Here’s your field guide to the 5 main types of pandemic deniers

AlterNet logoEvery day there is more data to prove the dangers of the coronavirus. Yet, bizarrely, the more proof we have of the damage of the pandemic; the more vicious and hysterical its deniers. It is hard not to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of uninformed, deluded ideas covidiots spew on a daily basis. We mourn not just the lives lost and the bodies damaged, but the collective intelligence of our nation. With international news consistently depicting the United States as the dumbest nation in the developed world, it is as if news of the covidiocy is almost as depressing as news of the virus’s spread itself.

The trend to what is described as America’s move from freedom to “freedumb” has sadly been a long time in the making. The pandemic only painfully reveals a process that was well-documented by Charles Pierce’s 2010 book “Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free.”

Pierce opens with a story of Americans descending on the Creation Museum in Kentucky, where homeschooled children on field trips can behold a dinosaur wearing a saddle. With stories like these it is not hard to understand how this country lost its grip on even the most basic scientific concepts. It is not a big leap from dinosaurs in saddles to believing that face masks make us sick. Continue reading.