Conspiracy Theories and Uncertainty About Monkeypox Are Spreading Really, Really Fast

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:

(((Dorit Reiss)))
@doritmi
·
Follow
Conspiracy Theories and Uncertainty About #Monkeypox Are Spreading Really, Really Fast and drawing on misinformation about #covid19 #vaccines, too. https://vice.com/en/article/3addx3/conspiracy-theories-and-uncertainty-about-monkeypox-are-spreading-really-really-fast… via @motherboard

vice.com
Conspiracy Theories and Uncertainty About Monkeypox Are Spreading Really, Really Fast
As awareness of the disease grows, so have beliefs about it being engineered in a lab or “released to help Biden.”
11:20 AM · Aug 9, 2022

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3addx3/conspiracy-theories-and-uncertainty-about-monkeypox-are-spreading-really-really-fast

A round of new public policy polls show that awareness of monkeypox is growing in the United States—and so are conspiracy theories about it, many of which have been directly repurposed from false claims made about COVID-19. While the far-right uses monkeypox to peddle anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theories and prominent anti-vax figures have already declared they won’t take the disease seriously, there’s evidence that a broader suspicion could, once again, be taking root. There’s also a noticeable—if still minor—percentage of people who don’t know what to believe about the disease, creating a fertile market for conspiracy peddlers.

The main source of information we currently have about monkeypox conspiracy theories is from a poll released on July 29 by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. We know from other polling in May that most Americans said then they weren’t paying attention to the monkeypox outbreak, but the Annenberg poll seemed to show that awareness of the disease is starting to grow. While about 80 percent of respondents said they weren’t worried about catching monkeypox in the next few months, 69 percent of the respondents knew that monkeypox usually spreads via close, prolonged contact with an infected person, suggesting they’ve been hearing or reading about the disease.

But that’s also where things immediately began to get a bit dicey: another 26 percent of respondents weren’t sure if that basic fact—that monkeypox spreads via close contact—was true. Additionally, 51 percent of the respondents weren’t sure if a monkeypox vaccine exists, although one has been licensed for use by the FDA (the same vaccine used to prevent smallpox).

And further questions on specific conspiratorial beliefs about monkeypox showed that a few conspiracy narratives are already circulating, even if they remain in the extreme minority. Some 34 percent of those surveyed weren’t sure whether or not it’s true or false that monkeypox was “bioengineered in a lab,” something for which there is absolutely no evidence. Lab leak theories about COVID-19, of course, have circulated widely, even while there’s still no definitive evidence that’s what happened. (Three preprint studies published in February showed that COVID emerging via a wet market is still most persuasive to experts. Two of those studies have since been released with peer review, though they still don’t answer precisely which animals were most likely involved.)

*snip*

[LW1977]

1. The homophobia from the right wing is only gonna escalate.

They learned nothing from the 1980s when AIDS was the punchline to every gay joke.

[crickets]

2. K&R for visibility.