14 Myths They Keep Telling Themselves about the Pandemic

An account of the cognitive dissonance you've likely encountered from NPCs during the pandemic years, expressed in a first-person, NPC narrative.

It was different back then…

Look, I get it now.

I know you were always banging on about it on your social media, and how, with hindsight, you might feel vindicated by some of the claims you made.

I get it.

But it was different back then.

There were thousands of people dying per day and we didn’t know what this was going to be like.

People were right to be scared because it was different back then.

Yeah, I got my shots.

Sure, we were all scared into doing it, but that doesn’t make it wrong.

The original variants were far more lethal and everyone was at risk.

It’s not a threat anymore though.

I mean, I know it still is, but it’s less likely to kill you, and besides, everyone is mostly vaccinated anyhow, so it really was different back then.

Governments did the best they could…

What did you really expect them to do?

We haven’t had a pandemic since whenever, and even so, despite knowing a lot more about viruses or epidemiology now, we were still in uncharted territory.

We had to do something and something was better than nothing, so yeah, lockdowns, contact-tracing, quarantine, isolation, masking, vaccine mandates, public health orders - yeah, you name it - these were all imperfect responses, but they were made with the best intentions - to save lives, prevent the spread of the disease and, you know what, they worked pretty well.

Well, at least they worked better than doing nothing would have!

It would have been far worse if we didn’t lockdown…

Lockdowns bought us the time.

Yeah, it absolutely flattened the curve.

We saved the hospitals from being inundated.

We gave Pharma the time to develop the life-saving vaccines.

We stopped people from seeing each other and you know what, that just had to have stopped the spread of the disease to some extent.

You think it didn’t?

Prove it.

It would have been far worse if I wasn’t vaccinated…

When I got COVID, my symptoms were only mild so I’m thankful to have been vaccinated otherwise it could have been so much worse.

It would have been far worse if we didn’t wear masks…

Yeah, I wore a mask.

It wasn’t the only thing I did to protect myself of course, but it made sense to do it.

I washed my hands thoroughly, I social distanced, if I felt ill I stayed at home, I got vaccinated, but yeah, wearing a mask in crowded places was an important part of protecting myself and others.

Look, sometimes you don’t need a scientific study to justify every action you take.

Sometimes you just go on intuition, and masking was one way to prevent the spread of the disease through the air.

Like I said, it was part of a whole range of things I did to protect myself and others.

What do you mean why don’t I wear one right now?

I told you before that things were different back then.

COVID’s not as bad these days, and I’m vaccinated.

It was coming out of lockdown that made it worse…

If anything, we probably made three mistakes in our response.

We didn’t lockdown early enough.

We didn’t lockdown hard enough.

We came out of lockdown too early.

Lockdowns didn’t look as good as they could have because we were too slow to lockdown, and when we did, we were all still allowed to go out for many different reasons and spread the disease.

Hydroxychloroquine? You serious?….

Really, are you serious?

Did you take your health advice from Donald Trump?

Don’t they treat malaria with that stuff?

I’ve heard some pretty bad things about that.

It was actually banned and people were overdosing on it.

No clinical trials have ever shown any benefit for it against COVID-19.

Ivermectin? You serious?…

Horse paste?

Haha, now I know you’re actually joking.

There is zero evidence it’s effective.

Even Merck, the company that makes the stuff said it wasn’t effective in treating COVID-19!

If anything there’s more evidence suggesting it’s harmful, and like hydroxychloroquine, people were overdosing on it and putting even more pressure on the health system when we needed that the least.

Seriously, if you keep coming up with this stuff you’ll just get laughed at.

Way to show how far down the rabbit hole you’ve gone.

My doctor and all the experts said the vaccines were ok, so I trusted that…

Was I really going to take medical advice from Joe Rogan?

Would I really do my “research” from Youtube?

No, I trusted what my doctor said thanks very much.

He told me that clinical trial data looked really good, and even though he was hesitant at first, the trial data confirmed that the vaccines were safe and effective.

I couldn’t take the time to investigate all of these things.

At some point you had to trust the experts right?

All of them were saying it was ok.

Therefore, it was ok for me.

The Pfizer vaccine was 95% effective!…

Didn’t you see the clinical trial data?

95% effective!

The vaccines would prevent 95% of all COVID infections!

You can’t argue with that can you?

That’s the gold-standard: a randomised, double-blinded, placebo controlled clinical trial that you’re arguing against right there.

You can say what you want about this, but I trust in Science.

Taking my vaccine helped stop the spread, to get herd immunity and end the pandemic…

Look, I know I was relatively fit, young and otherwise healthy, but taking the vaccine was about protecting those who were more at risk, even if it wasn’t totally about myself.

I didn’t want to take the risk for myself either way, but even if the vaccines didn’t end up being as perfect as we thought, at least I was doing my bit to protect the vulnerable.

You know, the old, the immunocompromised and the comorbid.

Not everyone could even have gotten their vaccine at the time, so I was doing my part to help stop the spread and to help other people have a fighting chance against the disease.

What, didn’t you like needles?

Haha.

Seriously though, you had to do your part too you know.

We never got to herd immunity because people like you.

It was our path out of lockdown.

It was our way of ending the pandemic.

Such a shame that the variants could develop in the unvaccinated and then thrive because of this.

We could have ended it if only we had vaccinated everyone.

The benefits outweighed the risks…

I knew that there was the small risk of a bad side-effect with the vaccine, but I also knew that the risk of death from COVID-19 was substantially higher.

The risks of COVID-19 were far worse than any rare or mild side-effect from the vaccines, so I took my chances with this, and the odds really were so small that anything bad would happen.

Even if something bad like myocarditis would happen, most cases were really mild and I would have recovered just fine.

I had more chances of getting myocarditis from COVID-19 anyhow, so at least I was reducing my risks.

I took the vaccine and I was ok, therefore, they must all be ok…

Look, I’ve heard some reports of rare side-effects from the vaccine, but all I got was a sore arm for a couple of days.

I don’t know anyone personally who was injured from the vaccine.

Seriously, these vaccines were given to millions of people and there have been only about 14 deaths in Australia that have been caused by the vaccine.

These sorts of things are incredibly hard to prove anyway aren’t they?

Where’s the proof that the vaccines caused it?

If the vaccines were causing the harm you say they cause, we’d surely know about it.

So what about excess mortality?

Of course there’s excess mortality!

We’ve been living in a pandemic don’t you know?

There’s probably loads more COVID-19 in the community than we know of but people have stopped testing so we are probably hugely underestimating it.

Don’t forget how bad Long-COVID is, that’s probably a big part of this too.

Trust me, we’d be hearing about it if the vaccines were responsible for this.

Why would they lie to us?

So you’re saying that it’s a big grand conspiracy to what, depopulate the globe?

No?

Then what’s the conspiracy?

Why would they lie to us?

If they’re all in on it, then why hasn’t anyone spilled the beans yet?

It only takes one person right?

One person to confess and it would all be over.

Seriously, you can read anything on the Internet.

You really have disappeared down the rabbit hole haven’t you???!!!