The WHO declared recently that there was an infodemic relating to Covid. Public health officials expressed worries about the amount of misinformation and conspiracy theories on social media platforms and alarmed at what people were prepared to believe. This has led to a refusal to take a vaccine and demonstrations against lockdown measures designed to protect populations. Trust between the state and the populace seems to be breaking down.
In a democracy, what is a reasonable curtailment of Freedom of Speech? Do the fact checking programmes take us any further in curbing the infodemic? Research would suggest not, as those expressing hesitancy may be pushed into rejection of vaccines by the effrontery of being ‘corrected’, ‘presented with the facts’ and an injunction to ‘follow the evidence’. Do we agree to be corrected by a public health authority directed by a government who is so obviously mendacious? Can we trust information from social media platforms that harvest our data in order to profit by exploiting our weaknesses and invading our privacy?
What are facts? Are all conspiracy theories untrue or even harmful?
A writer in today’s Guardian discussed Russian propaganda and its impetus to mask genocide. Going back to the Origins of Totalitarianism by Arendt, she discussed the uses of propaganda and conspiracy theories as a strategy to divorce the populace from reality and create a fantasy world where the state is the only place of safety. Genocide is the new way of naming the racist ideology of ‘the survival of the fittest’, so beloved of the Nazis and explains the ferocity of the targeting of Ukrainian civilians who as non Russians are clearly inferior according to Putin and his henchmen in the Kremlin.
The conspiracy theories peddled by the Russian troll farms, are clearly harmful and they have been discouraging of vaccine uptake. It almost seems as if taking the vaccine is an act of defiance against those who would control us. The lack of evidence of wide scale and damaging side effects of the Covid vaccines encourages us to get back to reality, and reject fantasy.
We seem to living in frightening times and the answer seems to be to keep a firm grip on reality and to pay attention to our social context. Maybe something that our own ideologue, Liz Truss, is beginning to learn, just perhaps.
Walking whilst ill 