Why I'm not a conspiracy theorist

Whenever I'm openly skeptical of the official COVID story in the media, I sometimes get this question:

"What do they gain from faking a pandemic?"

I think this is the wrong question to ask. People can be utterly wrong without being evil or deceitful. And this is exactly why I hate being lumped in with the conspiracy nuts whenever I'm skeptical of the official narrative.

When I'm saying the official narrative is wrong, I'm not saying it's because the powers that be are trying to control us in order to XYZ. I'm simply saying the official narrative is wrong.

It can be wrong for many reasons, even deliberate deception is an option, but in most cases global conspiracies are the least likely explanation, in my opinion.

Things like groupthink and confirmation bias are far more likely.

In the case of COVID, it seems to me that the severity and deadliness of the virus were severely overestimated in the beginning (an honest mistake, for all I know) and now we're all just pretending that it's still a really bad and scary virus, in order to save face and not look stupid in hindsight for inflicting such economic chaos on ourselves, despite the reality that total mortality this year is not that different from last.

I originally posted this two years ago, 2020 November 23.