It’s going to be along the lines of turkeys flying with turkeys.

The brainwashed brainwash the brain washable, and they all believe each other.

People die every day and it’s all being allocated to Covid whether it’s Covid or not.

Only the non brainwashed ask the question: yeah but he was 83, are you sure he Really was a Covid case or did that pancreatic cancer finally get him?

Yeah, the thing that keeps me from going with this line of thought is that I actually do know sceptics who soldiered on without much concern for the virus who have been, either themselves or close family members, been hit really hard by the virus. Mainly hospitalisations, but a few deaths. But I also know multiple people who experienced it just as a really deep cold with a fever. But most of the cases I know, surprisingly, are of people's relations living outside the UK -- strange!

Thanks for an interesting set of replies. What seems to pass some people by is that these things are really happening to real people. If you relate to them as actual human beings then telling them they've been brainwashed or are obviously false positives is unhelpful to say the least. It rather reminds me of the Marxist idea of false consciousness: the notion that the plebs are too thick to know what's good for them so can't be trusted to experience things for themselves. That tends not to end well! I realise many of us seem to have become experts in virology but I'm wary of any blanket explanations: false positives are obviously a complex issue depending on lab conditions, actual prevalence of the virus etc. One of the few MPs I trust to put principles above career is Steve Baker. It was interesting to me that in a recent interview he said that he was well aware of the problems with PCR testing but that he was holding his scepticism in balance with reports from hospital doctors in his constituency saying that distinctive Covid cases were presenting real challenges in clinical practice. So there is no getting away from the fact that much of the population is perceiving Covid as a uniquely scary thing. And the odd thing is that this then becomes a self fulfilling prophecy for them. They're not just imagining these things.

I have heard of one friend of a friend (elderly) dying of covid. I do not know if there were underlying circumstances. I do know that socially it makes me less want to challenge it.( I've lost close family members myself in the past decade so I know that I would not want to hear of other people who "think they know" about private situations.) Anyway, apart from that the people I have heard of with covid in the 35-50 age group say it gives you a really bad flu (lays you out for days) . Children don't get it badly at all.( From people who have had the positive test)