One man’s tragic tale reveals much about the reach and harm of anti-science propaganda
Gary Matthews fell headlong into a subterranean world haunted by vicious fantasies. But he wasn’t vicious himself. “I knew him since he was 19,” his friend Peter Roscoe told me. “He was a gentle guy. He wanted a better world. I am so sorry in recent times he became convinced that Covid was some kind of hoax.”
The “hoax” killed him, his relatives said. He had a positive Covid-19 test and went home to isolate. He died, aged 46, alone in his flat in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, on 13 January.