The COVID-19 crisis just became a lot messier, with different opinions flying through the air at such high velocities that not even standing six feet apart will stop the madness.

That’s right: the people from your hometown are saying the coronavirus is a government scheme — a hoax to control you. Every scientist, healthcare worker and person who has suffered from the virus? They’re all lying to you, and these individuals who peaked in high school are now the only ones you can trust these days because they are of the select few able to see the truth. 

It is rude to ask, so The Bucknellian is here to clarify: those Facebook memes that loosely outline the ways in which Nancy Pelosi singlehandedly manufactured a global pandemic that are dutifully presented on your timeline every time you log on to wish your estranged uncle a happy birthday are, in fact, completely accurate. Fake news only comes from the radical leftist media outlets like NPR, and the guy who barely passed ninth grade science knows way more about airborne illnesses than you, a biochem major, ever will. Any ideas suggesting otherwise will mean you’re too blind to see through the media.

And don’t even get the girl who took the same statistics course twice started on the COVID-19 mortality rate. In a tweet composed and, shockingly, published after proofreading it, she explained that the number of people who have died needs to be divided by the global population in order to determine the mortality rate. Numbers are pretty abstract, so who’s to say? Besides, the only people who are dying are old and sick already, so their lives are disposable, anyway. No need to take excessive precautions that involve minimal burdens on others just to accommodate them.

Yes, these are the same people who bullied you in middle school, but the past is the past. In this time of turmoil, it is absolutely crucial that we all band together and refuse to listen to the experts telling us how to end a global health crisis so it remains clear to the rest of the world that Americans will never be told to wear a piece of cloth over their mouths.