After spending the pandemic working in a public health job, I doubt even this would convince the most stubborn of COVID deniers. I called dozens of patients every week to inform them of positive tests, many of them insisting that COVID wasn’t real and it must be allergies or a cold.

When the Delta variant came around, I started to see a pattern. The fully vaccinated people who had tested positive were barely getting sick at all, while around 30% of the unvaccinated cases were doing so badly, I frequently had to speak with family members, as the patients were hospitalized or too sick to talk. I couldn’t believe how many people argued with me, as their loved ones were dying in the hospital, about how COVID wasn’t real and that it was the flu or pneumonia. I worked with several doctors who told me they had patients whose last words before going on ventilators were similar arguments.

We are in the age of mass psychosis. I don’t know why so many people are falling for such outlandish conspiracy theories, but there is no getting through to them.