Social media giving everyone a platform sounds like a great idea until you realise that there are people out there that hold some very dangerous ideas, ones that aim to hurt and misinform people for no other reason than their own personal satisfaction...or ignorance.

If you ran a poll on your own Facebook page about COVID-19 and where it came from, how many different answers do you think you'd get? We should know there's only really one accepted answer. It began in humans in late 2019 at a fresh food market in Wuhan, China and spread from there.

However, thanks to social media and some less-than-stellar media reporting around the world, there are plenty of people that would be convinced that it originated in a lab (false), or that BIll Gates has something to do with it (false). Or perhaps it has something at all to do with the 5G spectrum we're going to use in our mobile phones? (nope).

Anti-vaxxers, climate change denial, COVID conspiracies and all the way down to local council. People can't get enough of theories that agree with their view of the world that there is always something sinister going on.

Neither can I, for entertainment purposes, but when it spills over into the real world and starts to negatively affect people's lives. Then you have a problem.

This isn't anything new of course, there have been people getting about spouting conspiracies for as long as recorded history, Salem witch trials anyone?

Usually their spread was confined to a man shouting them on the street while wearing a breadboard. But now you have large crowds of people in Victoria collecting outside parliament, blatantly ignoring any rules around social distancing, protesting against isolation, 5G and tracking apps. It's the kind of stuff you'd expect to see over in 'crazy America'.

'They're nuts over there!' people would say about the US, when the President does things like spread wild conspiracies and stare into the sun during an eclipse. I honestly think our pollies have done a pretty good job of keeping people informed and staying on the right side of science and commonsense when it comes to the health and safety of the populace. For coronavirus at least, science in other areas is far less accepted. Strange that.

I'm not sure if you've heard, but COVID-19 is serious. We've been lucky - touch wood - that in Australia we've managed the pandemic relatively well compared to other countries that early on tried to play down the risk and saw tens of thousands of people die as a result.

I can't believe that there are people that are seeing the success of social restrictions and thinking 'this isn't as bad as they say'. Completely missing that entire reason we're doing okay is because it's been managed well.

As an oft-shared meme explained, lifting all restrictions now because we're flattening the curve is like taking off the parachute because we've started to fall a bit slower.

Just because you're getting a bit sick of things being the way they are doesn't give you a license to choose to ignore the rules. If you can't help yourself, at least think about others and those far more at risk.

Listen to the experts. Not some friend on Facebook that has 'done their research' or old mate that says the 'REAL' truth is to be found on a series of fringe YouTube accounts. We are better than that, so why aren't we acting like it?