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NHS Doctor Issues Warning On Covid Misinformation And Media Control
Of The Truths Of Pandemic

Completed in 17 Twitter messages, Rachel Clarke, NHS Palliative Care Doctor and influential writer of several books on the NHS – Breathtaking The NHS, being her latest – issued a plea to the public alerting them to the misinformation and management of the media by politicians and NHS England over the NHS and Covid-19 pandemic in the UK.

But even worse than the deliberate mismanagement of the truth of the Covid Pandemic and subsequent crisis in the UK’s healthcare system, is the personal abuse that such professionals as Rachel and her NHS colleagues suffer in social media by those in the public who reject anything they don’t wish to believe and prefer to silence the messenger by threats and abuse and claims of conspiracy theories.

30th December 2020

Covid misinformation and media management.

1. Like every NHS doctor and nurse on here, I am being constantly abused (I've even, on occasion, been threatened with rape or death) for saying Covid is real, deadly, and overwhelming our hospitals right now.

2. I say these things for one reason alone. To try and protect all our patients, Covid and non-Covid alike, from the deadly effects of the NHS falling apart under current pressures. We are DESPERATE to protect people.

3. I'm told I'm a liar, a fake, a self-promoter, a fraud.

4. And how do I disprove this torrent of attacks when there are no images from inside our hospitals right now?

5. Why why why @NHSEngland @MattHancock @DHSCgovuk are you not SHOWING the public how grave things are?

6. Do you not understand how lethal the misinformation is?

7. Senior clinicians in multiple hospitals tell me they are desperate to show the reality inside our ICUs, wards and EDs. They aren't allowed to. All comms have been centralised.

8. I know this to be true at a Trust level too. CEOs who *want* to show the truth and can't.

9. Meanwhile frontline staff like me risk our jobs, potentially, to try and warm the public to stay home, keep their distance, *believe* the gravity of the situation. 10. That can't be right, can it? Where is the transparency and leadership? 11. Where is putting patients first?

12. So I am going to appeal directly (again(, and with the most heartfelt sincerity, to @NHSEngland@MattHancock
@DHSCgovuk

13. Let the cameras in. Counter the misinformation with facts. Fact matter. Show the public. Please. 1

14. If you don't, I am genuinely fearful you will indirectly cause greater suffering and more deaths by unintentionally feeding those who seek to disinform. The scamdemic artists, the oh-its-all-false-positives brigade. 15. I can't do it alone. No individual can. Please how it.

16. If I could, I would beg you a hundred times more. I don't know how to plead more clearly - but this plea, I know, comes from many more frontline staff.

17. Lastly, and above all, to the public: please please please stay home. Trust us. You do not want to catch Covid.

End

Source: Rachel Clarke Twitter feed

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