Diary of a (secondline) clinicianFor time immemorial humans have engaged in conspiracy thinking. There are numerous reasons why people believe in conspiracies, from wanting to make sense of the world, feel a sense of control, or just plain make money. Some are largely harmless, except for causing their believers to unnecessarily lighten their wallets. Others are incredibly harmful, with medical conspiracies in particular comprising the bulk of this category. "Some are largely harmless, except for causing their believers to unnecessarily lighten their wallets." In addition to the usual smattering of Facebook posts that make up my medical professional-dominated feed, often with an exasperated comment along the lines of "Can you believe this [expletive]?!" I was recently sent a video by a close friend. This turned out to be a two and a half hour diatribe from a US osteopath, whose original video was apparently banned from YouTube after amassing 9 million views, claiming variously that SARS-CoV-2 was developed in a Wuhan laboratory at the direction of Dr Fauci and Bill Gates, COVID-19 was essentially no worse than any other run-of-the-mill upper respiratory tract infection but exposure to 5G communications made it significantly more deadly, that lockdown measures were an attempt to keep us all inside while 5G was installed across the world, and finally when we all get vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, the combination of this vaccine and 5G will kill us all. It is probably needless to say that this was presented with nothing more than anecdotal evidence "my friend called me up the other day and told me..." and faux surprised Dorthy Dixer questions from the interview host "But Iran doesn't have 5G does it?" with self-assured responses "Yes! Iran was actually competing to be a world leader in 5G!" (that may be but a quick Google reveals spectrum issues have even a 2021 Iranian 5G roll-out in doubt, although presumably that's not true and part of the conspiracy too). "This turned out to be a two and a half hour diatribe from a US osteopath, whose original video was apparently banned from YouTube after amassing 9 million views" Curiously I found myself understanding the appeal of listening to such a video. If you could suspend disbelief for a while and turn off the evidence-requiring piece of your frontal cortex for a while it was strangely reassuring to listen to someone so assured of the truth of what they were saying, making sense of the whole world for you. Yes of course this was all the fault of the Government and those people in positions of power. I was just a victim here. There's nothing I could have done to make this crisis better or worse, in fact I shouldn't suffer the economic consequences of physical distancing, I should go out and work my job, maybe doing my bit to expose the COVID-19 lie for what it really is to boot. Yes, alternate realities are seductive but like a good work of fiction, once disbelief is no longer suspended the whole edifice comes rapidly crumbling down.
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