Explaining the Irrationality of COVID-19 Conspiracy Theorists

Yesterday a Facebook friend posted a diatribe attempting to confirm the suspicions of COVID-19 conspiracy theorists. His explanation was that the Coronavirus mortality rate being “only slightly higher” than that of the flu confirmed the pandemic as a conspiracy. Despite me pointing out that the COVID-19 mortality rate is almost twice that of the flu, my Facebook friend was adamant that COVID-19 deaths were being over-reported because “hundreds of nurses” said so. Meanwhile, nearly 300 healthcare workers have died from COVID-19.

My sister is a healthcare worker who survived the Coronavirus. She contracted COVID-19 in March. She’s 33, doesn’t smoke, and is very active. 

“The week of March 15th I had contact with two patients that ended up on ventilators. I wore the PPE that was given to me (surgical mask), and I remember one of the patients coughed once while I was with them,” she explained. “I started having symptoms March 25th…I was one of the first employees that contracted the virus in our market.”

Her symptoms included a sore throat she thought was due to allergies and post-nasal drip, fatigue, elevated body temperature, an instance of diarrhea, loss of smell and taste, body aches, fever, chills, and shortness of breath. She had to take a break from pushing a vacuum because she was short of breath and still hasn’t regained her sense of smell three months later. Since she’s acquired the antibodies to help fight the virus, she’s donated plasma to help save the lives of those yet to contract COVID-19. If you’ve kicked the virus you can too.

This is what else you can do, according to my sister: “Wear a mask. Wash hands. Social distance. Just because quarantines are being lifted doesn’t mean the virus is gone.”

In contemplating the actual motivations of COVID-19 conspiracy theorists, at first I found their irrationality understandable. My Facebook friend lives in Montana, and having lived most my life in rural America, I understand the mindset of the rural American. That mindset is: “If it ain’t happenin’ in my backyard, it ain’t happenin’.”

Because my Facebook friend doesn’t see people dying all around him everyday like my sister, the threat of Coronavirus doesn’t exist to him. But his hospital isn’t so overrun with Coronavirus cases that receiving care for any other ailment is almost impossible, as is the case in Houston, where almost every ICU bed is taken. That’s why his “theory” that COVID-19 deaths are being over-reported because people dying with COVID-19 and not necessarily because of it is absolute nonsense. What about all the people without Coronavirus who died because they didn’t receive adequate healthcare due to others contracting the Coronavirus?

Rural American hospitals are not capable of providing adequate care during a Coronavirus outbreak. My father in Montana is at considerable risk if he were to contract COVID-19, and the closest hospital to him has just three ventilators. Given how well my state, Minnesota, has handled the pandemic, if my father were to contract the Coronavirus, I’d want it to happen here rather than there. He’d be more likely to survive in a Minneapolis-area hospital than a rural Montana hospital, even with just eight confirmed cases of Coronavirus being reported in his county. 

But this “if I can’t see it, it isn’t real” mindset isn’t the driving force of COVID-19 conspiracy theorists. COVID-19 conspiracy theorists are resisting the very same thing racist opponents of the BlackLivesMatter movement are resisting, and the same thing Conservatives in general are resisting: change. That’s made blatantly obvious in a video aired on latest episode of Last Week Tonight, in which Palm Beach County, Florida citizens complain about being required to wear a mask in public.

COVID-19 conspiracy theorists are creating a conspiracy to resist changing their lives one iota. Like baseball purists, COVID-19 conspiracy theorists are simply shouting “that’s the way we’ve always done it, and that’s the way it should stay.” Except changing the game of baseball doesn’t kill anybody.

Advocating for living our American lives as if the rest of the world was duped into believing a conspiracy is indicative of Americans’ ignorance and arrogance. The idea that COVID-19 conspiracy theorists know something the rest of the world doesn’t is incredibly narcissistic. But what’s more American than believing something that’s obviously untrue? 

COVID-19 conspiracy theorists need to realize their right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” applies to all their neighbors, and ordinances requiring social distancing and the wearing of masks in public are not an infringement of their rights, but a means of preserving all Americans’ right to life. 

I guess until these COVID-19 conspiracy theorists contract Coronavirus and give it to someone who dies from it, they won’t comprehend the magnitude of this pandemic. I hope they don’t get what’s coming to them, because they’ll surely exacerbate the problem. 

“This is a situation where we’re asking you to be a good citizen and give a damn about the people around you, and if you can’t do that…you’re not a good American, and you’re not a good Christian, and you’re not a good spiritual being. You’re a jerk.” — Laurie Garrett, Pulitzer Prize-winning Science Journalist in an interview on Democracy Now!