Last Stand of the Conspiracists
I
August marked an important turning point in the pandemic with the FDA granting full authorization for the Pfizer vaccine’s use and with it the ability for employers and institutions to mandate inoculation, thereby effectively shifting away from what had been a national narrative-first strategy in combatting vaccine hesitancy to one of social coercion — and rightly so. A campaign of counter-narrative in the face of misinformation was always doomed to fail. In the arena of storytelling, it is the conspiracists who will reign, for their tales are far more numerous, varied, and less beholden to the dictates of logic. Theirs is a narratively rich onslaught that switches tracks from science to politics to psychology to history to journalism at the slightest convenience, and with equal measures of bombast as disregard.
Thus for every empirical case made showing the vaccine’s efficacy against severe infection, a dozen others pointing to government incompetence, the Tuskegee Experiments, Bill Gates’ malevolence, the superiority of natural remedies, concocted statistics, testimonials from quack scientists, risks of autism and infertility, unverifiable anecdotes, and so on. It is why many of us have already had the experience of explaining the vaccine’s effectiveness to a friend or relative only to find the conversation quickly derailed by a constant shifting of terrain on which it is difficult to keep balance. For those of us who stand by the vaccines, we are equipped with but one tool, that of the mundane facts, which can pale in comparison in the face of zealous doubts. An August 6th episode of The Daily featured an interview with a woman who had twice had covid-19, developed pneumonia in both her lungs, contracted a fever of 104.7 degrees, been hospitalized to the brink of death, already lost her grandmother to the disease, missed her terribly, but still would not take the vaccine. Why? Because “I figured let my immune system do its job, because I do not get sick. I don’t take any antibiotics usually unless I absolutely need them. So I knew my immune system was great.”
So you will see that we are dealing with fanatics.
Many of the less adamant, though equally insidious, had in fact been holding onto the lack of FDA approval as their final reservation, adopting a wait-and-see type stance that lent them the air of reasonable citizens considering an important choice. Now that the approval is out of the way, we’ll see that they were never going to change their minds at all.
II
No one has the time to learn everything. Trust in our societal institutions is what lets us live together in a state of mutual benefit without having to. It’s why we start our cars without expecting them to explode, presuming that the engineers and regulators have done their job, enter destinations into our GPS to get where we are going, presuming that the space scientists have done their job, and turn out from our driveways onto the main street presupposing that the other drivers who stopped to give us way, will not suddenly change their minds and decide to smash into us. Even a trip to the store is an act of mass faith it boggles the mind to consider. I mention this trust not as some unfortunate shortcoming of complex civilization, but as one of its essential components. Some will doubtless point to exceptions to the above instances and cite examples of exploding cars and lost roadtrippers, in which case there is always the option of forfeiting society’s risks and becoming a hermit. The problem with the conspiracists is that they are out here living amongst us.
It was not always like this. Before we lived online the conspiracists were understandably reticent to make their beliefs known, and laughed out of the room as kooks in the rare instances they did. Many of us had that friend who through great pains had managed to procure some obscure VHS revealing the secrets of the Illuminati, its sound out of sync through repeated viewings, and that they revealed only very late at night, once, with the same cautious air as if exposing a sixth thumb. Back then, no one knew how many of them they were, least of all themselves, and they conducted their furtive business in scattered pockets across the land. Then the internet allowed them to coalesce and their ideas to take on the virulent growth of a contagion — first amongst each other, then with others still.
Now the budding conspiracist has not only a wealth of tales in which to believe, but also a thriving support network encouraging that she does. No longer does she have to wonder by herself if the earth is flat, or if the Clintons are cannibals. Instead she has an infinite scroll of recommended videos from pseudo-scientists and anonymous message boards from insiders offering clandestine scoops. Conspiracy thinking’s allure is in offering hidden, quickly-gained information capable of standing in as a substitute for difficult, slowly-earned knowledge. Why spend twelve years becoming a doctor when a Google search may defeat you? Of what use are the rigorous tenets of journalism when I can ask obscure misleading questions about global cabals and say, “Think about it . . .”? I will not be shy here in mentioning that many conspiracy thinkers have for the most part been excluded from the halls of higher education, with numerous studies correlating the lack of a college degree with an increase in conspiratorial thought. In adopting such beliefs they seek to satisfy any of the three important psychological motives identified by University of Kent social psychologist Dr Karen Douglas: the epistemic, or the need for knowledge and certainty, the existential, or the need to feel secure, and the social, the need to feel good about themselves and their group. Says Douglas:
So people with lower levels of education tend to be drawn to conspiracy theories. And we don’t argue that’s because people are not intelligent. It’s simply that they haven’t been allowed to have, or haven’t been given access to the tools to allow them to differentiate between good sources and bad sources or credible sources and non-credible sources. So they’re looking for that knowledge and certainty, but not necessarily looking in the right places.
The mind is a sponge in need of filling, by one means if not another; something must arise to satisfy that hunger for understanding left by academia’s absence. What the internet has done is provide a source of cheap nutrients in little need of digestion, and that better yet lends the patina of authority. So it is not just that the conspiracists cannot be convinced otherwise but that their very sense of self will not allow them to. Here they have found a tool of awesome might with which they can stand toe-to-toe with any opponent. Now I have seen conspiracists so empowered as to argue with actual scientists about science, with economists about global markets, with historians about The Council of Nicaea. The crux of their strength comes from that gap between partial knowledge and trust in institution that they refuse to cross, preferring instead to become authorities of their own through a hodgepodge of internet clicks and “research.” That research is itself a skill it takes years to learn, is an irony that does not deter them.
III
We need not look too far in the past to see what consequences are at stake. On January 6th an ill-formed mob of conspiracists and their ilk stormed the US Capitol in Washington DC, as much through coordinated assault as mindless momentum, empowered by a potent mix of paranoia and enthusiasm. Perhaps not all of them believed in the lie of a stolen election, but there were enough that did to buoy on the others. We learned that day just how willing conspiracists are to take the leap from the digital world of disinformation into the physical one of dissent and destruction. Now obvious in hindsight, the constant fuse of their convictions grew only hotter in the weeks following the election until they became as enraged as cornered animals.
The overlaps between the January 6th supporters and the covid-19 anti-vaxxers are nearly exact, which should surprise no one, as belief in at least one conspiracy theory predicts an increased likelihood of belief in others. As of this writing in September, still only 64% of Americans 18 and older are fully vaccinated. The remaining 36% is up to no good.
Anti-vax protestors in LA left one person stabbed and a reporter assaulted while in Hawaii a group ranging from 50 to 100 have been gathering every night outside the governor’s home where he lives with his wife and two children, yelling through bullhorns and shining strobe lights through the window. Elsewhere in France a crowd of 237,000 vandalized 15 vaccine centers with swastikas and Nazi slurs. Closer to my own region, anti-vaccine protestors in St Vincent struck the Prime Minister in the head with a stone. To say nothing of earlier acts of destruction preceding the vaccine rollout, such as the burning of dozens of 5G towers across Europe in order to prevent their wireless signals from interacting with some internal bio-mechanism that was in fact the real cause of covid-19, or something like that, proving once again that anything gets to be a conspiracy when you don’t know how shit works.
Perhaps there was indeed a window of opportunity in which the swift and effective rollout of factual information might have saved us, but it’s now long gone. Says Douglas:
… giving people the facts does work under certain situations. In some of our own research, we’ve actually found that it’s quite effective to provide people with factual information, provide people with the facts. And this was particularly about vaccines before they’re exposed to conspiracy theories, and then the conspiracy theory fails to gain traction. But once the people have been exposed to the conspiracy theory, they’re giving them the, I guess,… Sorry, the appropriate or correct information afterwards doesn’t really work.
Or, put otherwise, conspiracy theories can be vaccinated against, but they cannot be cured.
IV
We have been fighting two illnesses, only one of which seems to have a proven remedy. Against the virus of willful ignorance, no number of centuries has yet been able to stomp it out. We who are society, who believe in its institutions and in each other, must recognize in these dissenters not a mere differing of opinion but a fundamental rejection of the principles that allow us to live in harmony. We gave it a shot, trying to reason with them. But reason and trust are not society’s only tools, though they be amongst its most benign. When they have failed we must look to the ancient alternatives of stigma and banishment. Now is the time to put the squeeze on these people — to make them unwelcome in our schools and offices, on airlines, in our homes over the holidays. Waiting to see more evidence before choosing a vaccine is no longer an argument. Pointing to breakthrough infections is no longer an argument. There are no more arguments. Let us draw a line in the sand, insist that it not be crossed, and be ready for the storm when still they refuse.
