Antisemitism will sharply increase in 2021, according to a report issued Sunday   by the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs. The reason? COVID-19, of course.

Everyone knows that when there’s a plague, it’s the fault of the Jews, so it’s likely many of us suspected this might happen, just as it happened during, for instance, the bubonic plague. Plagues are great fodder for the antisemitic conspiracy machine.

The conspiracy theorists are spreading the word that Jews spread coronavirus to make money out of the chaos to fund their supposed efforts to create a new world order. Some also link Israel to COVID using the hashtag #COVID48, to compare the Jewish state to the virus. This campaign, it is believed, was begun by Iran, and the hashtag has been shared 250,000 times, including by the Ayatollah Ali Khameini. The hashtag was viewed hundreds of millions of times by Twitter users.

So what’s a Jew to do? My suggestion: stay out of crowds. This will keep you safe both from coronavirus and wacko conspiracy theorists who are up to no good.