Except they did, COVID. That first year saw quite a lot of death. Granted, the experience difference between healthcare and people hunkering down at home would be miles apart.

There would have to be a disconnect there, with the visitor bans. Necessary, but it may have contributed to the fallout of skepticism and conspiracy theory.

You see a loved one go in, get some screen time with them in a hospital bed, maybe, then a phone call from a nurse or doctor telling you your loved one is dead, no you can’t come in, the body will be delivered to the funeral home, do you have one picked out?. Then you see a body at the funeral home. No experience, no visual of real time decline in between, a black hole of time between alive and this dead body in a strange funeral home.

Denial is part of grief. You could even say it’s a normal part of grief. Combine that with the black hole of time between alive and dead, sprinkle with personal tendencies to conspiracy theories, and you have yourself a fake illness.

In addition, other people hunkering at home with nothing but time, screaming into the void in their grief, add fuel to the notion.

I guess COVID doesn’t count. I can only add partial sarcasm to that sentence.