Skip to main content

The Rise and Rise of Covid Denial

In the early days of the pandemic I convinced myself that when the virus hit the Midwest — when it colored in every county on the tracking maps — Trump’s base would finally understand how they’d been duped.

They would see Trump’s denial of the virus and the science behind it for the lethal deception it was. That the Fox News bubble would be exposed as criminally negligent. That people would come to understand that masks are not a political statement.

Wow, was I wrong.

Of all the atrocities committed by Trump and his enablers this year, the propagation of “Covid denial” is easily the most heinous. And the most deadly.

A few stories have really rocked me. The first is from South Dakota, where the worst governor in the country, Kristi Noem, has gone all in on Trump’s murderous politicization of the virus.

A nurse in that state, Jodi Doering, recently went public with her frustration over the alarming number of patients she has watched dying, gasping for breath — literally moments from death — refusing to believe they had Covid, or that Covid even exists:

They tell you there must be another reason they are sick. They call you names and ask why you have to wear all that ‘stuff’ because they don’t have Covid because it’s not real. Yes. This really happens.

She speaks of people dying in anger, filled with hate and confusion, unable to accept that because of this hoax, they could only say good-bye to their loved ones on an iPad.

These are your fellow citizens.

Then there’s Amber Elliott, a county health director in Missouri, who just quit her job because the death threats were getting old.

Every time you get on the phone, you’re hoping you don’t get cussed at. Probably half of the people we call are skeptical or combative. They refuse to talk. They deny their own positive test results. They hang up. They say they’re going to hire a lawyer … I have people in my own family who believe Covid is a conspiracy and our doctors are getting paid off … But the more I talk about the facts, the more it seems to put a target on my back.

I have no doubt these stories are echoed by thousands of healthcare workers in every state. And while it seems a horrible way for these misguided patients to die, my sympathies are more with the nurses trying, at great personal risk, to acquaint them with simple reality.

Covid denial is a proliferating phenomenon. It’s reflected in the election results and it’s popping up in studies. Only twenty percent of Trump voters named Covid as a top issue influencing their vote.

It’s also attracting the attention of psychologists. In a CNN interview, Mark Whitmore discussed the denial mechanism we’re all born with and use regularly, but which can go seriously off the rails if “unfounded beliefs were part of their upbringing.”

In other words, if someone is raised in, say, a faith-based sort of home-school reality — where their entire belief system is shaped by religion — they’re far more likely to believe in conspiracy theories.

They also tend to make decisions based on hunches and preconceived ideas and biases as opposed to using factual information … This also gets at confirmatory bias, where you create a bubble by surrounding yourself with people who believe what you believe, and you search out information that supports the way you believe.

So they’re not just denying the virus, they’re denying facts in general. I know, this is not a big surprise. But it led me to a sort of aha moment.

Could this be the missing link between evangelicals and Trump?

Could it be that their insular religious childhoods have predisposed them to fantastical realities that are, by any objective standard, bonkers?

Is this why they follow so blindly this con man who defiles, on a daily basis, everything they profess to believe in? Who gets them to reprogram their beliefs at will, to believe anything he wants them to, no matter how outrageous? Is this why they congregate in the Fox bubble? Is this why they only accept information that confirms a bias toward magical thinking?

As an explanation for the kind self-destructive behavior described by our two frontline workers, this is surely simplistic. But since it comports with my own biases, I find it intriguing.

Because when Trump tells them the coronavirus is a hoax, that it was made in a Chinese lab, that we’ve turned the corner, that it will go away “like a miracle,” that Democrats will stop talking about it the day after the election, they clearly believe it. Even if it blatantly contradicts what he told them the day before.

So while you and I might be troubled by certain questions — like “If a disease doesn’t exist, how can it go away?” — they aren’t troubled in the least.


  1. It's ignorance and so unfortunate. But a surprise. I don't think so. Look at a map of the states and the proliferation of evangelical pastors in the mega churches and mansions. Surprise! The south and other red states. This clearly speaks to the belief that religious freedom overrides every aspects of our lives, especially science and education. I think we are still stuck with this level of deniability for generations to come. Scary!

    1. I object to the term "religious freedom." Religious tyranny is more like it. Alito and Barr have both jumped on that "freedom" trope, and it's way dangerous.

  2. The whole thing leaves me totally incredulous .. . if it weren't really happening, I would not believe this level of ignorance & denial is even possible when lives of all, including all loved ones, are at stake.

  3. Each time I hear a denial from a covidiot I can't help but wish them the worst. Selfish, yes indeed, but a world without them is a better world.

  4. Well, it is one more piece of evidence that evolution is working. However, all the COVID VA patients that I have seen recently are thorough believers that the virus is real. Having been used as chattel in various theaters, they know that reality can be brutal.

  5. I strongly recommend watching the five part documentary on Netflix entitled "The Family". It is something I believe we should be much more aware of than we are and I believe it is what has led us over the last 80 years to where we are. They are quiet but powerful and they are more than likely paying off these evangelical pastors to do their bidding. It is working wonders for them. They are the ones who made abortion an issue for the right wing when it never had been before. They are very smart and self serving. Scary stuff...


Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Do We Fight Back Against What We All See Coming?

The country is heading over a cliff and the brake lines have been cut. This is readily apparent to anyone paying attention. A rogue political party with malign intent and vast resources is bent on dismantling our entire system, and they’re doing it in plain sight. They assume we’ll just let them. The question is what to do about it. Yes, we hold slim majorities in the legislative branch, but those majorities are frighteningly fragile. If the filibuster is altered — which seems both necessary and inevitable — it could backfire spectacularly when Republicans next take power. Which is more than possible, even as soon as 2022. Democracy itself seems to be backed against the wall. This leaves @Shoq — who takes this all quite personally — perplexed and frustrated. Most of his 25,000 Twitter followers get nourishment from his acerbic but cogent analyses of the ills we face, and they know that his alarmism is well backed by facts, reason, and perspective. The trouble he sees — and wha

Kompromat, and Why You Can’t Assume Allen Weisselberg will Flip

In my last post, I wandered into the slippery world of idle speculation — sort of a second cousin to conspiracy theory — and found I quite enjoyed it. So continuing in that vein, I’ll weigh in on a question being asked a lot these days:   Why won’t Trump Organization CFO, Allen Weisselberg, flip on Trump? It seems a no-brainer. Between the almost certain prison time and the family upheavals he faces, it is inconceivable that loyalty to Trump could extend that far. But what if it’s not about Trump? What if he’s keeping his mouth shut for more existential reasons? What if the consequences of singing are more dire than we know? Ever wonder why Paul Manafort didn’t flip on Trump? Why he chose real prison time over spilling secrets? I don’t believe for a minute it was for Trump — trusting Trump for anything, much less a future pardon, would be deluded. But when you think about the circles Manafort ran in back in 2015 — the people the Mueller investigation was trying to get him to

Was the Fight Over Obamacare a GOP Scam All Along?

Please bear with me as I indulge in a flight of fancy, a reasoned rearrangement of existing facts into a theory that may or may not be provable. I know, it sounds uncomfortably Republican, but hear me out. It’s not my intention to rewrite history, just to look at it from another angle. Which might just prove instructive. I have always been puzzled by the failure of the GOP to kill the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — “Obamacare” — especially when they had their big chance in 2017. They had a president (of sorts) who had repeatedly declared Obamacare “a total disaster.” They had a majority in both houses of Congress. They had the House pass a repeal bill — remember Paul Ryan toasting the tantalizing prospect of twenty million new uninsured? Repeal was just a Senate vote away. Senate Republicans, meanwhile, had designed — using the budget “reconciliation” tactic we now know so well — a filibuster-proof bill, and they’d told the world they were on a mission to “repeal and replace” Obamac