It's All a Conspiracy

I'm friends with someone on Facebook who posted this:

The birthday cake background is a nice touch! I'm not going to attack or defend Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf (or author Tom Wolfe) here. In my opinion, some people must have contracted COVID-19 based on their proximity to others during the protests. I also think it's likely that more people contracted COVID-19 from being in confined spaces with no social distancing in bars. It can be both. 

Back to the Facebook post, someone (we'll call him Danny) posted this comment:

Danny: just a ploy to continue to destroy our economy and hurt Trump.

In theory, I know that there are people out there who believe this. That's part of the "It's my constitutional right not to wear a mask" argument. Still, I hadn't seen this in real life by someone I'm tangentially connected to before. Against my better judgement, I decided to reply.

Me: Wait, so the entire COVID-19 with 123,000+ deaths and millions unemployed is a ploy to hurt Trump?  

Danny: the numbers are padded with the extra diagnosis of "covid-related" whatever that is and also the CDC quit counting regular flu deaths in April so those have been added in also.... and the average person that dies of covid has 3 pre-existing conditions and could have died of any of those but they call it covid because there is the financial incentive to medicare getting 13,000 dollars for each death they call covid…. surprised I had to explain all that to you 

Me:I guess that you need to explain more to me. So the thousands of deaths in May and June should be flu deaths? I didn't realize the US had so many flu deaths in those months.

And going back to the ploy to hurt Trump comment. Based on the significant increase of the number of COVID cases and deaths in Florida, Texas, and Arizona, the governors of these states, who I always thought were on Trump's side, are actually also involved in this plot to hurt him?

Who exactly is getting $13,000 for each COVID death and where is it coming from? Thanks in advance for the explanations.  

I should also add, why is the executive office trying to take away health insurance right now when more people than ever need it? Is that to help make sure that someone doesn't get $13000?

Danny: good question Sean I don't know about the insurance.... I know under Obamacare that the insurance that was known as catastrophic before became the normal insurance with high copays and high deductible.... thx for hearing my thoughts and have a great night brother 

I'm glad that it didn't get any further. I didn't really want to shift to a discussion about health insurance. Still, who is this big conspiracy that is sacrificing thousands of Americans just to hurt Trump? I mean is Trump really going to get hurt by all this? Worse case scenario for him is that he loses the election, but he still has plenty of money and will be able to live just fine as a former President. (Well assuming that he doesn't get charged and convicted on various sexual assault allegations and lawsuits related to financial and tax dealings and then doesn't get pardoned by Biden.) I don't understand how someone can say that there aren't any attempts at voter suppression (Hello Georgia and Wisconsin!), yet there's a massive conspiracy to unleash the worst virus in our lifetimes just to hurt Trump.

I'll end with this picture of the Dippy, the diplodocus outside the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh.

This is ridiculous. This diplodocus died so that we would have the freedom to not wear masks (even though it's in the best interest and the heath and safety of everyone to wear masks).

Photo by The Notorious C.H.U.C.K.