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Social media went bananas Thursday evening over news that the Ontario government, in conjunction with the Ontario Medical Association, will be reviewing the cost, frequency and administration of several medical procedures with an eye to best practices and cost savings. The procedures include colonoscopies, which is what set everyone off.

“The Ford government is trying to find close to half a billion dollars in savings from OHIP,” CityNews Toronto reporter Cynthia Mulligan tweeted. “It’s looking at reducing pain injections, some MRIs, sedation for colonoscopies and more.” A whole lot of people, including some professional journalists and commentators and at least one doctor, took that to mean any sedation for colonoscopies would be delisted from the provincial health plan.

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That would be totally ludicrous on every level, beginning with the political. Doug Ford is perhaps not the political genius he fancies himself, but he’s smart enough not to go to bat for making fairly routine anal procedures even more uncomfortable than they need to be. It’s also not what the story said. (Mulligan’s tweet preceded the story’s publication, giving the mania a head start.) But such is the widespread pathological hatred of this government, and of Ford in particular, that the nearly inconceivable can instantly become fact.