That there are people who deny the pandemic, is only to be expected. Viruses are invisible, and the illness is a bit hit or miss; some people get very sick and die, while others seem to have a mild flu and go about their lives.
Then, last winter when the storm Filomena walloped Madrid with unprecedented snow, there appeared the snow deniers. They crunched up a snowball, tried to melt it with a lighter, and got a blackened snowball. That the snow was cold in their hands didn't mean anything. The deniers immediately claimed the snow was a plastic fake. Never mind.
From there we jump to those who claim birds don't exist, that they were all killed to be replaced with robots that watch our every move. Tin foil is not enough for some.
Now come the deniers that missed out on entire classes of earth science in elementary school. Last Saturday, a volcano erupted on the Canary island of La Palma, just where vulcanologists had suspected it would, along the side of a volcano that had already erupted in 1971 and 1949. But, what do vulcanologists know? Evil Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was the perpetrator.
Twitter has long been a meeting ground for all types of people, from level-headed to head-in-space. Yesterday, on an account that has since been closed, someone claimed that the volcano was a conspiracy drummed up by Pedro Sánchez and the Socialist government. The reason? That the lava and the explosions came from a flank of the volcano, and not from the summit, like all volcanoes spit out their contents. Another one said that it sounded like it had been provoked. That account is now very private. Again, I found a tweet connecting the HAARP waves to the volcano, claiming it was provoked by those waves. Even, that the volcano was provoked to take our attention away from the vaccines with which Bill Gates wants to micochip everybody. Another claim was that it could have been provoked by pointing giant satellite mirrors at the volcano.
(HAARP stands for High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program. Its purpose is to analyze the ionosphere and see if radio communications can be improved by sending them through the highest layer of the atmosphere. Conspiracy theories abound, and touch on almost all subjects, so, of course people are going to claim HAARP radio waves are interfering with a volcano.)
It seems that the dream of creating thinking, rational people by widely introducing public education has backfired. With every passing year, I am convinced that people are, in the majority, stupid. With every passing year, people confirm that conviction. Some of these statements were obviously made as satire in response to those few that actually believe their own nutty conspiracies, though there are too many that aren't satire. But, while there have always been doubting Thomas's, even Thomas believed the evidence when he stuck his hand in Jesus' wounds. These people don't. These people could have Christ jumping on their heads, proving to them that He's alive, and they'll claim He's a new-fangled hologram.
On the serious side, though, the eruption on the island of La Palma is a tragedy. Living with a volcano is always risky; some are quiet for thousands of years and are mere history, while others awake within our lifetimes. The good thing is that, at the moment, no lives have been lost. But homes, livelihoods, crops, land have been lost forever. With an earthquake, one can always rebuild and still find treasures in the rubble. With a fire, one can rebuild, and, if luck is present, some treasures might survive. But with a volcano, it's as if the place one has lived has disappeared forever. There is no rebuilding; the lava will remain too hot for too long. Nothing can be saved; it's all been consumed by the lava. The landscape, with the familiar roads and folds of the hills, is gone forever, transmuted by the streams of lava.
I hope these people can regain their lives elsewhere.
Life continues.