How conspiracy theories threaten to derail the response to coronavirus
The World Health Organisation has declared the world should prepare for a coronavirus pandemic. Despite an apparently slowing rate of infection, potential new hotspots for the disease emerged in South Korea, Japan, Iran, and Italy over the past few days. Today this was accompanied by a spike of new cases recorded in China bringing the total number of confirmed cases across the world to 79,551, with 2,626 confirmed deaths. As authorities struggle to contain this crisis perhaps the biggest challenge they will have to overcome is the lack of trust.
Can the authorities – in different countries – feel they can trust each other. The epicentre of the crisis is China, a country whose government’s opacity, authoritarianism, and paranoia is almost unparalleled.
Having already undermined China’s domestic response these traits now threaten to damage the international response. In order to properly understand and respond to coronavirus experts need trustworthy data. However, uncertainty is starting to swirl around official Chinese figures about the spread of the disease, not helped by the fact that the method used by the Chinese government to count infections has been changed twice.
Similar problems have beset the figures coming out of Iran. While the Iranian government reported that 61 people had been infected, and that of this number 12 had died, local press claimed that 50 have died in one city alone. While the government has denied this the question of whether it can be trusted now hovers in the background. Even if it has reported the numbers it has in good faith 12 deaths suggest a far higher number of infected than 47.
Even in the supposedly more democratic and transparent Japan the government response, particularly with regards to the Diamond Princess cruise ship which was quarantined in Yokohama, has been roundly criticised as ineffective and opaque. Currently Japan has recorded 159 infections and 3 deaths but there are fears that these numbers could spike.
The second major issue is a lack of public trust in central governments and medical authorities. The Ebola crisis in the Congo starkly demonstrates just how badly a breakdown in public trust in these institutions can hurt effort to combat the disease. There violence against medical workers, which cost some of them their lives, by groups distrustful of their presence greatly damaged efforts to contain the disease.
While some might be tempted to imagine that this issue is one which will mainly affect developing nations, or nations under authoritarian regimes, this is not the case. In South Korea the recent spike in cases – 833 infected and 8 dead – has been linked to the Shincheonji Church, an organisation frequently accused of being a cult. As the police struggle to contact some members of the church there have been suggestions that some members of the group might be reluctant to cooperate with the authorities.
Equally, while the general public’s trust of doctors in the West remains very high large sections of society are still susceptible to medical misinformation. When a coronavirus vaccine is developed it will have to contend with the anti-vaccine movement which has gathered steam across the world. In Italy – 230 infected and 6 dead – two major populist parties, the Five Star Movement which forms part of the government and the League which is the largest opposition party, have both promoted anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. Other populist parties such as Germany’s AfD and France’s Front Nationale have also indulged these conspiracies.
There is real risk conspiracy theories about coronavirus take root. Some are already circulating, the most common one being that it is a genetically engineered bioweapon apparently promoted by Russian trolls. There is a grim precedent to this. In the 1980s the KGB ran a disinformation campaign claiming that AIDs was an American bioweapon. This conspiracy theory promoted others and extracted a grim toll as no less a figure than South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, cast doubts abouts HIVs links to AIDs leading to over 300,000 deaths in South Africa alone.
These sorts of rumours are most damaging when they feed into existing political and social conflicts. As such a botched government response to coronavirus, or its potential economic toll, risks fuelling for the ongoing populist challenge in Europe. As a number of populist parties already indulge in dangerous medical pseudo-science about vaccines this could prove extremely dangerous. The potential for travel controls aimed at curbing the spread of the disease to become bound-up in debates about immigration, with the populist right playing to pull-up the drawbridge instincts, is also all too clear.
In the US the potential for dangerous politicisation undermining public trust in the response is also easily apparent. Under Trump the Centre for Disease Control has seen its funding cut, and the world class global health security team has been dissolved. Should the disease spread to America, Democratic attack lines write themselves, as does the inevitable furious Republican denial. One can also only wonder how large sections of the public would react to actual quarantines in a land where conspiracy theories about plans for mass internment camps run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, surely easily conflated with the CDC in the fevered minds of the conspiratorially inclined, have semi-mainstream status.
Perhaps this is too alarmist. The World Health Organisation does believe that the rate of infection is diminishing. The reaction in many countries – including the UK – has been brisk and so far effective. But should the spread continue we must be aware that there is scope for panic.