Cooties Drives the Covid Beliefs

Their ridiculous beliefs about Covid are driven by our evolved psychology for the behavior of contaminants, or “cooties.” Trouble is, respiratory viruses aren’t at all like cooties.

A mass hysteria swept over the world in March of 2020. I diagnosed it at the start, and devoted myself to researching the “physics” of such emergent psycho-societal events, which also underlie the great totalitarianisms of the last century.

One of the most bizarre facets of what we’ve been experiencing is how those within the hysteria really, truly, 110% believe patently absurd things about Covid, the interventions, and bedrock civil liberties.

In April of 2021 I wrote in the Federalist...

By mid-March [of 2020], numerous false narratives spread like wildfire: COVID-19’s infection fatality rate was devastatingly high for the entire population; asymptomatic people were rampant and dangerous; COVID-19 is extremely risky for the young; immunity doesn’t apply like it normally does; a COVID bout could leave you with chronic health issues, unlike infections from other coronaviruses; forcibly confining healthy populations to their homes and shutting down businesses is an entirely sensible measure without downsides; masks work because surgeons wear them; and more.

Things have not let up since I wrote that. The mainstream narrative has only deepened, and added a variety of other strange beliefs, such as that the unvaccinated are a risk to the vaccinated despite the fact that the vaccinated (i) are vaccinated, and (ii) still transmit the virus at about the same rates as the unvaccinated.

Here I will give a simple explanation for why they believe what they believe. Over this short article I’ll describe why it is that certain human psychological predispositions explain the mainstream narrative’s beliefs about…

1. asymptomatics

2. hand sanitizer

3. the two meter rule

4. masks

5. lockdowns

6. treatment

7. natural immunity

8. long Covid

9. who’s at risk

10. seasonality

11. vaccines

And you can also find an even easier-to-follow Science Moment on it below.

Cooties

Much of what they believe about Covid emanates from our innate human psychology concerning disgusting infectious contaminants, or “cooties”.

What are cooties? Think: gross, pus-filled, putrid, stinky, lice-ridden, bacteria-growing dirty things. They’re our basic human intuitive notion of a contaminant.

By understanding the “physics of cooties,” we can begin to make sense of how the mainstream narrative ended up with many of its bizarre beliefs about Covid.

In fact, in many (all?) mass delusions the mainstream narrative comes to treat the out-group as if they have cooties. For example, African-Americans (U.S. slavery), Jews (Nazi Germany), upper class (Communist China), women without a head scarf (Islamic Iran), or homosexuals (pretty much anywhere) became associated with contaminants. They have cooties.

The psychology of contaminants drives the narratives of mass delusion and prejudicial discrimination generally, but we’ll focus here mostly on how this instinctive way of thinking about contaminants has steered the Covid narrative.

A key thing to keep in mind is that although respiratory viruses are infectious contaminants, they do not at all follow the physics of cooties.

Let’s walk through some of the basic "physics laws” for cooties. As we do, we’ll be able to derive what the Covid Cult falsely believes.

Cooties Law #1: Contamination can be invisible.

When food falls on the floor, it’s treated as dirty whether or not you see dirt on it. It’s now icky. Period. This is true for anything that’s contaminated. That’s Law #1.

Human societies are thereby perfectly happy to discriminate against folks on the basis of traits that are not even perceptually identifiable, e.g., class, birthright, religion, sexual orientation, some light skin African Americans, most Jews. They may look like those in the in-group, but they can nevertheless carry the disgusting contamination.

In the case of an actual pandemic, this cootie-invisibility expresses itself as “asymptomatic disease carriers,” and they were potentially everywhere despite evidence of asymptomatic transmission being very rare.

[1] Asymptomatics are inherently potentially infectious.

It need not have been this way. It could have been that, so long as you, say, look like you’re in the virtuous group, then humans are perfectly content treating you as virtuous. But we’re not like that, because cooties aren’t like that. Or, if the physics of contamination were that something is contaminated if and only if there’s visible guck on it, then in-groups would only have ethnically distinguishable out-groups.

Cooties Law #2: If you get it in your mouth, nose or eyes, you’re contaminated.

Contamination is spread by contact. But not just anywhere. Getting it on your hands is gross, but it doesn’t infect you per se unless it gets in your mouth, nose or eyes. The key to human contamination is that it got in you.

In terms of out-groups generally, you should steer clear of those in the out-group, and definitely avoid contact, especially intimate contact. Even those in the righteous in-group will become unrighteous by befriending, supporting or most certainly dating someone in the out-group. Instinctively, it’s because they’ve gotten too close to the contaminated, and so now they are themselves contaminated.

It need not have been this way. It could, say, have been that, so long as the out-group just gives a small bit of a deferential expression upon greeting someone in our group, we’re like totally 100% cool. Or, it could instead have been that the righteous group simply stays righteous no matter who they’re intimate with. It’s not that way because our disgust sense follows its own peculiar rules, one driven by our evolved instincts concerning cooties.

Law #2 has several immediate consequences in terms of Covid, which is not spread in this cooties fashion, but, rather, is spread via smoke-like aerosols, and can even travel between rooms through ventilation and piping.

The first concerns hand sanitizer, which is, instinctively, exactly what’s needed to disinfect the spot on — not in — one’s body that got cooties on it, almost always one’s hands.

[2] Hand sanitizer protects against Covid infection.

The second is that folks need to stand far enough way from others that one can’t be coughed or sneezed on in the face, which is what drove the two-meter rule.

[3] One should socially distance at around two meters.

Third, the law explains the allure of masks which, although not slowing smoke-like aerosols, actually do block spittle.

[4] Masks slow Covid transmission.

Finally, this law explains why lockdowns super-obviously have to work: If everyone’s at home, no one’s cooties can get on anyone else.

[5] Lockdowns slow Covid transmission.

Cooties Law #3: You can’t clean contaminated things.

Or, once contaminated, always contaminated.

For example, in cooties physics, food is deemed contaminated if it falls on the floor. It fits Law #1 in that it’s deemed contaminated whether or not you can see any dirt on it. But, in addition, it can’t be cleaned. It’s as good as dirt now, and you just have to throw it away.

In general out-group terms, those in the out-group cannot become righteous merely by modifying their behavior to be like those in the righteous in-group. The unclean can’t become clean.

There are two important consequences for Covid.

First, it implies that those who catch Covid cannot be treated by medication. If they could be treated, then it would mean the unclean can become clean, and that violates this law. That’s why there has been a crimes-against-humanity-level taboo against treatment for Covid, something that has best been communicated by Dr. Peter McCollough.

[6] Covid cannot be treated.

Second, it follows that natural immunity isn’t a thing. The idea behind natural immunity is that someone who is infected and recovers is then much less able to get infected. But that would suggest that an unclean (infected) person can become clean. Worse, natural immunity makes the recovered person even safer to be around than someone who was never infected at all, because the latter can suddenly at any time become infected. That would suggest the unclean can become extra clean, and that’s an extra big violation of Law #3.

[7] Recovery from Covid does not provide immunity.

Cooties Law #4: It’s a permanent bad thing to get contaminated.

Whatever that (possibly invisible) gunk might be, if I get any of it in me, I’m going to be in a bad bad way! And, like, potentially for a long time. Possibly permanently damaged!

This is why we treat those in any out-group as not merely bad, but worse off in the long run. It’s not good to be them.

For Covid, it explains why the mainstream narrative says that one doesn’t ever get over it, but instead has long Covid, with permanent deficits.

[8] Covid leads inexorably to chronic long term problems (disproportionate to that of flu and other respiratory viruses, which didn’t succumb to the cooties narrative).

Cooties Law #5: Anyone can get contaminated, at any time.

Our instinctive psychological “cooties” model for contaminants doesn’t specify that it’s more dangerous to certain folks over others, nor that it matters when you get contaminated, and that has the following two immediate consequences.

[9] Everyone is at risk from Covid. (And, so it’s not at all true that there’s a thousand-fold difference across age brackets.)

[10] Covid is not seasonal.

Cooties Law #6: You CAN shield yourself from contamination.

Although you can’t clean anything contaminated, you can prevent contamination from things that could get contaminated. Like… proper storage, refrigeration, keeping it away from contaminated things, away from carcasses, etc.

Social distancing, masks, and lockdowns (which we already saw above emanating from Law #2) also follow from this, but vaccines fall more narrowly within this category.

Vaccines historically were sterilizing, and so they fit in the narrative as shielding against infection. The new vaccines do not even have this property, but were labeled as ‘vaccines’ in order to fit the role of a cootie-shield. Thus their appeal as a justification for vaccine mandates.

[11] Vaccines protect against transmission.

These beliefs emerge because they’re selected for

These eleven central mainstream beliefs about Covid are false, but they ring 110% true to because they fit our pre-existing cognitive biases toward the ways contaminants behave.

1. Asymptomatics are inherently potentially infectious.

2. Hand sanitizer protects against Covid infection.

3. One should socially distance at around two meters.

4. Masks slow Covid transmission.

5. Lockdowns slow Covid transmission.

6. Covid cannot be treated.

7. Recovery from Covid does not provide immunity.

8. Covid leads inexorably to chronic long term problems (disproportionate to that of flu and other respiratory viruses, which didn’t succumb to the cooties narrative).

9. Everyone is at risk from Covid. (And, so it’s not at all true that there’s a thousand-fold difference across age brackets.)

10. Covid is not seasonal.

11. Vaccines protect against transmission.

Is this because there are puppeteers guiding the mass delusion, introducing these beliefs because they know we’re susceptible to believing them?

No. That would be to entirely miss the point.

Cooties find their way into how in-groups stereotype out-groups in many, most or all societies not because there is a super-cagey cabal creating the perfect narrative.

Rather, the moral here is that these beliefs get selected for over time because they fit our innate preconceptions so well. The mainstream narrative ends up fitting the physics of cooties — as it often does for out-groups — because societies evolve, and the beliefs that conform more closely to our instinctive biases get selected for.

Cooties, cooties everywhere because humans humans everywhere. It’s convergent evolution. Covid hysteria stumbled its way, as all societies do, to treating the out-group in similar, cooties-driven ways.

Follow up with this Moment video to really drive it home in your brain…