Covid Deniers Need to Take a Breath

I thought this pandemic would be over by now. Well, not really. It could have been.

We have a vaccine that stops the spread, and it’s free and safe and available at drive-throughs. Vaccines have saved millions of lives over the last century, with very few downsides. So the news these days about this pandemic of the unvaccinated is tough to wrap your head around.

· · ·My first article about this phenomenon overviews the shame and ignorance around Covid· · ·

Hospitals in the South brace for overflow that could lead to “failure.” Ventilators hum. Covid long-haulers deal with brain fog. The unvaccinated make up more than 90 percent of those hospitalized, many of whom see their savings wiped out. Covid deniers are literally struggling to take a breath.

Anti-vaxxers foolishly say the vaccine has nanotech to track you, that it changes your DNA and damages fertility, that it’s unproven and untested. Fistfights break out at vaccine rallys, sometimes even stabbings.

Anti-vaxxers around the country carry signs like “Covid hoax” and “The blood of Christ is my vaccine.”

People are being hospitalized after rumors online and on TV convinced them Ivermectin, a drug mainly used for horse-deworming, might treat Covid-19. When some doctors wouldn’t prescribe the drug for covid, people started buying it at feed stores, and in some animal shops it’s in short supply. “You are not a horse,” tweeted the FDA.

What is happening here? Why has half the country gone crazy? Why is all this anti-vax blindness prolonging the pandemic? Why do we still feel the shame, guilt and hate I first wrote about near the beginning of the pandemic?

In my view, these folks have collapsed the two polarities of a healthy worldview: beliefs and facts. Beliefs are like your god, they guide you in your big picture. Facts are your map: they ground you in reality and keep you from falling into open sewers. Balancing opposites is one mark of a top-notch mind.

Fact is, the disease doesn’t care about beliefs. It spreads and kills according to laws of physics and biology. Few things better capture the absurdity of our times than this headline: “3rd conservative radio host who condemned vaccines dies of Covid.” (The dead radio host, Marc Bernier, said the vaccine-pushing government was “acting like Nazi’s.” That the government is pushing medicines that save you, not kill you, seems a distinction Bernier missed.)

The ventilator hums at a frequency that becomes the room. Not background noise — the room itself. The sound of a machine breathing for someone who chose not to protect the breath they had.

Written in 2021, when the vaccine was free, available at drive-throughs, and backed by a century of immunological science. When hospitals in the South were building overflow tents in parking lots. When the spiritual community — the people who talk about interconnection and collective consciousness — were sharing anti-vax memes between posts about mercury retrograde.

The structural betrayal is specific: the same communities that preach "we are all one" decided that collective immunity was someone else's problem. The yoga teachers who talk about prana — life force, breath — refused the intervention that protects breath. The irony is not subtle. It's architectural. A belief system built on interconnection that collapses the moment interconnection requires a needle.

The honest admission, years later: the fury has metabolized into something quieter and sadder. Not at the deniers — at the system that made denialism profitable. The influencers who monetized fear. The platforms that amplified conspiracy because engagement is engagement. The structural incentive to be wrong loudly is stronger than the structural incentive to be right quietly.

Some lessons only land after the bodies are counted.