After a third patient in Motozintla, Chiapas was diagnosed with COVID-19, an angry mob of around 300 stormed the town's Social Security Institute hospital demanding to examine the patient themselves to make sure whether he have the coronavirus.

According to a recent article, doctors and nurses refused them entry.

The angry mob also demanded a meeting with the hospital's director and the region's political representative. Still, the hospital personnel called in the army and the National Guard to defuse the situation.

It all began when friends and family members of the infected patient took to social media their advocacy to "rescue" the patient from the hospital and claimed that the coronavirus diagnosis is a government conspiracy that aims to kill people.

The protesters bombarded the "Mercado Libre Motozintla" Facebook group, which usually functions as a sort of virtual yard sale, with messages urging members to leave their homes and march to the hospital.

"Coronavirus is a lie, let's not fall for it," one member wrote.

The crowd also called for the government to lift the stay-at-home guidelines because, they said, the virus does not exist.


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But some members of the Facebook group opposed the protest.

"Motozintla has not understood the danger involved in continuing to expose oneself, not complying with the prevention measures against Covid-19, and people continue to believe that this disease does not exist or is a government lie," one member posted. "Hopefully, soon, people will stop believing in email chains and videos that a random person invents just to generate panic."

In other parts of Mexico, people also said they don't believe COVID-19 is real.

In an article by Latin Post, vendors of overpriced hand sanitizers in the streets of Mexico City claimed they do not believe the news of the virus. They said that people were wasting their money on hand sanitizer despite benefiting from the fear caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

"It's a rumor. The whole world's getting sick, but this is utter nonsense from the federal and world governments," said one vendor. "You go and find out who caused this disorder."

As of Tuesday, there are already 26,025 confirmed cases of coronavirus in Mexico, with 2,507 deaths.


Why do some people believe COVID-19 is a hoax?

Dr. Joseph Pierre, Health Sciences Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, explained that a pandemic on the scale of what a COVID-19 has done has not occurred since the influenza pandemic of 1918 that killed 50 million or more people worldwide.

"Since few of us were around then, and given medical advances in the form of preventative vaccines and antiviral medications since that time, it's hard for us to imagine that a "flu-like" illness could be so destructive," he said.

He also cited the "optimism bias," a general tendency that people tend to underestimate personal risks, as a likely contributor. The fact that the elderly and immunocompromised are at higher risk that those younger and healthier ones make them invalidate the possibility of getting infected.

Aside from those, some political leaders suggested it might be a hoax, despite the load of information provided by credible sources like the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which created the differences in people's level of concern about COVID-19.

Throughout centuries, viruses have been responsible for wiping a large percentage of the human population. If we don't want history to repeat itself, the best option is to get informed and slow the spread of COVID-19 by practicing precautionary health measures.