Do Not Cover This Easy Story: Corona Virus Conspiracy Theories are Almost All Robots

Corona virus news is everywhere. Yet, it is less of a problem than influenza. In many ways the reaction to the virus is more problematic than the virus itself, linking the hypertrophied sense of skepticism of the hoax with ostensibly scientific rationality. Racist ideas appear rational during the time of the outbreak. Ed Yong has framed this in compelling terms in The Atlantic. The end game is that protectionist measures that would ban travel or racialize the response to a medical situation destroy the bonds that make effective responses possible:

Bans can also break the fragile bonds of international trust that are necessary for controlling diseases, which is why the WHO advised against them when it declared a PHEIC. If countries know that they’ll be cut off during an epidemic, with all the economic repercussions that entails, they may be less likely to report future outbreaks, leading to costly delays.

So if one were to amplify nationalist and protectionist responses against a disease they could effectively magnify the impact of that disease. Who would want that?

The answer is relatively clear: if you instigate social actions that cause the response to a disease to fail, you will have proven that the structures of governance that were not worth supporting in the first place. An important element of the response of the Chinese government is reestablishing credibility on this front. It would be entirely possible to…