The "plandemic" is back! On Wednesday, August 14, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a public health emergency of international concern, its highest alert level, for mpox (the disease formerly known as monkeypox), a virulent and deadly strain of which is spreading from West Africa. For conspiracy theorists, this was all it took to reach the conclusion that this epidemic was planned for unspeakable ends and that "they're trying to redo Covid," as one X user commented.
The main players in the conspiracy theories of the 2020-2021 pandemic quickly revised their rhetoric to fit mpox: Silvano Trotta, the great craftsman of disinformation in French-speaking spheres in 2020; Quebecer Alexis Cossette, a conduit of conspiracy tales between the United States and France in the heyday of the QAnon movement; Richard Ebright, a biologist and fervent advocate of the (never proven) hypothesis of a laboratory-derived SARS-CoV-2; and certain branches of RéinfoCovid, an anti-restriction and anti-RNA vaccine collective.
Illustrated with a photograph of Bill Gates with his face covered in dollar sign-shaped sores, the same reasoning resurfaced: "Follow the money," implying that the American multi-billionaire, the WHO's largest private donor, would profit from every health crisis, thanks to his patents on vaccines. Back in the spring of 2020, the Microsoft founder was the target of relentless conspiracy theories blaming him for the emergence of Covid-19. Just as his participation in a health emergency preparedness exercise in October 2019 had been interpreted as planning for Covid-19, a 2021 speech in which he evoked fears of a possible bioterrorist use of smallpox is now being presented as evidence of his involvement in the spread of a new strain of mpox.
This classic conspiracy reflex, which involves creating a scapegoat for every health crisis, is accompanied by a fierce denial of the natural origin of diseases. A viral image mocking the term "monkeypox" is in fact a misnomer. It was discovered in primates in the 1950s, but is now known to come from rodents. For those resistant to scientific consensus, unconvinced that a virus can originate in animals, it belongs atop a long – and ironic – list of unlikely diseases, from "ladybug acne" to "snail otitis." It's a way of brushing aside the zoonotic nature of epidemics, which has been widely documented, the better to blame mankind, in particular the figure of the virologist working on dangerous experiments.
Right from the start, the Covid-19 pandemic was plagued by speculation about a virus that escaped from a laboratory. From the possibility of a research accident to the Hollywood scenario of a biological weapon, one theory after another popped up. Four and a half years later, mpox is getting the same treatment: A 2019 news report showing laboratory work on a smallpox strain is being cited to claim that the virus "has been completely reproduced by Canadian researchers," "with the aim of killing us off," according to an Internet user.
In this grim repetition of the conspiracy rhetoric of 2020, many pretend to be unaware that the situation is, to date, hardly comparable. Unlike Covid-19, mpox is not a disease transmitted through the air, but by sexual intercourse, physical contact or droplets. Mpox is still transmissible and a cause for concern, but its reproduction rate is not comparable to that of a respiratory virus, and does not justify the same kind of health response. "No one, to my knowledge, has raised the idea of resorting to lockdowns to control mpox," said epidemiologist Antoine Flahault, Director of the University of Geneva's Institute of Public Health, in an interview with the website Atlantico.
Other conspiracy theorists already view the WHO alert as the work of "Big Pharma," a supposed conspiracy by pharmaceutical multinationals. For Silvano Trotta, "you have to build up fear so that the first simpletons start getting vaccinated to drag the others along." But this interpretation too is incorrect, since vaccines against smallpox and its various strains are generic drugs and therefore make little money for Big Pharma.
Going even further, Cossette, convinced like so many Trumpist activists that the 2020 election was stolen by the Democrats, sees a link between the WHO alert and next November's US presidential election. This despite the fact that mpox is already on its second WHO alert in two years, and that at last count, it hadn't prevented any elections from taking place.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.