(Also, ugh, remember those terrible articles, with claims like "no immunity from Omicron", "people will be routinely getting infected twice a month", "imprinting proven", etc. etc.

IT WAS ALREADY EASY TO TELL IT WAS CLEARLY WRONG WHEN PUBLISHED, but its predictions also failed.)

— zeynep tufekci (@zeynep) October 13, 2022

Yeah, I remember those. A lot of the Covidians were claiming we’d get infected dozens of times a year and that our entire society would collapse due to widespread disability from Long Covid. This was common on Twitter and elsewhere. It was farcically absurd, of course, but the Covid Zero people and Covidians took it completely seriously and expected the rest of us to as well.

It will be interesting after the pandemic recedes a little more to examine the psychology of such beliefs and how they develop. What was going on there was different from hypochondriasis as it was an attempt to shame others and to elicit fear in them to cause those others to behave as the Covidians believed was correct. In this their behavior bears more resemblance to religion than anything else. The Covidians see themselves as a besieged but morally-correct outgroup holding the line against the sinners of larger society who want somewhat normal lives.

Sound like anyone else you know (evangelicals)?