The COVID-19 pandemic

[tomh009]

4-5 years ago, I would have accepted that a good amount of people pushing such messages are botnets run by malicious actors. But in 2021, the virus of stupidity is enough to propagate such stuff on its own. Russia, Iran, China, far-right conservatives barely need to push any buttons these days. There are certainly malicious actors out there pushing this stuff for sure, but by now the seeds of conspiracy have been planted all over the place. These morons don't need bots to tell them how to think because this is their default mode of thinking.
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Ultimately, I blame capitalism, but that's not a topic to discuss on WRC.

Allow me to assure you, such stupidity does not require any specific economic system. And, on the flip side, there are many capitalist countries (to me, a social democracy is still fundamentally capitalist) where this is a far, far smaller problem. That country to the south of us, though ...