Welcome to my new daily series: Quarantine! I’ve been laid off for at least weeks so I decided to do a daily series separate from my weekly series, Born Creationist. Of course, we are living in an unprecedented time of history. As you might have already assumed, I’ve been temporarily laid off because of the Covid-19 virus outbreak. It seems odd that I could so casually talk about being laid off and be less panicked about that than whether or not I’ve used enough hand sanitizer lately, but that is where we are right now.

Technically, I’m on day 2 of family quarantine but yesterday was devoted to calling various banks to ensure my loans could be deferred penalty free which left little energy for writing. The banks are in an odd position right now. They would love an opportunity for my principle balance to stay the same while their interests grow. But that would obviously bring about an unprecedented public backlash. Almost overnight, millions of Americans through no fault of their own found themselves without an income. If debt collectors took advantage of this situation they’d end up with millions of loans going into default they wouldn’t make any money at all. It’s just like how movie studios have delayed their big theatrical releases. If no one is going to see a movie in theaters, the studio would lose millions of dollars. It really begs the question: is anyone benefitting from this pandemic?

Normally, you might say it’s an insensitive question to ask, but it’s become a serious question because of the scores of conspiracy minded people who’ve been voicing their views online. My wife showed me a video this morning that came up on her Facebook feed of a man explaining the psychological reasons we’re all in a panic. Since there’s a lot we still don’t know about this pandemic, our fear is amplified. Since we can receive constant daily updates, our fear is amplified. Since we can see how scared our friends, neighbors, and families are, our fear is amplified. All of this is true, but does it mean our amplified fears are unjustified? The man in the video went on to say that the government could be lying about the numbers we are seeing. That’s what leads me to the most logical next question: “Why?” Why would, not jut the American government, but governments around the world lie about the number of cases and deaths from Covid-19? So let’s take a deep dive into this.

As news of this virus began to emerge, the leaders in governments around the world tried to downplay its effect. As the numbers of cases and deaths grew, they tried to cull the panic that normally ensues when a new disease starts spreading around. The world’s governments have nothing to gain from a world in panic. But in the conspiracy mind, the government and media want the population to panic so they’ll buy more stuff. They’ll trust the government to tell them what to do and will happily follow the orders. In this case, though, people aren’t really spending money. Sure the grocery stores have steady traffic of people looking for toilet paper and other various cleaning supplies. Frozen meals and bottled water are constantly low in quantity. However, since these items are not as used to being in such high demand, this could hurt their business in the long term. The amount of money the cleaning supply industry is making in this surge is still little compared to the amount of money all other industries are now losing daily. So it’s not money for capitalists.

Another reason the conspiracy minded claim the government would want to cause a panic is so we will be more submissive. This has been the more common theme I’ve seen in recent days on social media. The “control theory.” We are all just believing whatever the government tells us and going along with it for no reason, giving up our freedoms. But in this case, the general population is being asked to stay inside. We’re being asked to not go to work. We’re asked to keep our children home from (as a conspiracist might put it) the “brainwashing factory” that is the public school system. Since many people aren’t working, they can’t go out and spend money on the usual frivolous things that usually pollute our minds and bodies. That means no more movies that gaslight us into submission. We are not contributing to the economy that keeps the fat cats fat and the government money flowing. So this does nothing to make things better for the government.

What about the media? Yes! The media always has an agenda! They want us to be panicked because…? They want us to watch their shows! But television studios don’t make their money from eyeballs glued to disaster porn. They make their money from advertisers. This is something even the most crazy conspiracy theorist understands. But what good does advertising do when people aren’t capable of spending money on frivolous goods? If anything, there’s a potential this could put a strain on the media industry because delaying production on major shows and movies is not a cheap endeavor. There’s nothing simple about delaying a release at the last second is either. Companies will not be able to put aside as much money for advertising soon as they will need to focus on recovering from the massive amount of unexpected downtime this has caused. So it doesn’t do any good for the media to induce this level of panic.

If you find some meme or video while scrolling through social media claiming that all of this panic is an overreaction, I’ll encourage you to do the same thing I encouraged my wife to do: report it! There’s now more options available in the social media domain to report posts that share false information and if there’s ever been a time to be vigilant against bullshit, this is it. This pandemic is on track to cost millions of lives and overwhelm our healthcare industry unless we all do our part to stunt its spread. We can do that by simply taking a break from the world. It’s not easy, it’s not cheap, it will require a lot of sacrifice, but it’s the right thing to do. We can’t allow the spread of disinformation to negatively affect the efforts of the thousands of doctors and scientists around the world who must continue working to find better testing and treatments for the virus.

Stay safe everyone, stay inside, and use hand sanitizer! Check in tomorrow.