I understand what you mean and agree with it to an extent, but who is it up to to decide what's a conspiracy theory and what's not
I think we should all be following government guidelines, but it's ok to question them, look at stats, look what other countries are doing, speculate on what's best
As long as you aren't calling for action saying "this is all bulls***! go out and riot and take the streets back!" then it's whatever
Personally I think because I'm optimistic about how this will all end I'm leaning towards the "it's not quite as bad as first feared" type news, but time will tell
https://www.bbc.co.uk/ideas/videos/three-ways-to-spot-a-conspiracy-theory/p07j9sjk
I agree it's absolutely ok to question things if you're approaching them from an intellectually honest position, genuine curiosity, wanting to find out more, wanting more evidence etc.
However, if you've already decided that there's an evil conspiracy trying to create a New World Order and you're only looking for ways to discredit experts or the media, that's not intellectually honest.
Approaching evidence with an open mind, considering the credibillity, reliability of source etc = good
Reaching a conclusion and then looking for any old shite that might support it = bad
Obviously it's impossible to be completely unbiased or unprejudiced, but trying goes a long way.
Spreading confusion and distrust may not be as bad as directly telling people to ignore public health advice but it can have the same impact. It's a natural human instinct to look at how other people are reacting to gauge your own reaction, so if folks see that a lot of people doubt the narrative, it is easier for them to doubt it too. Again, it only takes one idiot to be tipped over the edge, e.g. Thomas Mair.
Good to be optimistic, hopefully it all turns out better than expected. Also always good to keep spirits up etc. I'm not about doom and gloom for the sake of it, but in my view there has been a big issue with normalcy bias and it's important that folks understand the scale of the problem. Two weeks ago very few people did, this has all happened very quickly. Today the Deputy CMO said they have evidence that people are now taking the measures more seriously, so that's reason to be hopeful.
There is a slight danger that we do all the right things, minimize the deaths and then people complain it was a lot of fuss over nothing, but that's far better than the alternative.
I think the working number for mortality rate was 1% for a while, the CMO suggested he was hoping for 0.6%.
That pathologist in the Spectator was suggesting 0.5% I think? That would still be 5x deadlier than flu.
I'm not sure if those numbers are assuming that we're able to manage it sufficiently to avoid overwhelming the health service. There is much more reason to hope for that now, but only because of the incredible efforts of the professionals to massively increase capacity, open field hospitals, manufacture ventilators etc.