Confessions of a Covid-19 truther

According to psychologists, denial is a common defence mechanism. We humans reject truths which we find too uncomfortable to bear. When reality becomes too painful, we refuse to acknowledge it. The more evidence mounts against us, the more we insist that everything is ok.

I fear I might be doing precisely that in reaction to the coronavirus pandemic. Every day I watch the global death toll ticking up — that awful exponential growth we keep being told about. I see the images from the hospitals. I read the tweets of NHS frontline staff saying how desperate things are, or the Facebook posts of people mourning the dead. And I think: it can’t be that bad. Isn’t this all hysteria? Aren’t people always dying in hospitals? Aren’t we destroying the whole global economy, perhaps our civilisation, on the advice of a few catastrophist scientists? Isn’t the weather lovely?

So help me God, I’m a Covid-truther.