



The posts are just the latest example of the growing number of conspiracy theories about the coronavirus being shared on social media during the UK’s lockdown.

One such post was shared by Inspire EU, an anti-Brexit Facebook page with over 35,000 followers which is run by Jack Dart, a Liberal Democrat councillor in Devon.

An Inspire EU post on Tuesday said “from death’s door to sprightly Easter Sunday riser in two days? Possible, but then Boris Johnson is a compulsive liar, and Dominic Cummings is an amoral, Machiavellian sociopath, so…”

This post shared a tweet by lawyer Marcus Ball, who claims to have “sent an FOI request to St Thomas’s NHS Trust requesting confirmation/proof that @BorisJohnson wasn’t lying about being admitted there or the severity of his condition”.

The post disappeared after BuzzFeed News requested comment, though it was not clear whether it was removed by Facebook or by Inspire EU.

On Tuesday, the same page shared an article from a website called TruePublica entitled "Editor at the Economist: ‘Something Fishy’ About Boris Johnson’s Intensive Care Stay”.

The article references a tweet by Chris Lockwood, Europe editor of the Economist, who shared a video of Johnson and said, “This is not someone who was at death’s door a few days ago. Something incredibly fishy about the whole business.”

Lockwood later retracted his tweet and apologised, but the TruePublica article is still up, as is the “Inspire EU” post quoting it, which has been shared over 600 times.