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| “ | COVID is just cold! | „ |
| ~ Masayuki Hiratsuka's election poster |
COVID denialism is an ideology generated by anti-vaxxers or by people who believe that COVID-19 either does not exist or is not as dangerous as experts say it is.
Most believers are victims of the recession caused by COVID-19 or paranoid people who over-believe rumors.
They believe that COVID-19 is a conspiracy theories (for example, "COVID is just cold", "COVID does not exist" and "COVID is a farce by government"), and are hated by various political groups and the majority of people. Also some people, like Unplug, are hostile to health care workers, and they sabotage health care works.
Although COVID denialism has no ideological boundaries, it most frequently crops up on the far-right, who also often utilize anti-Chinese racism as a part of COVID denialism, such as referring to COVID-19 as the "Chinese virus" or the "kung-flu".
Type of COVID denialism
Inflated death count theory
One of the most common forms of COVID denialism is the false claim that COVID-19 is the same as influenza or the common cold, and that the number of deaths resulting from the pandemic is being inflated by the left in order to push a narrative. This claim often takes the form of this basic premise: somebody goes to the hospital with COVID, then dies of unrelated causes and has their death attributed to COVID. Another variant of this claim is that the media deliberately lied about the number of COVID deaths for sensationalism during the first lockdown.
Cyber-COVID denialism
Cyber-COVID denialism is COVID denialism in the Internet. Cyber-COVID denialism adopt trolling and Internet propaganda/publicity.
#Let's unplug
#let's unplug, abbreviated as Unplug is movement by anti-vaxxers derived from cyber-COVID denialism in Japan. The name comes from unplugging the fridge that stores the vaccine, and the outbreak of this movement has led to cases in various hospitals where the fridge that stores the vaccine is unplugged. These cases were terrorism incidents that resulted in the disposal of more than 100 vaccines. The offender has not yet been arrested.
People
- Donald Trump (for a while)
- Hotoka Sugita
- John Magufuli
- Masayuki Hiratsuka
- Reppu1019
- satton(suzuki)
- Simone Gold
- Teruna Saegusa
- THE dondengaeshi
- Yosuke Tsukaguchi
- Vernon Coleman