Promoting conspiracy theory: From AIDS to COVID-19

ABSTRACT

Conspiracy theories (evidence-free, improbable narratives about powerful agents conspiring to harm people) circulated widely during the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and COVID-19 epidemics. They travelled over time and space, adapted to local conditions and anxieties, and were promoted for commercial and political purposes. Russian conspiracy theories claiming the viruses were United States bioweapons appeared in both epidemics. So did ‘cultropreneurs’ who, as a marketing strategy for their ‘alternative’ therapies, promoted conspiracy theories about scientific medicine. Pro-science activists sought to counter medical misinformation and debunk faux cures, but their task was harder in the ‘post-truth’ social-media driven context of COVID-19. Conspiracy theories about vaccines are an ongoing challenge for public health.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• AIDS
• conspiracy theory
• medical populism
• misinformation

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Jeremy Seekings, Rebecca Hodes and four anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier versions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 America’s Frontline Doctors was set up as a support organisation for Donald Trump. Its founder, Dr Simone Gold, was arrested during the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

2 See also this investigative report from ABC news: https://abcnews.go.com/US/video/truth-ivermectin-83239643

3 Writing analysts have identified Q’s posts as most likely written by the owners of two websites where Q posted, one of whom subsequently ran for office as a Republican (Kirkpatrick, 2022).

4 See Kalichman (2009a, 2009b) for a discussion of Duesberg’s work and personality.

5 Mullis published a rambling autobiography detailing, inter alia, his experimentation with hallucinatory drugs and encounters with extra-terrestrials (Mullis, 1998).

6 In 2009 Duesberg published his views, fundamentally unchanged, in Medical Hypotheses, a journal which at the time did not engage in peer review. Scientists complained to the publisher, which then subjected Duesberg’s article to peer review. This resulted in the article being retracted and the journal instructed to introduce peer review (Nattrass, 2011).

7 See discussion in (Nattrass, 2021a, 2012b).

8 Right-wing Fox News presenter, Sean Hannity, described the protesting truck drivers as ‘heroes’ (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/sean-hannity-hero-canada-trucker-b2015596.html).

9 https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/facts.html?s_cid=11714:covid%20immunity:sem.ga:p:RG:GM:gen:PTN:FY22.

10 See https://www.dr-rath-foundation.org/.

11 https://scienceblogs.com/erv/2010/05/27/fda-warns-lenny-horowitz.

12 See also: https://www.factcheck.org/2022/08/correcting-misinformation-about-dr-fauci/ (downloaded 31 December 2022).

13 Data from Our World in Data (https://ourworldindata.org/).

14 See https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status.

15 Data for 30 January, from https://sacoronavirus.co.za/latest-vaccine-statistics/.

16 https://aidstruth.org.

17 https://www.sorryantivaxxer.com/.

18 https://quackwatch.org.

19 One of these is John Moore, an eminent virologist from New York, who was involved in AIDStruth.org. In an interview with Science Writers New York: https://www.swiny.org/youtube/ Moore draws connections with the AIDS struggle and argues for class action lawsuits against spreaders of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.

20 See https://spotifyopenletter.wordpress.com/2022/01/10/an-open-letter-to-spotify/.

21 https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-criminal-investigations/warning-letters/mercolacom-llc-607133-02182021.

22 https://transparency.twitter.com/en/reports/covid19.html#item2:2021-jul-dec.