Recently I read a social media account of someone’s experience while waiting in line at a local Home Depot. They were standing next to a man who, according to the writer, was not keeping a safe distance and not wearing a mask. Upon being told he might need a mask to go into Home Depot, the man said he’d been coming all week, never wore a mask, and anyway COVID-19 is a hoax. Home Depot did let him in without a mask.

That’s okay I guess, since our noble Home Depot patron knows it is all a hoax. But I, one of the gullible masses, could use a little help understanding this.

So how does this hoax work?

Here I am with a son in Brooklyn who has been struggling for seven weeks with what we all thought was COVID-19. He had all the symptoms, short of breath, congestion, cough, loss of smell, weak and tired all the time. We call him every day. But we can’t go see him or help him. Lots of worrying. Now, thanks to the knowledgeable man at Home Depot I’ve learned he can’t have COVID-19. What a relief.

So how does this hoax work? Is our son being paid by a secret hoax generating organization to lie about being sick? Naw. This is a young man who, as a child, couldn’t even lie to stay out of trouble. He’s painfully honest. Did someone sneak into his room while he slept and inject him with a COVID-19 faking serum developed by…who? the Army, the Chinese, the Democrats?

And what about my wife’s uncle, who died two weeks ago at Lawrence & Memorial of COVID-19, which he caught while staying in a local nursing home. Oh, yeah, and our good friend Estelle’s father, who died of COVID-19 in a nursing home in Atlanta, Georgia, last month. We attended an online memorial service for him. Were all the doctors and nurses lying to us and her about the cause of death?

Are the thousands and thousands of doctors and nurses all over the country all in on it? All the scientists? They’d have to be? They’d all have to be lying. Do you not know any health care workers? I know lots. They don’t seem like the sneaky lying fiends they’d all have to be to pull off this hoax.

And all the doctors and nurses and scientists all over the world? They’re all in it too? They’d have to be.

But why? Why would all the doctors and nurses want to put millions of people out of work? Cause thousands of businesses to fail. It must be the Democrats, right? Wait a minute. I’m a Democrat. Sure, we’re sneaky, evil people bent on destroying everything great about America, but are we that evil? Besides, I know for a fact that not all doctors and nurses are Democrats.

I guess it’s because everybody in the whole world is picking on President Trump. Is this hoax being perpetrated to make him look bad? But wait, even he acknowledges the existence of COVID-19. He has everyone around him tested all the time, announced that some on his staff have it, and announced he’s taking hydroxychloroquine to protect himself (even though there is no scientific evidence it works against COVID-19).

So even the president doesn’t know it’s a hoax?

But you did say it’s a hoax, right? My son, his boss, and many of his co-workers who think they have or had COVID-19, are either lying or were somehow, unbeknownst to them, injected with a secret hoax serum that made them sick.

Gee, to say all that out loud sounds pretty crazy. But you must know something. No one would willingly risk the safety of others unless he really knew something. Because otherwise you’d be like a super ratfink, or something worse. Right? 

David Watson is retired mechanical engineer who served in the U.S. Coast Guard. He lives in New London.