Greta Thunberg Has Been Added to CNN's Expert Coronavirus Panel and Twitter Is Not Happy About It | 22 Words

Teenage activist, Greta Thunberg has entered the spotlight once again, but this time trolls are refusing to let CNN get away with putting the "school dropout" on a pedestal.

She has been chosen to sit among medical professionals in CNN's latest show about the pandemic, and Twitter is in a total uproar.

Keep scrolling to read the disgusting comments the teenager has had to put up with since accepting the invitation...

Greta Thunberg is the face of the youth climate change movement... but is that where she should stay?

The Swedish seventeen-year-old has been added to a panel of medical experts, which has Twitter in an uproar. The comments are the worst yet...

Just over a year ago, she was relatively unknown.

via: Twitter

 Greta would regularly sit on her own outside Swedish parliament, first staging a "School Strike for Climate" in August last year. In the weeks leading up to the country’s general election, Thunberg sat on the steps outside of the parliament building in Stockholm, holding up the now-iconic sign that read “Skolstrejk För Klimatet" — translating to “school strike for climate."

The teen sat outside the building during school hours for 3 weeks.

Her demands were that the Swedish government reduce carbon emissions in accordance with the Paris Agreement. By sacrificing her education to protest for action, Thunberg began to conjure up attention and gain traction online.

Her unwavering commitment to the environment has woken the rest of the world.

While a little over a year ago, the name "Greta Thunberg" was relatively unknown, now it is the first name that springs to mind when you think of the climate change movement.

Thunberg is known for delivering blistering, matter-of-fact speeches about the urgency of what she calls the "climate crisis."

If we fast-forward to today, Thunberg continues to hold governments accountable during her powerful talks, which have seen her nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and placed in TIME's top one-hundred influential people in the world list.

If we do not act, the future, if there is one at all, will be very bleak.

Rising global temperatures pose a high risk of social and environmental disasters, including floods, drought, wildfires, and food shortages for millions of people across our planet.

Thunberg has gone to great lengths to fight her cause.

In July last year, the teen ditched environmentally damaging air travel and sailed across the Atlantic to attend the U.N. climate summits in the U.S. and Chile.

And her youth school strike movement is growing on a mass scale.

On September 20, 2019,  millions around the world, from London to New York, Sydney to Colombia, ditched the classroom to peacefully protest for climate action in what Thunberg dubs "Fridays for Future."

She's also backed by a whole host of famous faces.

Including the likes of Michelle Obama, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It's been a busy year for the teen.

Thunberg was even listed as 1 of 4 winners of the 2019 Right Livelihood Award, which is widely known as the "Alternative Nobel Prize," as well as honored as TIME's Person of the Year. 

But, Thunberg's movement has still been met with waves of criticism.

Her activism has seen her labeled as "melodramatic" amongst other things, as well as others saying that she is being used as a political shield. Though her critics don't seem to have stopped her.

Trolls will criticize the teen for literally anything.

via: Getty Images

 For a prime example... During a recent rally at College Green, the Swedish activist was accused of damaging a "healthy" patch of grass because, after her rally, it became muddy.

Yep. Muddy.

via: Getty Images

 Well, what else do you expect when hundreds of people gather in the rain? Nonetheless, the locals were left enraged after seeing the "consequences" of the rally.

One person on Facebook said this:

"Oh the irony, hundreds of people turning up to talk about our planet dying to end up destroying a green area." While another on Twitter said: "Call themselves green campaigners and then create this mess without a thought for the feelings of others. Most of them probably came from outside of Bristol so don't care a hoot."

She simply can't win... Greta recently weighed in on the pandemic.

via: Getty

 And some people's responses to her message were completely and utterly disgusting.

The activist tweeted about the outbreak of the deadly virus...

Where she told her followers that "we can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis and we must unite behind experts and science."

In a lengthy thread, she urged people to listen to the experts.

And encouraged her followers to find "new ways to create public awareness & advocate for change that doesn't involve big crowds."

Yet, while many Twitter users thanked Greta for her message...

Others were not so kind to the teen.

The trolls and climate change-deniers were quick to come out in full force...

And criticize for Greta for "not knowing" anything about the crisis. Oh, and to remind her that climate change doesn't exist, of course.

But some people over-stepped the line...

via: Twitter

 By saying they hope that Greta catches the virus and dies as a result.

Threatening a child is clearly Twitter's latest trend...

via: Twitter

 As various users took to the platform to inform the seventeen-year-old that they wanted her to catch the virus.

Clearly not everyone can see eye-to-eye with Greta's message and politics...

via: Getty

 And now Twitter has lost it's cool once again after it's been revealed that Greta will join a panel of medical experts on CNN's upcoming town hall on the pandemic.

Twitter users are not happy about it...

The program will also include CNN broadcaster fifty-one-year-old Sanjay Gupta, seventy-one-year-old former Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and sixty-year-old former Disease Control Prevention director Richard Besser. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper will also host alongside Gupta. That's a lot of knowledge...

It's understandable why people are irritated by the choice to place a teen climate activist on a panel with public health experts.

Twitter user, Yashar Ali, went viral with this comment to his 618,000 followers.“What place does Greta Thunberg have in this town hall?"

The topic has received more than 30,000 mentions across Twitter in just a few hours.

Ali followed up his last tweet with this comment: “I understand that but this is a panel of top health experts and administrators. A climate activist would be better suited on a different panel. She’s not a climate scientist. It’s a matter of placement."

The subject has sparked an extreme onslaught of virtual eye-rolls.

After the network's announcement on Wednesday, this was the top response: “Greta Thunberg? Now, she’s a COVID expert? @CNN is a joke!" It gained hundreds of likes online from other users that share this view.

And the comments just kept rolling in...

“Not picking on the kid," said another. “Picking on a ‘news’ network for featuring a child to inform the public."

Although a few scarce Twitter users came to Thunberg's defence...

There were even some pome public figures weighing in on the argument, saying that the future generations should have at least some say in what happens to the planet they'll inherit.

I mean they make a fair point.

Writer Roxane Gay tweeted: “Unqualified men appear on cable all day every day, bloviating endlessly, but Greta Thunberg is a bridge too far? Ok." The Oscar-winning actor Patricia Arquette even came to her aid: “She’s has extraordinary knowledge and she is the next generation that is left to clean this mess we’ve made. They wouldn’t have her there if she wasn’t a powerful voice."

Maybe people should at least hear her out...

One follower made it clear that the panel isn't just for scientists: “It’s a town hall, not a meeting of scientists, some of their previous guests have been chef Jose Andres, director Spike Lee, author Laurie Garrett, etc etc." Keep scrolling for more on the pandemic, and why Bryan Adams is being accused of racism...