When I read quotes from people who think COVID is a hoax, so many of them seem to suffer under the idea that other people put emotions INSIDE of them. As if a doctor who tells you a dangerous virus is spreading must be MAKING you feel the fear of the dangerous virus.

This is the same thinking that leads to someone believing they only feel hurt if someone else MADE them feel hurt, or they would only feel guilty if someone was trying to FORCE them feel that way. These people believe they only feel because others make them feel.

There are videos of people who refuse to wear masks screaming at those who do for just existing near them. In that moment, to them, the mask-wearer serves as a reminder of the fear they feel, and aides the rapid dissolution of whatever delusion they've buried it under.

The impotent rage at their own fear (often coded as weakness) is expressed toward the visual marker of the mask, the human behind it disregarded or deemed guilty by association. All this death will be assigned to many sources & a lack of emotional education should be among them.

This is not a defense of the behavior, it’s an attempt to understand it better than I do now. I would like it to be simpler than it is, but wanting simple explanations doesn’t create them.