The Novel Conspiracy Virus…2020

If I were the novel Coronavirus virus, a teeny-weeny microbe no more, which has turned millions of mighty humans into cowering, pitiable creatures, yelping like wounded puppies, I would be overcome with what can only be described as a deep sense of 'sadistic job satisfaction'. At the least I would be bemused.

Not so much by the death and devastation, but by this typically quaint human desperation to find an explanation. It is one of those inexplicable human quirks: we seek explanations for everything, especially for overwhelming tragedies of which we can ordinarily make little or no sense. Somehow, again for unreasonable reasons, we seem to feel relived once we ‘think’ we have an explanation, even if that explanation does nothing to change our miserable circumstances.

And if established science cannot supply an explanation or — because it is rigorous — is taking much too irritatingly long to find, then any explanation will do, as a short-term palliative. Even a rumour can provide some relief. The line between science and fiction was never too broad in the best of times. But now there is no line. So, fact, fiction, myth, reality, fake, real, verified, unverified and so on can all grow merrily together, like wheat and tares in the wild.

Because, pending the arrival of scientific explanations and a vaccination, humans do need comforting explanations to make it all a tad more bearable, the internet is bubbling over with theories of all manner... explanations that are not just simple but simplistic. All of them are spun around that other great comforting factor: blame shifting. Yes sir! While any explanation is welcome the most popular and effective ones (as a palliative) are those which hang the blame on someone else. We are happy when we know both the cause and the culprit, so long as we are not the culprit!

This culprit in the current context is anyone. It’s a wide expanse indeed: nations; establishments; large businesses; dictators; industries; scientists; doctors; hospitals; temples of higher learning... all singularly or collectively bent upon wiping out half the global population to acquire mindless power and money, to rule over what is left of the world.

Because these theories are cleverly written and do make for unputdownable reading, undoubtedly a virtue in our boring locked down times, they have spread like Australian forest fire. Or, to use an even more topical expression, they have become ‘viral’. After all who wouldn’t enjoy a delicious winter’s tale by the fireside of a smouldering pandemic. Especially, if these tales satiate our desperate hunger for comforting explanations.

And for this and no other reason I too am quite enamoured of these tales that trawl the gutters of chilling conspiracy...a throwback to my Robin Cook days. The trouble is that I am not entirely convinced that it is sensible to take these stories to heart, beguiling as they may be. After all what do these contrarians want us to do? In fact, nothing. Other than tearing down every established scientific fact, finding and institution and holding all establishments (pejoratively described as ‘mainstream’) up to ridicule they have little to offer. So, the question remains: ‘what are we to do?’

• Are we to willy-nilly become parts of these fables and join the not such a balmy army of booers?
• Are we to cock a snook at the painstaking work of innumerable scientists, technologists, virologists, pathologists and renowned epidemiologists at iconic universities, labs and institutions of excellence around the world, ignore their counsel and go on living as if nothing’s happened?
• Are we to dismiss the mountain of evidence built on evidence by individual scientists, a large number of them toiling out of home labs, throw all caution to wind and dare the pandemic with devilry? 
• Are we to behave as if nothing is in fact wrong, that Covid is no more than a figment of 'elitist' imagination, which is supposed to scare all of us to death.
• Are we being expected to believe that countless doctors and scientists dispersed across the earth and unrelated to one another are ‘conspiring’ lockstep in perfect synchrony much like Robin Cook’s horrible villains, to give effect to a grand conspiracy designed by some secret cabal to annihilate the world and most of its people?

Preposterous as it is, in a moment of utter insanity, we might actually even consider this, provided there was an alternate path. The fact is that there is none. No sir, the conspiracy peddlers are not here to provide solutions; their stock in trade is to create confusion and make a quick buck while the going is good by preying upon a fatal human fallibility. The desire to find some, any, explanation to make it all more bearable.

So, here is what we might want to do: if you like spy, espionage or crime stories then by all means read and watch every one of these conspiracy productions. There can be few better ways of filling the endless number of empty hours that surround our lives these days. Read. Enjoy. And dismiss. If I were you, I would be downloading all of them right away because the time for these conspiracy writers will be over the day we find a vaccination. It is limited edition, guys. Book your copy now!!!