Scientific American: Nine COVID-19 Myths That Just Won’t Go Away. Subtitle: From a human-made virus to vaccine conspiracy theories, we rounded up the most persistent false claims about the pandemic.
I’m beginning to think that many, perhaps most, people, do not truly *think* and draw conclusions in the way rationalists and scientists — including all those who have built the modern technological world (which ironically allows the conspiracy theorists to spread their ideas) — do. How is it all these religious loonies claims to *know* this or that, with no evidence or rationale? (QAnon.) They clearly can’t *know* these things, because they are demonstrably not true. My take, for the moment, is that these people are — like Trump — transactional. They imagine what they would like to be true, and say it to the world, because many of their listeners will believe them. They can get away with it, because day to day life for virtually everyone does not depend on the truth or falsity of bizarre conspiracy theories about the actual world.
