Should it surprise anyone that criticisms of a gov't are more likely to come from people opposed to that gov't than those who support it? Surely that doesn't mean all such criticisms are 'fake news.' Criticisms, even on social media, can be based entirely on known facts. People may misattribute the motivations of those responsible, but their actions are usually clear to see, and those are what they should be judged on imo.

That's why I say I don't care if the UK gov't had the best intentions, I care about what they actually did and whether it was a huge collosal fuckup that is costing us thousands of lives. Which it was, and it is.

I'm also not concerned with parsing the responsiblity between the gov't and its team of advisors, because ultimately the gov't decides which advice to listen to, and so they bear the ultimate responsibility. If they got bad advice and followed it, then they should have hired more competent advisors. If they got good advice and ignored it, that's their fault too. If they got mixed advice, then they have to accept responsibility for the consequences of the advice they chose to adopt. There's no excuses about quality of advice that absolve the gov't from blame if things go wrong; that's not how responsibility works.