90-Second Read: Ebola and Hantavirus outbreaks prompt raft of conspiracy theories in divided US

Mikki Willis, who made the film Plandemic, about the conspiracy theory that the Covid pandemic was planned, said that "they are … gonna try this again" with Hantavirus. Middle Ages historian Thomas Asbridge, author of The Black Death, argues that the response to Hantavirus, Ebola, Covid and the 14th century plague share common characteristics. We're absolutely right to be alarmed and cautious about Ebola and Hantavirus. In the upside-down world of conspiracy theories it could be a bioweapon, a financial plot, or a scheme to extract national resources.

The rightwing site Gateway Pundit, which included a "Contagion Emergency Kit", suggested that Hantavirus was "another plandemic" and a "transparent effort to terrorize Americans and swing the midterms against President Trump". According to the website Media Matters, which monitors the right wing in the US, numerous podcasters and social media figures have linked the twin viral outbreaks as a way of potentially disrupting the coming US midterm elections. Last week, US secretary of state Marco Rubio and WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus clashed on US international engagement after Rubio said the agency was a "little late" in identifying the Ebola outbreak in DRC. But that was during the fourth season of The Walking Dead.

Ebola, which the World Health Organization warned Friday is spreading rapidly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and poses a "very high" risk at the national level. Whatever the disease, people are going to say there's a conspiracy behind it, or that it's not real and the vaccine is scam. But claims that conspiracy theories are always rightwing are not entirely accurate. In response to identification of the Andes strain of Hantavirus onboard MV Hondius, officials initially offered contradictory information about whether it was spread by rodent dropping or could by close human-to-human contact.

Anti-fluoridation, a movement that opposes the addition of fluoride to public water supplies, exists in Portland, Oregon, and it does in Florida, but for different reasons: one group mainly thinks it's a capitalist corporate plot; the other is anti-communist. And amid the natural confusion of dealing with a virus, conspiracy theorists only add to the problem, which remains a very real one. Asbridge points out the Black Death came during financial and climate crises, the collapse of the Florentine gold-backed economy and the onset of the Little Ice Age.