Fool me Once

To paraphrase an old saying, the Lord must have loved foolish people, because he made so many of them.

Now comes evidence that strongly suggests that believing COVID-19 was a hoax is a "gateway drug" that leads to believing in other conspiracy theories, in which we are all awash, sad to say.

The journal PLOS One contains the research that found that among those who cling to the belief that the number of  COVID-19 deaths was a wild exaggeration, or that someone in China developed the virus for evil purposes and sent it out into the world, a substantial number also tend to believe that UFOs create crop circles and moon landings were Disney productions. 

"The widespread damage created by the COVID-19 pandemic has heightened people's anxiety, uncertainty, feelings of powerlessness, and has created friction between members of different social groups," said the research group. "Such conditions represent a near perfect recipe for the proliferation of conspiracy theories."

The team looked at two surveys: one from June 2020, and one in the early part of 2021, surveys in which people were asked about their beliefs in conspiracy in general and and their notions about COVID in particular. 

No surprise to me, but those who think that "COVID-19 was intentionally brought into the world for dark purposes" or that "the severity of COVID-19 was exaggerated" also nod vigorously when asked about the 2020 presidential election being rigged more than any election in history, very bigly, or that  “some UFO sightings and rumors are planned or staged in order to distract the public from real alien contact.”

In time, it was found that the more people bought into the "COVID is fake" myth, the more likely they were to believe that John Kennedy Senior and Junior are alive and running a shrimping operation in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and mass shootings of school children are produced by cable TV as fodder for the mainstream media. 

Try as you might, you cannot get adherents to these nutty notions to explain why the people they dismiss as incompetent government or military personnel are at once so stupid as to allow these horrible things, and also so brilliant as to pull off these gigantic mass deceptions.