COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories

The handling of the pandemic globally was negatively affected by several misinformation and outright fake news about its origin and even treatment. The various forms of misinformation built up public mistrust about the government and various medical scholars.

A study conducted by Cornell University published in The New York Times found out that of the more than 38 million articles published between 01.01 and 26.05, more than 1.1 million (~3%) contained misinformation. Out of these 1.1 million articles, 46% were categorized as misinformation or conspiracy theories. These conspiracy theories/ misinformation were further broken down into 11 distinct topics as displayed in the image. These topics ranged from the pandemic being spread by bat soup to there being a miracle cure (eg injecting bleach or use of anti-malarial drugs) to it being a Democratic Party hoax (as the outbreak of the pandemic coincided with Trump’s impeachment trial). The major source of misinformation/conspiracy theory was the miracle cure which accounted 26.4% of the 46% share of misinformation/conspiracy theories.

Do you believe any of these theories or did you at some point?

Let’s know in the comment section 👇🏿