Covid 19 has quickly become a playground for axe-grinders and barrow-pushers. When disaster strikes, out they come in force. Let's upset some apple-carts.

On world-shaking issues, everybody has got an opinion and everybody is welcome to one. For most people, their take on a phenomenon like Coronavirus is merely speculation. They generally know this and don't claim anything different. For others, it's undeniable confirmation of something they have always believed to be true. But their unconscious motive is given away by the fact that whatever their pet hate or darling theory is, they held it long before Covid 19 happened along. They had a pre-existing bias to believe something, so they can't even pretend to objectivity. They mostly preach to the converted anyway, so that won't bother them.

Today a post appeared in my Facebook feed declaring that animal cruelty had brought all of humanity to its knees. That's an overreach that would have done Inspector Gadget proud. There are many factors that combined to bring about this pandemic. You can point to a link in a chain and insist that without that link the event wouldn't have occurred. But there are other links that are equally important. To single one out and predicate the whole sequence of events upon it is just plain bad logic. This process uses a weak logical connection for advancing a sentiment. That's how demagoguery works.

Another important link in the chain is China's inability to enforce its own laws, probably due to corruption. Reports suggest that Wuhan's live-animal food markets are illegal. That doesn't disprove the complicity of animal cruelty. However, it does highlight that solving corruption among officials is a bigger issue, particularly because it facilitates a wide range of abuses. So, why didn't the animal cruelty zealots highlight that instead? There's also the undeniable fact that improper dealing with the carcasses of animals that were humanely slaughtered could have produced the same outcome.

A few days ago, I read an article in a Newscorp publication declaring that Coronavirus should make us question whether we should be eating animals at all. Subscribers to that opinion clearly believe it’s possible for the human race to snap their fingers and instantly invalidate 2.4 million years of human history as carnivores. As if nature played some sort of cruel joke that it's our obligation to rectify. Dream on. It's highly unlikely that humans could have got to be where we are without being meat-eaters. The whole planet may eventually stop eating animals in favour of plant-based foods. However, that will be due to proof of suitability and sustainability that has grown over decades, not just a year or two. "Look at me, I did it and I haven't died" are famous last words repeated throughout history. Humanity will wisely wait and see what the fullness of time reveals.

A flurry of conspiracy theories have mushroomed over Covid 19. These were inevitable, considering that a mushroom cloud of them has been growing ever since the self-imposed yoke of social media burst upon us. Mostly they expound how one government or organisation, or a conspiracy of such entities is conspiring to impose upon us global government. This world domination will apparently bring a new serfdom in which we are deprived of whatever rights the individual most fears losing.

So, Covid 19 was deliberately released to kill off the old and sick, to keep populations down, take people's guns away or some other such skulduggery. Most of these claims have holes in them you could drive a bus through. People who advance the ones about China and world domination never get around to explaining why they think the Chinese government would resort to such tactics to achieve something that they were already succeeding at quite nicely, anyway. The conspirators themselves would have no proof that they wouldn't become victims of their own evil.

"Haters gonna hate", parrot those who hate to be disagreed with. We don't hate their theories, we just don't believe them. We recognise that claims based on hints and allegations have the convenient quality that they can't be disproved. Certainly not to people who have zero interest in having them proven wrong. But that just isn't good enough to win support of people are aren't easily convinced or won over with mere appeals sentiment.