What the papers say: social media amidst coronavirus isolation

John Harris wrote in his column that as coronavirus forces communities online, support groups are realising Facebook’s promise to truly connect us, but asks is Facebook is still far too powerful.

He said: "The Covid-19 moment demands a means of bringing people together while they largely stay in their homes, and ensuring that whatever limited time they can spend in the real world is used as constructively as possible.

"Facebook’s PR people are keen to big up its new “information centre” that puts reliable material about the virus at the top of people’s news feeds. Its moderating machine, they emphasise, is aggressively tackling misinformation about the virus – though its systems have already mistakenly clamped down on legitimate material, and the weeks to come will surely test them to the limit. Facebook-owned WhatsApp is another means of communication that the outbreak has made indispensable, although there are questions to be asked about the misinformation people are using it to spread."

The Independent

In his column James Ball said coronavirus rumour only fills the vacuum left behind by awful government communication.

He said: "The simple truth is that the torrent of online rumour-mongering is simply filled by a vacuum left where official communications should be. At a time of crisis, with hundreds of thousands of lives at stake, government communications have failed in a way never seen before in modern times."

Mr Ball added millions of don’t know whether to self-isolate for seven days or 14 days, or even what self-isolation means, while many more don’t know whether they are among the 1.5 million “extremely vulnerable” people mentioned in on-air briefings.

He added: "There is, in other words, an absolute and systemic breakdown of government communications at a time when such communications could not be more important.

"Pandemics spread exponentially: cases move from the hundreds, to the thousands, to the tens of thousands within a few weeks – by the time you spot thousands of cases, you have a much bigger problem than you know. Every day lost to chaos and confusion is vital time, wasted."

The Scotsman

Brian Monteith used his column to say Covid-19 crisis is a wake-up call for SNP and Europhiles.

He wrote: "The UK is not alone in facing these difficulties, and in some respects other countries face worse prospects. For instance, those in the European Union do not have the flexibility of response or their own central bank that the UK has. If we had the euro for our currency, we would not be able to put our national interests first and respond to our needs with a tailored approach."

He added: "The massive scale of financial intervention by the UK Government could not have been replicated in Scotland had we voted for independence in 2014 – or were we to vote to secede at any referendum now or in the near future.

"Notwithstanding the existing dire state of Scottish public finances, the tanking oil price that would make them worse day by day and that the Scottish Government has been borrowing to the max already – there simply would be no resources to act in the generous manner the UK Government has."

The Daily Express

Jacky Colliss Harvey asks if anything of greatness come out of such an unprecedented global nightmare?

She said: "I know, it's hard to lift your head and look forward very far at present, but history would tell us that's just what we should be doing.

The world survived the Black Death, and this country emerged from the plague of 1665. And that magical space we all have in our heads will prove itself equal to this one, too. Most of us will come through this, though we'll never be the same again."

She added: "We will be poorer (us writers, for certain), we will be less sure of ourselves. But for every merchant of doom there will be five or six folk who suddenly find themselves contemplating a spring blossom, or listening in the newly quiet air to birdsong, and thinking "That's beautiful"."