Facemasks Are Useless Against Coronavirus Conspiracy BS

I probably don't need to tell you how widespread fear about the Coronavirus is right now. Odds are you already know, and you have the mass quantities of toilet paper and hand soap to prove it. But as with any panic, or generally any subject in the modern world, there are conspiracy theories about it. Whether it's blaming the disease on the made-up dietary habits of foreign people, or deciding that an entire half of the country actually wants it to kill us all, we are currently in the Golden Age of misguided people yelling shit about illnesses.

Let's start with the theory that the Coronavirus was made by the CIA to fight China, because the disease originated in China and the United States isn't really BFFs with them right now and ... ummm, I guess that's about all there is to that one. Really? There are rejected scripts from Vin Diesel movies with deeper plots than this. Some people thought that Zika was a biological weapon, so there's some precedent for this kind of rationalization. (To be fair, it was kind of a bummer to learn that mosquitos were the secret super threat and not a Clone Hitler's army of robot Tyrannosaurs.)

China is the basis for a few more Coronavirus theories, ranging from the idea that it leaked from a lab there, to the idea that China is like Resident Evil's Umbrella Corporation, only instead of creating flesh-eating zombies, they want to give us all ... flu-like symptoms? There's also the ridiculously unproven theory that the disease originated from Chinese people eating bats. See, the disease's genetics are super similar to the one found in bats, and since SARS was thought to have come from bats and some people in China have eaten bats at some point, boom, everyone's getting sick because Asia is just one big all-you-can-eat bat feast, apparently.

As exemplified in the dumbest assertion in the history of the world.

But here's the thing and I want y'all to keep this in mind for the rest of the article: If your first thought about a theory is "How can I say this theory without sounding racist?" then it's time to double-check your theory.

So if we didn't make this thing to overthrow China, and China didn't make this thing because they're not cartoon supervillains, then where did it come from? Some secret organization, probably. After all, a sizeable amount of people (as in more than 0% of people) believe that AIDS was created by the Legion of Doom or whatever. The same goes for people thinking that the government is hiding the effects of vaccines from people, despite the effect of vaccines being obviously shown in the overwhelming number of people who've taken vaccines and been fucking fine.

With that in mind, it shouldn't be a surprise when you hear that QAnon -- the Kirby of conspiracy theories, sucking up everything in its vicinity -- believes that the deep state was involved. For those that are luckily unaware, the deep state is the cabal of established Washington DC politicians that puppeteer the country and also probably get Tim Allen sitcoms canceled. Their solution? Drink bleach. Our solution? Do not, under any circumstances, drink bleach. And maybe, and I know this sounds wild, see a doctor instead.

But who is immune to the nefarious tentacles of the Deep State? Who among us would be target #1 in a ploy to overthrow all that is good and Reaganomical in the world? Why our ridiculous President Donald Trump. And that's why certain theories have sprung up about the Coronavirus being aimed specifically at him. The Dems couldn't nail him on the Russia stuff, and Jeff Bezos couldn't topple him with fake news, so now they're trying to make him look bad at his job.

Trump himself has accused his political opponents and the media of trying to instill virus fears in people so that the stock market will go downhill, and people will distrust his excellent president-ing abilities. Mike Huckabee and Fox & Friends host, Pete Hegseth, echoed this sentiment, claiming that Dems are clamoring for Trump to fail in the face of the growing pandemic. "--they're rooting for it to grow," said Hegseth, "--for it to become an absolute national crisis for one reason and one reason alone."

Of course, this would imply that the Dems are bloodthirsty monsters that want Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders to give their Inaugural Address atop a mound of coronavirus victims, but what else is new? Hegseth is also the guy that spends his job wondering if Bernie was cheering on the Soviet ice hockey team at the 1980 Olympics, so it's debatable whether or not we should be turning to him for his opinions about any issues, much less ones that deal with life-threatening sicknesses.

People that aren't even employed by FOX News have found themselves caught in the conspiracy net that it inevitably casts. A man who went through Coronavirus quarantines, and was cleared of having the disease, was interviewed and then coughed on air. He blamed this on nerves, but the internet wasn't so sure, and now he has to deal with that along with thousands of dollars of medical bills. Oh, and his wife got pneumonia and his father-in-law died from Coronavirus. No joke to end this paragraph, because reality is terrible.

And it isn't just Fox that features outrageous people just projectile vomiting theories and ideas that they'll almost certainly regret in like four hours. CNBC's Rick Santelli proposed giving the virus to everyone and being done with it in a month. That way, we wouldn't wreak "havoc on the global and domestic economies."

I take back our "dumbest assertion in the history of the world" claim from earlier.

Luckily, we don't have to deal with a bunch of people trying to profit off of this with entire books based on Coronavirus theories. Oh, we do? Like a lot of them? Ones with names like Jesus vs Satan: The Origins of Coronavirus and Your Homemade Hand Sanitizer Recipes: How To Make Your Hand Sanitizer With Natural Essential Oils? That's not great. Of course, some of these seem written to help people, though unless they're just one hundred pages of "WASH YOUR FUCKING HANDS," I'm not sure what they can offer.

In the time it took you to read this article, a dozen more theories have probably sprung up, done irreparable damage to America's collective psyche and been dismissed the CDC. So in the end, who can you trust? Health professionals, probably. And me, when I tell you again to not drink fucking bleach.