boris johnson

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Boris Johnson coronavirus test leads to meme explosion

Sympathy is not on many people's mind.

 

Siobhan Ball

Internet Culture

Posted on Mar 27, 2020   Updated on Mar 27, 2020, 11:19 am CDT

With the news that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tested positive for coronavirus, Twitter has experienced a meme explosion.

https://twitter.com/atenderwolf/status/1243539283530702854

Beyond the usual tendency of the internet to turn everything into memes, there’s a lot of anger at the prime minister over his handling of the pandemic.

CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC

His early strategy of herd immunity was slammed for being both ineffective and callous, and the late start of a lockdown has allowed the virus to spread much more widely than it would have with an earlier containment strategy.

https://twitter.com/apolwlos/status/1243535976066146307
https://twitter.com/apointofme/status/1243501360164765698
https://twitter.com/paresiure/status/1243501764009242625

Johnson didn’t seem to be taking the virus seriously, bragging about shaking hands with coronavirus patients in early March and encouraging everyone else to keep shaking hands instead of practicing social distancing.

It’s something that’s now coming back to bite him.

https://twitter.com/apolwlos/status/1243527680571650050
https://twitter.com/AGlasgowGirl/status/1243508090382712832

A handful of delightful edits have been made by enterprising Twitter users.

Others brought up the ventilator issue, where the government missed the deadline to join the EU in procuring them and are instead relying on Dyson (the vacuum manufacturer) to produce them.

https://twitter.com/EtonOldBoys/status/1243533360011624449

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*First Published: Mar 27, 2020, 11:15 am CDT