I feel so upset. 2 nurses who were in ITU [intenstive therapy unit] in Swansea have died today. 3 more still ventilated. All from the same unit. My heart is breaking.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n This would be very sad, if true. But, as it turns out, it is not \u2013 the official twitter of Swansea\u2019s NHS trust actually responded:<\/p>\n This is incorrect. We have not had any nurse deaths in our ITU department and your tweet is causing anxiety.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Here\u2019s a screencap of the original exchange (we can\u2019t embed the tweets, for reasons which will shortly become apparent):<\/p>\n Instead, her account\u00a0has been deleted<\/a>:<\/p>\n It\u2019s possible \u201cTracey\u201d was simply so inundated with people calling her a liar\/idiot\/troll etc. that she got sick of it and deleted the account, everyone on social media feels like that sometimes.<\/p>\n But that doesn\u2019t really address the critical issue.<\/p>\n The key question isn\u2019t really \u201cwho is Tracey?\u201d or \u201cWhy is her account gone?\u201d But rather, how did she come by the false information?<\/p>\n Assuming she didn\u2019t make it up herself, who told her it was true?<\/p>\n Somewhere along the line somebody somewhere told a lie. They claimed five nurses were seriously ill and two of them had died based on nothing. A story which, coincidentally, lines up with the media scare-stories about how NHS staff are in terrible danger (when they\u2019re not<\/a>).<\/p>\n We\u2019ll never know specifically who. But whoever it was is likely still doing the same thing.<\/p>\n Perhaps the most important thing we should take away from this is that the original lie had over 3000 retweets and nearly 10,000 likes before the correction was even posted. The correction, despite being up for over a month longer, still has less than 1\/5th that number.<\/p>\n This is hardly likely to be an isolated incident. There are probably thousands of such claims circling the internet that never intersect with those informed enough to correct them, all creating a collage of panic and tragedy of which no individual part could ever stand up to scrutiny.<\/p>\n For example, we are aware of one widely shared story of personal loss which originated from a twitter account which was provably using Shutterstock stock images for supposed friends and family.<\/p>\n Whether \u201cTracey\u201d was a victim of misinformation or a willing participant the important question remains the same: Who is inventing stories about Covid19? Who would have anything to gain from that?<\/p>\n In 2015 the\u00a0UK announced the formation of the 77th brigade<\/a>, known colloquially as the Facebook Warriors, their job is to \u201ccombat disinformation\u201d online.<\/p>\n On April 22nd General Sir Nick Carter, the UK\u2019s chief of the defence staff,\u00a0publicly stated<\/a>\u00a0that the 77th brigade were actively \u201ccountering Covid19 misinformation online\u201d.<\/p>\n Make of that what you will.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/off-guardian.org\/wp-content\/medialibrary\/Traceyz18-Swansea-correction.jpg?x34803\")
<\/a>The rational response to this, if it were just a misunderstanding, would be for \u201cTracey\u201d to say \u201coops, sorry, I was misinformed\u201d and then either correct the tweet or remove it.<\/p>\n<\/a>\u2026which is strange.<\/p>\n