Daily Kos, meet Dr. Cyril Broderick.
The Ebola outbreak in the West African nations of Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone has claimed, since December, some 3,000 lives and possibly twice that, sickened another 4,000+, and has thrown the region into chaos. Economies are teetering (Guinea's GDP will drop by a full percent this year and perhaps more), the social fabric is unraveling. Panic is gripping nations. Panic and hysteria that feed conspiracy theories.
Guess what? Panic that leads to hysteria that feed conspiracy theories actively kill people.
Like Dr. Broderick's conspiracy theory, published in a major Liberian newspaper earlier in September. (Click through to get to what he actually wrote. It's a bloody doozy.)
“Reports narrate stories of the US Department of Defense (DoD) funding Ebola trials on humans, trials which started just weeks before the Ebola outbreak in Guinea and Sierra Leone,” wrote Delaware State University associate professor Cyril Broderick.
Under the headline, “Ebola, AIDS Manufactured by Western Pharmaceuticals, US DoD?”, it says: “the U.S., Canada, France, and the U.K. are all implicated in the detestable and devilish deeds that these Ebola tests are. There is a need to pursue criminal and civil redress for damages.”
Here are a couple of the things that he actually said:
1. Ebola is a GMO.
2. Ebola is being actively tested by USDoD on African populations
Oh, it gets worse. From WaPo:
Worse, in the same breath, the semi-intelligible article suggests groups trying to stop the epidemic — Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders — are all somehow in on it. The piece puts them on a list of those “implicated in selecting and enticing African countries to participate in the testing events.”
Yeah. Click through. All the way through to the article in the Liberian Observer. And take a brief perusal of the comments. Yes, even people in Liberia have Facebook (what did you think, Africans just sit around in huts?), and they are commenting on the article. A good many
believe it.
Okay, before I move further, I have to get this off my chest. Fuck you, Dr. Cyril Broderick. Fuck. You.
Okay, now that this is done, let's keep going. Yes, there's evidence his words are not helping. His conspiracy theories are not helping. His conspiracy theories are actively killing.
In Guinea, there have been riots and there was the tragic case of 8 aid workers, murdered. Why were they murdered? Hysteria and conspiracy theories. Hysteria, panic, and conspiracy theories led to their murders. Hysteria, panic, and conspiracy theories killed.
Liberians and Sierra Leoneans have a distrust of their governments as well. Both nations recently emerged from hideous civil wars, and Guinea was, for lack of a better word, a deeply authoritarian state until fairly recently, and too lacks a certain stability despite, until this year, a quickly growing economy (both Sierra Leone and Liberia also have, or well had, rapidly expanding economies).
We snark about chemtrails and other ridiculous nutty WRONG bullshit that crosses our paths. A good deal of the ridiculous nutty conspiracy theory WRONG bullshit that crosses our path is harmless, annoying, indicative of a population that thrives on that sort of stuff for some damn reason.
Not so with this one. Like HIV-denialist conspiracy theories (and it's worth noting that a good many people who espoused that shit are DEAD now, from AIDS which is a syndrome derived from where, class?), this conspiracy theory is actively killing people.
In July the Washington Post reported that in Freetown, the capital city of Sierra Leone, people were saying "ebola doesn't exist." This is not a rare belief in a conspiracy theory. Well, the conspiracy theory has killed, now, in Sierra Leone.
Dr. Broderick doesn't seem to give a flying fuck that his words are not helping. A professor of plant science at Delaware State University in Dover, DE, this isn't even his lane. WaPo writes:
“Ebola has a terrible history, and testing has been secretly taking place in Africa,” Broderick wrote, going on to praise the famous Ebola account “The Hot Zone” as “heart-rending,” but written “to be politically correct.”
Broderick declined to answer whether he is concerned his article, published in Liberia’s Ebola-devastated capital, would convince locals that Western doctors are trying to harm them. “I refer you to the articles and reports published,” he said. “I hope you can understand them. They are unambiguous. I am happy that our government has taken the lead in counteracting the infection to curtail the infections and death.”
What unbothered bullshit you're speaking, Dr. Broderick, and never mind the fact that The Hot Zone is considered by ACTUAL EBOLA RESEARCHERS
to be highly inaccurate. And here's why he's being believed on the ground in Monrovia: he's educated, he's a scientist, and he's employed by a fairly decent American university. Gotdamn.
The university, of course, is very likely to not do a damn thing either. Could they? Maybe. Should they? I don't know. This is what they said though.
“A lot of people can have tenure at a university and then they’ll go out and commit mass murder, okay,” said a Delaware State University spokesperson. “We didn’t know that they would do that before they were granted tenure.”
welp.
Conspiracy theories, panic, and hysteria feed on misinformation, and misinformation especially in nations where the populace has a mistrust of its government, can kill.
Here's a sample of the greater harm that panic, hysteria, misinformation, and conspiracy theories are having:
In Guinea some 2 million people--that one-fifth of the population, is estimated to be anemic due to malnutrition. In Guinea some 180,000 people are HIV-positive. Malaria will disable or kill tens of thousands if not more this year alone. Their needs aren't being met. On top of that? Prices of food are skyrocketing.
In Liberia where some 85% of the population lives in poverty the maternal mortality rate is 990 in 100,000. And to point out those who want total travel bans (and especially to the individual who suggested sealing the place off like that city in Resident Evil), 90% of Liberia's food is imported. There, like in Guinea, prices for food are skyrocketing.
In Sierra Leone, ebolavirus killed the nation's top Lassa fever expert. Lassa Fever kills some 5,000 people a year. Yellow Fever and malaria are endemic. On top of that like elsewhere, food prices are skyrocketing as civil society shuts down.
Ebola is not native to any location in West Africa. Identified in 1976 in what is now South Sudan, it's appeared in Congo-Zaire (including Kinshasa), Uganda, and the Republic of Congo. These nations, despite three of them not being anywhere close to stable, have a familiarity with the disease. Not so in western Africa until this summer. A lack of familiarity, coupled with panic, and rumours, and misinformation, and conspiracy theories, and hysteria has killed thousands of people.
That's changing, slowly. Awareness campaigns are underway as aid begins to finally arrive.
That's real awareness campaigns, not Dr. Broderick's fucking bullshit.
(I won't even discuss the homeopathic bullshit posted earlier this summer on that horrid little Natural News site, because then the diary would be even longer and angrier, but to their credit they did take it down. That said, homeopathy and "natural cures" kill here too.)
Like this one.
Or this one. These are just a couple samples. Their road is long and their battle is uphill.
Music is huge in this region. So music will help change behaviors, bring out awareness, and the incoming aid will help stop the outbreak. This is how it's done, Dr. Broderick, not a bunch of idiotic and dangerous and damaging conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories that are feeding panic and hysteria, all of which is killing people through exposure to the virus. It doesn't help when media outlets spread the hysteria too, because that will kill. This isn't a game, especially when modeling done by the CDC and WHO suggests that some 200,000 people or more* could contract ebolavirus. Conspiracy theories, hysteria, and panic, and misinformation can kill. Here's where it's actively doing so.