Covid Conspiracists Die Young, Live Worse

 


Yet they are so sure of themselves...


There is a fascinating article over on the Cambridge University Press website at the moment, “Conspiracy beliefs prospectively predict health behavior and well-being during a pandemic,” by Jan-Willem van Prooijen, Tom W. Etienne , Yordan Kutiyski,  and André P. M. Krouwel. The authors did a study of the lives of people who believe that Covid is a hoax, or that the vaccines are ineffective or part of a conspiracy against them, and discovered that…surprise!…such people tended to get Covid. And die. Or if they didn’t die, were very sick. Or even if they recovered or were asymptomatic, their lives were made very much worse by their beliefs. They lost jobs, were alienated from friends and family, and just generally suffered.


In short, nothing good …and much bad…comes from being a Covid-denialist and/or believing in conspiracy theories.


On some level, yes, you could argue that this is hardly news. It would seem to be obvious. But the fact that so many people continue to hold fast to insane beliefs, and suffer or even die because of them, shows that the obvious is not always obvious. In other words, there are none so blind as those who will not see.


Alas, neither Death nor Darwin care whether you choose to blink…or not.


~mjt



Source: “Conspiracy beliefs prospectively predict health behavior and well-being during a pandemic,” by Jan-Willem van Prooijen, Tom W. Etienne , Yordan Kutiyski,  and André P. M. Krouwel, Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2021, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/conspiracy-beliefs-prospectively-predict-health-behavior-and-wellbeing-during-a-pandemic/9739301679DEF2B81958CBB03C5D5AC1



Copyright©2021 Michael Jay Tucker

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