The Covid conspiracies: a virus that can only spread

Every pandemic generates conspiracy theories. Depending on which one you believe, the coronavirus is a bioweapon created by China, or Big Pharma, or American scientists, or it’s caused by 5G technology, or it doesn’t exist, just a “hoax” made up by Donald Trump’s enemies. Conspiracy theorists also warn that any future “vaccine” will be a trick by governments to subjugate populations. These false beliefs are deeply consequential. They will make it harder to end this pandemic with a vaccine. They also risk making our politics even more dysfunctional.

The modern case study of pandemics and conspiracy theories is Aids. In 1983, a small Indian newspaper, the Patriot, published an anonymous letter headlined: “Aids may invade India: Mystery disease caused by US experiments”. The letter, supposedly written by a “well-known American scientist and anthropologist”, blamed Aids on “the Pentagon’s experiments to develop . . . biological weapons” at an army research facility at Fort Detrick, Maryland. The letter was almost certainly authored by the KGB, which had helped create the Patriot as a vehicle for Soviet disinformation, writes Thomas Boghardt of the US Army Center of Military History.

Soon the East German “Stasi” secret service took up the anti-American conspiracy theory. “Useful idiots” around the world picked it up. By late 1987, the bogus story had appeared in media in 80 countries (including Britain’s Daily Telegraph and Channel 4), reports Boghardt. It had a lasting impact. In 2005, the Rand Corporation and Oregon State University found that nearly half of African-Americans believed Aids was “man-made”.

We’re back in that territory now. A month ago, 29 per cent of Americans told the Pew Research Center that the coronavirus was created in a lab (while another 25 per cent weren’t sure). No wonder, because the virus is the perfect generator of conspiracy theories. It’s literally an invisible enemy, points out Catherine Fieschi, founder of the research group Counterpoint. She says: “It’s not very satisfying to blame the virus. Instead of a virus that you can’t see, you blame a 5G tower that you can see.” She adds that blaming it on a combination of China, Huawei and 5G is “the equivalent of one of those dreams you wouldn’t take to your psychoanalyst because it’s so banal”.

Today’s climate is ideal for conspiracy theories, says Hugo Drochon, political theorist at Nottingham University. We’re living through a moment of fear in an era of mistrust. Unprecedented numbers of people are currently alone, a state that makes them more susceptible to conspiracy theories. They have been forced to stay at home by governments, are losing their livelihoods and are spending hours on social media, where conspiracy theories run rife, even if tech platforms are now finally trying hard to censor them. WhatsApp is a particularly powerful vector because people tend to trust messages from friends and family, says Drochon.

Meanwhile, when people turn on the news, they see distrusted politicians reciting false numbers (official statistics on deaths and infections are almost all underestimates), flanked by scientists who can’t make up their minds. One week, the authorities say there’s no problem; the next, we’re all locked up. Someone who mistrusts the authorities will also mistrust their instructions to change behaviour. We saw this during the Aids epidemic, when many South Africans and Americans who believed conspiracy theories about the virus continued having unprotected sex and didn’t get tested or take antiretroviral drugs, writes Nicoli Nattrass in The AIDS Conspiracy.

Most epidemiologists agree on the best path out of this pandemic: first, tracking the virus by monitoring people’s locations through their phones; later, a vaccine. But both these initiatives risk hitting a wall of mistrust. Even before the pandemic, there were well-founded fears of invasion of privacy (the characteristic business model of our time) as well as unfounded fears of vaccinations (always pushed by Russia). Trump himself has linked vaccines with autism. 

Now conspiracy theorists are warning that a vaccine against Covid-19 fits into a government masterplan for mass surveillance or enslavement. The master puppeteer is often identified as Bill Gates. Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham quoted a tweet that said, “Bill Gates Calls for a ‘Digital Certificate’ to Identify Who Received Covid-19 Vaccine”, adding her comment: “Digitally tracking Americans’ every move has been a dream of the globalists for years. This health crisis is the perfect vehicle for them to push this.”

The ground for such thinking will only get more fertile. Fieschi warns: “We’ll look back on this period and think it was the last period of calm, because we are going to get an economic crisis and then a social crisis.”

Imagine that a vaccine becomes available in 18 months. Many people will have fallen into atomised existences, either unemployed or in early retirement. Growing numbers will rate their own lives as failures, an attitude that predicts belief in conspiracy theories, says French think-tank the Jean Jaurès Foundation. People will be more dependent on government yet simultaneously more suspicious of it. Good luck vaccinating a distrustful world.

Follow Simon on Twitter @KuperSimon and email him at simon.kuper@ft.com

This article was amended following publication to remove a line that inaccurately stated Italian policy on mandatory childhood vaccinations. 

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