A Meeting Gone Awry

We had a company-wide meeting today to discuss COVID, and our company’s approach to COVID (think working remotely, wearing a mask, health checks, etc).  And I made the mistake of reading the chat during the meeting.  It was insane.  Like the worst and most toxic kind of Reddit thread.  I thought the people who worked at a biotech company would be a bit more rational and would understand the science around COVID, but apparently not.  It was almost like the chat had been hijacked by anti-vaxxers or trolls who were making deliberately provocative and outrageous claims.  Unreal.  I looked up a few of the people saying these things on our company address book, and apparently they are real employees or contractors here (or at least they appear to be).  My god, that is surreal – maybe they shouldn’t be.  I’m almost convinced that there must be people attending the meeting who shouldn’t be – I think one of the speakers did say at one point that there were over 4000 people on the call, which is way more than normal.  Very strange.