Another pandemic rises with the spread of COVID-19: the rise of endless conspiracy theories.

Six months have passed since the coronavirus’s latest strand - known as COVID-19 - has been discovered. The problem seemingly exploded from a regional endemic to a full-blown pandemic on a global scale that is unprecedented, causing severe economic crises, halting religious services, and shutting down traditional methods of education. At the same time, another pandemic was running simultaneously with COVID-19 and its rise has been disturbing: the rise of misinformation. Many governments fighting pandemics mimic wartime efforts and a reduction in freedoms is witnessed as governments gain more control to have an attempt at flattening the curve. However, as governments worldwide are grappling with the virus, they are also fighting a misinformation pandemic. From 5G and microchips to ‘escaping from the Wuhan Institute of virology’ (CNN, 2020), the last few months have been essentially a swamp of misinformation. Because of this, we’ve managed to find ourselves exhausted from the amount of fake news, causing us to end up in another case of the Tragedy of the Commons (Hardin, 1968).

The 5G Conspiracy

The 5G conspiracy has been one of particular popularity. One striking fact that comes to mind is that most of these theories are largely pushed by alt-right and conservative individuals. Alex Jones of Infowars, attempted to downplay the virus and even touted a ‘cure’ (Marantz, 2020) that the FDA demanded that he withdraws from his website (Rosenbaum, 2020). This conspiracy focuses on the connection between new 5G technologies and the spread of the respiratory disease. It is particularly ironic given the fact that Italy and Spain, both harshly hit by the pandemic, losing a combined 60,000 people, barely host any 5G coverage. At least, just enough to cover at 20 percent of their soil (Worldometer,2020). In comparison to Switzerland, one of the first companies to implement the technology and has a wide coverage-  as well as a high COVID-19 recovery rate at approximately 91 percent (Worldometer,2020).  This conspiracy has been supported by a rise in anti-5G sentiment pre COVID-19, amplified by the virus across Europe as we have seen with burnings of several towers in the UK (Reichert, 2020). 

Biological Weaponry

Moreover, coupled along with all the typical conspiracies that we are aware of this pandemic has become increasingly political, an alarming fact for the world population. I would like to delve into the biological weapon aspect a bit since it seems to be the perfect scapegoat for a failed government response whether it’s the United States or other nations. Although the United States has not implied that this theory is true, some supporters of the president have. Mike Pompeo and Fox News both seem to be agreeing on an idea that it escaped from Wuhan’s Virology Institute (Pompeo, 2020). In contrast, Iran’s Press TV had contacted Dr. James Fetzer, a PhD holder in philosophy and a conspiracy theorist, who claimed: ‘Ibelieve that what is going on is, under the cloak of the alleged coronavirus epidemic, that biological warfare is being conducted against Iran by Zionist elements who are taking advantage of the situation,’ (PressTV,2020). Additionally, during the commemoration of the Persian New year the nation’s de facto ruler, Grand Ayatollah Khameini, accused the United States of creating a biological weapon catered for the genetics of Iranians based on the genetic information obtained by the US government.  Moreover, the state of Iran has repeatedly claimed that it is past the peak of the virus - even though since last month an alarming uptick has hit the state following the relaxation of lockdown measures and a return to houses of worship with little to no adherence of social distancing guidelines.  

It seems that the virus has become the conspiracy-theorist’s goldmine, aided by the pseudo-science claims to the boiling point at which the real and viral information seems to disappear in the midst. This is where we find the tragedy.

The Tragedy of the Pandemic

In 1968, Garrett Hardin* published a paper titled ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’**, discussing the issue of sharing a public space in which people pay no cost to join and the more they take advantage of this space, the less of it there is. While the commons could be an area shared between farms where animals get to graze, we see this theory in action here as people continue to share fake information during an already tense pandemic. Since there are little repercussions to sharing false information on your social media – in fact, there is often the benefit of having more people comment and share your posts, people continue to spread misinformation. Because people are not adequately researching the truth behind the information they share, conspiracy theories rise and are promoted during unstable situations. This causes companies such as Facebook and Youtube to begin tightening their guidelines in an attempt to keep this spread of false information at bay. It is important to understand what we’re sharing and who we’re sharing it to, otherwise we contribute to the death of the ‘commons’ (or the social media feed, the ease of posting what’s on your mind, the free space that is the Internet) as we know them to be today. 

Notes for further reading:

*Although many aspects of the article find themselves to be false or simply unethical, the idea of depleting the commons itself is what we’re interested in with our argument. 

**The author of this Tragedy mentioned possible solutions to stop depleting the commons, including privatizing the commons so that people bear the cost of degrading them, regulating – which, in our example, is what Facebook and Youtube are doing- to punish the issue at hand, and taxing to decrease use of the public good at all. There is a fourth solution that has been suggested by other scholars, which is self-organization: trusting people to police themselves, amongst themselves.

—- An earlier version of this article misplaced Pompeo’s sentiments about the virus due to an editing dilemma. It has been updated and placed under the correct theory since.

Citations and sources for further reading:

Gapper, John. “Facebook Faces the Tragedy of the Commons.” Subscribe to Read | Financial Times, Financial Times, 29 Nov. 2017, www.ft.com/content/ec74ce54-d3e1-11e7-8c9a-d9c0a5c8d5c9.

Hardin, Garrett. “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science, vol. 162, 13 Dec. 1968.

“ Italy.” Worldometer,www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/.

Marantz, Andrew. “Alex Jones’s Bogus Coronavirus Cures”, The New Yorker, March 30,2020, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/06/alex-jones-bogus-coronavirus-cures

Rosenbaum, Leah, “InfoWars Founder Alex Jones Must Stop Selling Fake Coronavirus Silver Cures, FDA Says”,April 9,2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/leahrosenbaum/2020/04/09/infowars-founder-alex-jones-must-stop-selling-fake-coronavirus-silver-cures-fda-says/#3e42f9e8541a

Reichert, Corinne. “ 5G coronavirus conspiracy theory leads to 77 mobile towers burned in UK, report says” , CNET, May 7,2020, https://www.cnet.com/health/5g-coronavirus-conspiracy-theory-sees-77-mobile-towers-burned-report-says/

“Spain.” Worldometer,www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain/.

“Pompeo: 'Enormous Evidence' Virus Started in Chinese Lab - CNN Video.” CNN. Cable News Network, May 3, 2020. https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/05/03/mike-pompeo-coronavirus-china-sot-vpx-nr.cnn.

“Zionist Elements Developed Deadlier Strain of Coronavirus against Iran: Academic.” PressTV, March 5, 2020. https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/03/05/620217/US-coronavirus-James-Henry-Fetzer.