News

Violent toilet paper fights escalate during coronavirus panic

March 7, 2020 | | Print Article
Facebook Twitter Reddit LinkedIn Gab
(Video screenshots)

Coronavirus fear, panic, and desperation is real, and it’s spreading like wildfire all across the globe, from Australia to Iran to even the United States.

For evidence, one need only to turn to Twitter, where video footage of panicked people acting like maniacs has been surfacing nonstop ever since the global media establishment began broadcasting 24/7 reports about the coronavirus.

Case in point:

However, the panic being seen here in the states is relatively calm and quiet compared to the panic that’s emerged in countries like Australia.

“A fight over toilet paper in an Australian supermarket on Saturday (Mar 7) prompted police to call for calm after the latest violence sparked by coronavirus-induced panic buying in the country,” Channel NewsAsia has reported.

“A video widely shared online shows three women pulling each other’s hair and screaming as they struggle over a large pack of the highly sought-after commodity in the aisle of a grocery store in Sydney.”

That video may be seen below:

Following the incident, local authorities pleaded with folks to calm down.

“It’s not the Thunderdome, it’s not Mad Max. We don’t need to do that,” Acting Inspector Andrew New of the New South Wales Police Force told reporters.

He was referring to the steel-cage jousting arena from the post-apocalyptic film, “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.”

Watch a scene from the film below to get an idea of what he meant:

Yet even the panic seen in first-world countries such as Australia pales in comparison to the panic and utter desperation that’s taken hold in third-world nations.

Over in Iran, the panic is so severe that the nation’s Islamic government has opted to release 54,000 prisoners for reasons that have baffled critics.

“Iran’s judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili told reporters the Middle Eastern country will be releasing more than 54,000 inmates from its crowded prison system on furlough after they test negative for the virus and post bail,” UPI confirmed.

It’s not clear how they plan to re-apprehend these inmates once the coronavirus crisis subsides.

Meanwhile, all of this is happening in Iran:

And then there’s this:

A question that has emerged is whether this panic is being driven by real facts or by fear-mongering. The answer may depend entirely on the country where the panic is being seen. In a third-world country such as Iran, one naturally faces a higher risk of being infected, ergo why Iranians reportedly face the highest death rates.

That said, it’s undeniable that media coverage does play at least some role in spurring panic, according to Cardiff University Prof. Karin Wahl-Jorgensen.

“The current outbreak has been much more prominent in media coverage than recent epidemics, including Ebola,” she wrote last month for the Nieman Journalism Lab.

“For example, a Time Magazine study found that there were 23 times more articles in English-language print news covering the coronavirus outbreak in its first month compared to the same time period for the 2018 Ebola epidemic.”

She added that it seems “fear has played a particularly vital role in coverage of the coronavirus outbreak.”

And this fear, she concluded, “suggests that much of the outbreak’s coverage is more of a reflection of public fear than informative of what’s actually happening in terms of the spread of the virus.”

Fear that, it would seem, is being driven partly by the media …

DONATE TO BIZPAC REVIEW

Please help us! If you are fed up with letting radical big tech execs, phony fact-checkers, tyrannical liberals and a lying mainstream media have unprecedented power over your news please consider making a donation to BPR to help us fight them. Now is the time. Truth has never been more critical!

$10
$15
$25
$50
Other
$
Success! Thank you for donating. Please share BPR content to help combat the lies.
Facebook Twitter Reddit LinkedIn Gab
Vivek Saxena
Latest posts by Vivek Saxena (see all)

Comment

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.

PLEASE JOIN OUR NEW COMMENT SYSTEM! We love hearing from our readers and invite you to join us for feedback and great conversation. If you've commented with us before, we'll need you to re-input your email address for this. The public will not see it and we do not share it.

Latest Articles