5G, bioweapons and distrust: Coronavirus conspiracy theories are putting strain on families

You might try to ignore it at first: Your aunt’s YouTube videos about how coronavirus is a bioweapon. The former workmate forwarding 5G conspiracy theories on WhatsApp.

The pandemic has quickly changed everything — we’re confined to our homes, glued to our screens — and among some families and friends, the virus has also fractured a shared sense of what is fact, what is true.

Sarah’s* father sends her links to websites full of jumbled ideas and misrepresented data. He doubts how dangerous the disease is, and because he’s in his 70s, she fears for his safety.

“It floored me initially,” she says. “He was telling us he was off to do the shopping…still wanting to visit [his family], still wanting us to visit him.”

She won’t let the rabbit holes he goes down derail their relationship, but she longs, during this often dismal and anxious moment, to be on the same page.

Conspiracy theories predate the pandemic, and beliefs about disease have long been a battleground. Perhaps because we occasionally think of health as a collective endeavour.

Imagine vaccines, for example, not just in terms of how they affect our individual body, but also in how they affect “the collective body of a community”, as Eula Biss wrote in her book, On Immunity.

This means we can be quick to anger when faced with misinformation about infectious disease, suggests Julie Leask, a professor at the University of Sydney’s Faculty of Medicine and Health, who has researched anti-vaccination views and how to respond to them.

Cutting ties

It can be easy to dismiss coronavirus conspiracy theorists, with their janky YouTube videos and Facebook tirades, but if we want to talk to family and friends who have been persuaded, we must first understand their appeal.

Dr Leask describes it as “causal hunger” — the desire to know, where did this illness come from and how can I fight it?

“People develop folk tales around disease causation, to make sense of it and find a path for prevention,” she says.

Sharing conspiracy theories can also be a way for someone to signal who they are — that they are suspicious of authority, or conservative or progressive — suggests Nick Enfield, who heads the Sydney Initiative for Truth at Sydney University.

“If there is already some kind of disagreement or rift or difference of ideology or identity … often that’s exactly how that comes to the surface,” Professor Enfield says.

And while these theories may be ignored at Christmas dinner, during a pandemic, some families feel pushed to take a stand.

Fiona, 41, and her partner have found themselves avoiding her mother-in-law and her partner over their beliefs about the virus, which she feels have grown more extreme.

While she knew her mother-in-law was anti-vaccination, they never really talked about it and maintained a good relationship. The coronavirus outbreak has taken the brakes off.

Many of her mother-in-law’s beliefs seem to have emerged from YouTube, where hawkers of conspiracy theories that claim social distancing and 5G are means of totalitarian government control have found an audience.

“When they’re listening to these people on YouTube, it does feel like they belong to a movement or almost like religion,” Fiona says.

The decision to pause her daughter’s visits with her mother-in-law was profoundly difficult, but she and her partner were worried their five-year-old might become frightened by what her grandmother shared about vaccines or the virus.

“My daughter misses seeing her nanna,” she says. “Because it’s toxic, the whole conversation. In order to remove that toxicity, it means that you miss out on the good stuff.”

Triaging for others

Tatiana Ikasovic, 28, an Australian actor in Los Angeles, tries to triage the explosion of coronavirus misinformation she’s seen from family and friends on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

She makes decisions each day about how to react. If it’s an older person, she might be more sympathetic — perhaps they’re not familiar with YouTube and aren’t sure how to distinguish trustworthy sources from untrustworthy.

Often she reminds herself that she doesn’t know why people hold particular viewpoints — whether there is a personal reason they’re distrustful of authorities.

But it bothers her most when young people who haven’t been affected by the virus, who are “just on the internet all day”, share posts claiming the virus isn’t real or that it’s the government’s attempt to implement a fascist system.

“I find that incredibly disrespectful to people who have known people who have died from this illness, and to healthcare workers,” Tatiana says.

While such situations can be highly tricky and painful, someone’s beliefs about the coronavirus should not get in the way of important relationships as much as possible, Dr Leask says.

She suggests trying to find common ground where possible even if they are “a dead-set true believer”.

“It’s different if they’re acting in a way that’s harmful to you, or your family or other people,” she says.

But we shouldn’t only be concerned about the people who believe in conspiracy theories, but those who might be exposed to them.

If you have an audience among your family on a Zoom call or in Facebook comments, for example, Dr Leask says it can be important to debunk information “quickly, calmly and respectfully”.

She advises checking where someone first heard the conspiracy theory, about 5G causing the virus, for example, and gauging their strength of belief.

If they seem to be simply testing out a theory, you could respond with personalised language along the lines of: “from what I can see, it looks like COVID-19 was caused by a virus passed from humans and that it passes from person to person.”

Her research on anti-vaccination beliefs suggests it is best to “be brief, be factual, be evidence informed, don’t shoot from the hip”.

‘I feel like I’m helpless’

Australians are being asked to be on a “team”, to stay at home for the public good, but this assumes we share a set of beliefs about the danger of the disease and trust in authorities.

Coronavirus is remarkably new and our understanding of it evolves every day, making it even harder for some people to establish a common set of facts with friends and family.

Fiona just wants a way to help her relatives out of the YouTube vortex.

When they send her videos about vaccination and the pandemic, it seems to come from a place of genuine concern and fear for her health, and the health of her daughter.

“I feel like I’m helpless in even helping them, because I think it’s so sad they’re so distressed by it all,” she says.

While social media allows what were once fringe ideas to become easily accessible, Dr Enright says we should also remember that broadly they remain marginal overall.

“The responsibility is partly on all of us to try and help develop that culture of understanding… and to understand science better than we do,” he says.

“To have respect for it, and be happy to change our position.”

*** This article has been archived for your research. The original version from ABC News can be found here ***