Gems, Genocide, Germs

The gems being discussed this week are not stones, but the conspiracy theories that are flying about regarding the germ-of-the-day, the coronavirus sickening millions and killing tens of thousands of people all over earth.

The response to this pandemic has been less competent than what we as a species are capable of. I suspect this is due, at least in part, to our lack of recent experience with a biological enemy that is so effective at sickening us. But even that considered, we still could have done better by listening to the expertise of those who study this sort of thing, epidemiologists and virologists most of all. But, for whatever reason, many countries, and in the U.S. individual states, governmental/political leaders in many cases ignored scientific bases for action and instead relied on their own “gut” (or sometimes even more cynically, profit motives) in deciding how to proceed. Now that the situation has gotten bad, some of those same governments are trying to mask their failures by inventing and spreading conspiracy theories.