Item — HN Reader

I feel like this is implying this is a bad thing, which it absolutely is not. Am I the only one who hasn't stumbled onto any conspiracy theories whatsoever?

I've found the internet to be an invaluable source of outstanding information on this virus (dashboards of diagnoses, research on variants, journal articles on origin, updates about potential treatments) and have found most people to relatively reasonable (e.g. frustrated about lack of testing, but nothing resembling conspiracy theories). That said I focus on HN/reddit.

3 comments

You must have some really selective curation going on :) At least one of the prominent people I follow on Twitter has been flirting with conspiracy theories, not actively promoting them but saying it's a question that should be asked. And it's way, way worse out there in unfiltered Twitter.

ETA: check elsewhere in this thread, though there's a good chance it'll be quickly downvoted.

It probably has to do with whom you talk to and what sites you frequent. I've seen lots of conspiracy theories about how this was engineered by China in order to crash Western economies with China getting back on its feet first so it could take advantage of the West while we are down. Seriously. I've heard many people saying that social isolation is going to be permanent going forward. I've heard that the government is going to use this to enforce martial law. I've heard that Trump is going to use this to cancel the upcoming election and invoke something or other to put himself into power permanently, a la Putin. Etc. That's just the tip of the iceburg. There are tons of conspiracy theories. I know people who are starting to stockpile guns and ammunition (and probably TP) in insane amounts. I know people who are pulling all of their money out of the banks. I know others that are buying gold. A lot of gold. In my view, people are verging into extreme unreasonableness.

On the other hand, there is the other side of not being reasonable. Yesterday a friend was at the park with her kids. Another mom was on her phone talking to her doctor about her kid's fever and cough. The same kid that she had brought to the public park!

I know people who are planning trips to Hawaii while the kids are on this extended vacation.

There are a lot of people who are not taking this at all seriously.

The doomer and prepper crowd will twist any news to fit their narrative. You can go back through the last 20 years of blog posts and see these same predictions made about every large news story. If you hear people quoting this stuff remind them that it's the same thing people said about the financial crisis, hurricane katrina, 9/11, and y2k, and none of those things ever happened.

Yeah, but the people I am talking about were never ever doomers and preppers before. They were just ordinary people who never had any interest in that sort of stuff. Why is it different this time? I have no idea.

Scroll around the comments you'll find some here.