You know, for all the time I spend following skeptical sources and the skeptical community, I don't think I've seen more than a handful of people actually claim that the virus isn't real. The "plandemic" types don't believe it's fake, the "casedemic" types don't believe it's fake.
What tends to unite them is a belief that it's not as scary as what mainstream media makes it out to be, which given how apocalyptic the reporting has been at times I wouldn't necessarily call a conspiracy theory (even if the rest of it is a bit looney). Even that nurse story where she said people dying of covid are denying it's existence seems to be made up (https://www.wired.com/story/are-covid-patients-gasping-it-isnt-real-as-they-die).
The enduring popularity of "American rednecks are so stupid they don't believe coronavirus is real" seems to be far greater than what is justified.
I think part of the problem is that a lot of the questions that scientists are grappling with are legitimately confusing and we still do not have answers to - things like the true toll of the pandemic (how do we truly count a 'died of'?), the severity of the disease for different demographics, the strengths and weaknesses of PCR as a diagnostic tool, what the hell is happening with flu/ILI counts, etc, etc.
Unfortunately there's a current tendency for some public health experts to overly simplify some of these complex topics, or to present as certainties things that are actually quite uncertain. This may work to an extent - until it doesn't (for example, the motorcycle crash that was counted as a COVID death) and then suddenly trust in those public health experts certainty is lost.
This is further a problem that most people also don't have the a capability to evaluate these complex topics themselves or know how to find public health experts that are able to guide through the uncertainty (heck, I can't find a clear answer on how high cycle counts in PCR affects our pandemic analysis, and I'm not dumb).
People overall aren't idiots, and they can smell bullshit. We need public health experts who don't treat the populace like idiots and don't try to feed them bullshit if we want to get out of it.