The Daily Mail just reached an unbelievably dangerous new low

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On 21 March, the Daily Mail reached an unbelievably dangerous new low in its coverage on the coronavirus (Covid-19). As people across the country were urged to stay at home to limit the spread of the virus, and people in rural areas begged tourists to stay away, the Mail published the following article:

Irresponsible and dangerous

Many people on Twitter couldn’t believe the Mail thought it was a good idea to publish the piece:

 

 

And this “rant” summed up how a lot of people felt:

Stay at home

As The Canary reported on 21 March, tourists are being asked to stay away from Cornwall and other areas to avoid spreading the virus and putting struggling services under even more pressure.

Cornwall, for example, only has one major hospital that was at breaking point before the pandemic. On 3 January, the BBC stated that Royal Cornwall Hospital was taking the “unprecedented” move of turning away people with minor injuries and the hospital stated that:

We have had patients waiting in the emergency department for beds for up to 12 hours and queues in the corridors

This is the only critical care unit in the region, and that unit only has 15 beds.

Meanwhile, in Wales, people started taking direct action to stop the influx of tourists:

Across the UK, people flocked to beaches. In Lincolnshire, police and crime commissioner Mark Jones claimed there were “hundreds of thousands of visitors”. And dentist in Skegness posted on Facebook that:

I was appalled to see as I drove home Skegness looking like it does on a busy summer day…We are a small town. We have a cottage hospital supported by two main district hospitals and this is a disaster waiting to happen.

Just stay at home!

The data showing how quickly coronavirus is spreading around the UK is terrifying. We already know this number will go up as it will take two to three weeks for social distancing and other measures to have an impact.

But these measures won’t have an impact if idiotic people continue living their lives as normal. This is not a drill. This is all our lives. If you’ve got a home, be grateful and just stay there. This is not the time for a holiday. Don’t spread this virus any further. Stay away from rural communities and please, let’s work together to keep everyone safe and flatten the curve.

Even for the Daily Mail, this feature is an all-time dangerous low. This type of ‘journalism’ is putting lives on the line in rural communities. It should be ashamed.

Featured image via screengrab

 

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  • Show Comments

    2. In Norway, if you stay overnight in you log cabin and that happens to be outside your own county, you will be punished. 10days in prison or 1500 quid fine.
      As in the UK, these inland rural communities don’t have the infrastructure to cope with the volume of sick people.
      Irresponsible of the Mail.

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    3. Totally, irresponsible. I live close to the East Neuk of Fife, another area very popular with holiday makers and second home owners. Already, our local paper is having to issue pleas for the influx of visitors to go home. Our local hospital – twenty five miles away from most of these areas over rural roads for the most part – is already stretched to breaking point.
      I believe the Scottish government is already introducing legislation to limit ferry travel to the islands to essential + local people ( many of the islands have no doctor or dentist so people do have to travel either to the mainland or one of the bigger islands to access these) and hopefully more general “Stay put” legislation will follow.
      The Daily Mail should be crucified for this article, merely encouraging the scum who have swept the supermarket shelves clean and left suppliers with no chest freezers. Most ordinary people in this country have to budget carefully so I assume many are maxing out the credit cards to do this. I hope it all comes back to bite them.

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