Bless:) It's always difficult to communicate through messages
While it’s not fake, it is overblown, overhyped, and definitely nothing serious
I'm not sure anything but the first reply helped me better figure out how to deal with coworkers who believe the pandemic is fake.
What I got from it was: you can't change their mind, just deal with it.
OK.
It doesn't really matter if people think the pandemic is fake, so long as they comply with all the published rules and guidance. The problems with an entrenched belief, only come when people stop complying with those rules and guidance.
A phobia is similarly OK, until it prevents someone being appropriately fearful of something more dangerous.
Ignorance is someone's lived reality. Arrogance is imposing one's experience on someone's lived reality without ever acknowledging it as such.
How to deal with thoughts of this virus as a hoax?
Listen with an intent to understand their lived reality and the perspective it gives them. Acknowledge it and move on.
Their ignorance is a gift of an opportunity for you to learn and hopefully understand.
No need to agree. No need to accept. It's their world. Their truth. Their gift to you to hone compassion, learn and let go.
You have a life to continue living. That's their moment. Let them have it. Thank them in your head for it and keep moving.
@Bles . . . unless that ignorance leads to a behaviour which harms others ; by catching the virus, then either passing it on, or putting healthcare workers at risk.
Imposing one's belief on others is indeed arrogance ; but so is imposing the consequences of one's belief on others, including by circulating those beliefs to people who might act on them.
Anyone who is advocating to keep schools shutdown in the fall is certainly part of a hoax/ plot. As the science is clear that it would make no sense to do that. Your co-workers likely are not saying the virus is not real. As I have not met one person who feels that way.
@eddie2sweaty Closed schools means less education ( particularly for low-income families ) and more difficulty for parents returning to work ; but my reading of the science is that children in school can pass the virus between households.
Having said that, children not at school can also pass the virus between households.