There are moments when I genuinely wonder whether the internet was a mistake.

As I was doomscrolling through Facebook the other day, I came across another gem of modern intellectual achievement: someone claiming that the COVID-19 vaccine caused hantavirus.

Yes. Really.

At this point, I honestly can’t decide whether the bigger problem is ignorance or stupidity. I’m leaning toward “both,” with a heavy seasoning of social media algorithms and people who think watching three TikToks makes them epidemiologists.

We have gone through this a million times already, but apparently we are now doing it a million plus one.

Reading Facebook posts, reposting garbage on X, or spending twenty minutes on Google does not make you an immunologist. It does not make you a virologist. It does not make you qualified to diagnose yourself, diagnose other people, or scream medical conspiracy theories into the void like a caffeinated raccoon digging through trash.

And honestly? COVID vaccine outrage was so 2021.

I get it. You were angry someone wanted you to get a vaccine that significantly reduced your risk of severe illness and death during a global pandemic. Meanwhile, hospitals and ICUs were drowning in patients. Healthcare workers were getting destroyed physically and emotionally. Entire systems were overloaded.

But instead of taking the easier route and getting vaccinated, a whole lot of people decided livestock dewormer and conspiracy podcasts were somehow superior to actual medical science.

Ivermectin became gospel because some politician with absolutely no medical training decided to cosplay as an infectious disease expert. Same energy as the bleach injection nonsense. And somehow people listened.

There were study after study after study showing ivermectin was ineffective against COVID. But by then facts no longer mattered. Once something gets embedded into internet culture, people cling to it like it’s a religious artifact.

Now apparently we are blaming hantavirus on COVID vaccines too.

For the love of all things holy, hantavirus has existed for decades. I knew a professor doing hantavirus research back in the 1990s. This isn’t some mystery illness that magically appeared because someone got vaccinated in 2021.

This is right up there with “Tylenol causes autism” and every other recycled pseudoscientific fever dream that social media keeps dragging back from the grave.

And yes, I am asking sincerely:

Are people really this fucking stupid?

One of the things I do not miss about medicine is dealing with internet-diagnosed patients.

I cannot tell you how many people came into appointments carrying printouts from Google like they were presenting peer-reviewed evidence to the court. They would arrive absolutely convinced they had a rare disease, demanding very specific lab work because some Facebook group or wellness influencer told them that was the problem.

Never mind the fact that I had nearly twenty years of nursing experience and advanced practice training dealing with differential diagnoses, ruling conditions out, and actually understanding disease processes.

Nope.

Google said it was cancer.

And honestly, that’s part of what exhausted so many healthcare providers. Not just the workload — the arrogance. The idea that years of education, clinical experience, and evidence-based medicine somehow hold equal weight with “a guy online.”

As the saying goes: I don’t come down to Burger King and make your fucking Whopper.

Actually, the original version of that line is dirtier, but I’ve already sworn enough in this post.

The internet — especially social media — has given everyone a megaphone without requiring even a basic competency test first. Someone posts nonsense, one friend shares it, then another shares it, and suddenly a completely fabricated claim spreads faster than the correction ever will.

And that’s the real problem.

By the time experts step in to explain why something is false, the damage is already done. People would rather believe outrage, fear, and conspiracies because they spread faster and feel more emotionally satisfying than actual science.

That is the world we now live in: experts getting steamrolled by people who mistake confidence for knowledge.

So let me make this simple.

You have an amazing organ between your ears called a brain. Use it.

Listen to multiple sources. Learn how to evaluate evidence. Stop treating social media influencers like they are infectious disease specialists.

When you’re sick, you go to a doctor.

You don’t go to Donnie down the street who watched six YouTube videos and now thinks Wi-Fi causes lupus.

And if medical care is too expensive — which it absolutely is — maybe stop voting against healthcare systems that would actually help people access care without going bankrupt.

But that would require people to stop listening to politicians and pundits screaming that universal healthcare is socialism while simultaneously profiting from the current disaster.

So here we are.

My dog and my mother continue to agree:

We need to do better.