I’m sure many of you, just like me, have a love-hate relationship with social media at the moment? To be perfectly honest, some days I’m ready to shoot a hole through my screen, some posts are so annoying and sometimes so upsetting, they actually derail my day a bit.

The thing with this Corona pandemic is, that we haven’t had access to many facts about it – because it’s been all new to everyone, including the scientists. We’ve had to learn as we go, as we’ve seen things develop and only the measurement, statistics and graphs will show us the truth over an unacceptably long period of time.

But us human beings need facts and affirmations. We just can’t accept living in the unknown. All these questions – an no proper answer.

Nothing is allowed to take over our life without us understanding why, what it is, for how long it’s going to affect us and who’s fault it all is. We need figures, schedules, scapegoats and a quick resolve. So when the government, doctors and scientists say “we don’t know yet” it’s simply not good enough. We can’t accept that they refuse to give us even assumptions or their best calculated guesses. We have nothing to gain from listening to them anymore. And we move to the people who are willing to give us their truths.

We start grabbing for the stories that resonate with us most. Theories that give us some sort of an explanation. The ideas that sound most plausible. Because we need something to hold on to. We listen to the people who first step forward and claim they know. The ones we think sound eloquent and in the know. We might not even understand all they say, but they have clearly studied these things, we have not.

Then we build on this and start living according to these stories, we hear them from other people too. Two people who say they know have a higher impact than 100 scientists who can’t know. So people start sharing the theories with their family, friends and connections, forgetting that these stories they hold on to are actually substituting facts that are still unknown.

Be careful with the stories you share. Because some people are listening and living by your guidelines. Are you sure you’re prepared for that?

A great podcast on the subject on