummate ability to pursue imaginary ends with great cruelty. The COVID conspiracy is not the first, nor are its “promoters” the first to be vilified as “Dictator Dan” or “Dr Mengele”, as Fauci found this week. Traditional healers have been burnt alive or drowned, following accusations that they were causing all the ill fortune around them and that they were possessed by the devil. Jews have been accused of eating Christian children and all sorts of other crimes, bleeding decent Christian folk of land and money. Captives in predatory wars have been sacrificed with great cruelty to the Gods. These monsters have been with us since time-immemorial. So, I am less hopeful that natural selection will rid us of these dangerous anti-vaccers. I once thought that the development of science and reliance on objective evidence might do the job but have been stunned with how wrong John Stuart Mill was when he thought freedom of speech would rid us of error, with the wide acceptance of science and objective evidence. It has been depressing.
Would that be Homo sapiens ssp narcissus you are referring to?
More like Homo sapiens ssp Whackjobus
A clinical test for this mutation would be very helpful. A least to the rest of us.
Imagine how many other people they are infecting by refusing to get tested. Absolutely disgusting.
In other news, Roy Morgan released data they obtained from a ‘heat map’ of information from the mobile phones of the rally attendees which showed where they are from. I can only imagine this is going to result in mass wearing of aluminium foil at the next rally. I almost feel like Roy Morgan is trolling them. What else could it be when you prove to a whole lot of conspiracy theorists that they are being surveilled. I bet Telegram is running hot tonight.
The Facebook Medical Journal has a lot to answer for.
Hey, at least it is peer reviewed.
Their peers being the problem – aka lowest common denominator.