Conspiracies a viral sickness

Conspiracy theories are spreading faster then the coronavirus, with social media a perfect breeding ground for far-fetched fantasies engineered to fan fear and agitate political agendas. China, Iran, Trump it's the perfect petri dish to ensure the virus goes viral.

Officially, the epidemic appears to have slowed somewhat in mainland China, with government cadres reporting a sharp drop in new infections in Wuhan and other cities. Although it shows signs of easing, they warn it has yet to reach a turning point.

But it appears to be blowing up elsewhere. South Korea declared a "red alert" on yesterday after a surge in infections and a death toll of six. Iran confirmed 15 new cases, taking the total to 43 with a death toll of eight.

And Italy's northern Lombardy region reported 89 cases, up from 54 a day earlier, bringing the total number of cases in the country to more than 100. Veneto, the other worst hit area, said it had 19 cases, up seven from Saturday. Two people have died. Authorities have banned public events and told workers in affected areas to stay home. As the coronavirus spreads around the world, the World Health Organization says the window of containment is narrowing.

Unfortunately, the less people know, the more vulnerable they are to hearsay and conspiracy theories. The explosion of the epidemic in the mainland has been accompanied by a virulent outbreak of theories pointing to conspiracies by the usual suspects - primarily, the usual arch villains of the United States and Russia.

Among the latest is a theory accusing Americans of being behind Covid-19, the code-like special name the WHO assigned to the new virus to distance it from the city of Wuhan.

The US State Department hit out, accusing Russia of being behind another disinformation campaign involving hundreds or even thousands of Russian-linked social media accounts. Vladimir Putin's regime in Moscow denied having anything to do with it.

That's the first time since the new virus erupted that government officials have been involved in making claims and denials against each other.

Indeed, there has never been a lack of hearsay revolving around the virus. Like the virus, conspiracy theories keep evolving constantly during this turbulent period - some escalating to the official levels like the US-Russian barbs and others confined to civilians.

For example, after the novel coronavirus was claimed to have been artificially created by a top-security state laboratory in Wuhan, it was soon suggested that evil minds in Beijing deliberately released the virus to create chaos so that Beijing would not be obliged to buy US goods worth billions of dollars after signing the bitterly hated trade deal. As I have commented before, that sabotage plot was nonsense.

The problem with the current situation is the abundance of both accurate and inaccurate information mixing with each other until it's almost impossible for ordinary people to differentiate fact from fiction.

Rumors in Hong Kong that toilet rolls were in short supply were incredulous, right? But they caused runs and even led to an armed robbery of rolls. Rumors cannot be corrected by curbs on the use of social media - which could just backfire and breed fears - but only through the dissemination of accurate information.

Like it or not, we are all part of a global village and must support each other instead of pointing fingers and spreading confusion and fear. There is more than one virus that needs eradicating.