Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Ebolagain! (Back to the Conspiracy)
44 Plays1 year ago
The rumoured outbreak of Ebola at this year's Burning Man is all the excuse M and Josh need to take a look at our old episodes about Ebola conspiracy theories, and infectious disease conspiracy theories in general. Who remembers Zika?
—
You can contact us at: podcastconspiracy@gmail.com
Why not support The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy by donating to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/podcastersguidetotheconspiracy
or Podbean crowdfunding? http://www.podbean.com/patron/crowdfund/profile/id/muv5b-79
Recommended
Transcript
Episode Introduction and Setup
00:00:00
Speaker
Howdy, so what are you doing? Just trying to rework one of our past witty and incredibly humorous introductions. Yes, witty and humorous. That's a description of them. Seriously though, what are you working on? It's an update to episode 24's jokes about Ebola. Last time I was something, something, something rhymes with cola. Yeah, I hate to be the one who asks the hard questions, but as I said almost
00:00:27
Speaker
Jesus, seven years ago? Aren't there actually any funny jokes about Ebola? No, but that doesn't mean we can't try and find some regardless. Say, does anything rhyme with hemorrhagic fever? I'm not sure you actually took on board what I said. Something about fruit bats? I mean, post-COVID there's got to be a joke about fruit bats somewhere.
00:00:47
Speaker
I mean, it is a fairly horrible disease. It disproportionately affects third world countries. Ebola or Covid? Both. Maybe a song. I could cover Jack Payne's Rhythmatitis. Look, I mean, surely you'd at least draw the line at making, say, jokes about AIDS. An AIDS joke about Ebola and Covid. That's a bit...
00:01:09
Speaker
Dark, isn't it? It's not really what I was getting at. So I think you're onto something. Rhyme Ebola with novel- no, no, no, no, novel. NOLA. NOLA Cola. There wasn't that SARS Cola thing a few years ago. I'm just gonna set this one out. BOLA Cola, made of granola, made by a bad name named NOLA. It'll whoop your arse like the old tombola. It's a heavy-hitting roll-a-dola. Something, something runs on Sola. Roll the theme.
00:01:43
Speaker
The podcast's guide to the conspiracy featuring Josh Edison and Em
Revival of an Old Conspiracy Topic
00:01:48
Speaker
Dintus.
00:01:54
Speaker
Oh, and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy in Auckland, New Zealand. I am Josh Edison, and in Zhuhai, China, it is Associate Professor, once again, M.R.X.Tentis. Yes, I have returned from the grave? I don't know. Probably. From something. From being a mere doctor to a full Associate Professor.
00:02:17
Speaker
You're back in China, isn't it? It's the first time, but I thought we're worth mentioning it again. And we're just completely fouling up an intro as is per usual. Yeah, not helped by the fact that the internet has been less, less than agreeable this time, but we're recording now, so let's stick with it while we've got it.
00:02:35
Speaker
Yeah, well, not just less than agreeable, but as we were preparing to do the podcast, I got a phone call from the courier who was delivering my noodles, who apparently can't get onto the campus and was waiting outside the campus. I had to cycle to the entrance of the campus to pick up my noodles and come back. So there's been a remarkable number of delays getting to the start of this episode. And because Josh is on a timeline,
00:02:58
Speaker
I mean, we're all in a timeline, but Josh is a time limit. A deadline, you might say. The fact that I'm drawing out this preamble means that we're running awfully close to running up against that limit. And when we hit that limit, I believe Josh dies. Something like that, but you'll never know. But yes, we probably should crack ahead. We've got
Ebola's Media Frenzy and Conspiracy Theories
00:03:18
Speaker
a
00:03:18
Speaker
We've got it back to the conspiracy episode, looking at an old topic that reared its head slightly over the last week, which is all the justification we need to start talking about it. Yes, I was going to make a joke about the Running Man, but I just can't work out how to get from Burning Man to Running Man, other than doing a very bad Arnold Schwarzenegger impression. And nobody needs to hear that. Nobody does. What we do need to hear is a chime, and then we can start talking about it. Then let's chime like we did last summer.
00:03:47
Speaker
Buckle up. We're going back to the conspiracy.
00:04:07
Speaker
I mean, I mean, because it was a period of time in which white people were getting Ebola and then suddenly it was the worst disease of all time. Yeah. Yeah. And then when it when it just started being people in Africa, getting Ebola, we basically decided to not care, which I think speaks an awful lot about Western civilization.
00:04:26
Speaker
It does, unfortunately. But yes, back in October of 2014, Ebola had actually reached mainland USA, which meant people were talking about it. And as we were recording the podcast all the way back then, we were 24 episodes into the podcast.
00:04:43
Speaker
Back when we were young and vibrant. In episode 24 we decided to devote episode 24 to Ebola. So of course Ebola like in the 90s, Ebola first showed up in the 90s. I don't know exactly why, I'm not sure exactly what prompted it. I think certain writers or screenwriters had just found out about this Ebola disease that sounded really gross because you start bleeding all over the place.
00:05:09
Speaker
And then we had, there was the movie Outbreak. That was the big one. But there were books about... Build on that star Dustin Hoffman's monkey? Yes, Dustin Hoffman and a monkey. That was Outbreak. Oh, I didn't actually realize Dustin Hoffman was in it. I just thought his monkey was in it. No, no, he was there as well. Renee Russo, a bunch of famous people. I can't remember when I saw him, but... Sorry, Renee Russo owns a monkey. Probably. Don't they all those Hollywood types? Yeah, I mean, I guess you're right, actually.
00:05:36
Speaker
So, yeah, in the 90s it was big, and then, as you say, because it was only actually affecting people on the other side of the planet, the Western world kind of lost interest in it. Until 2014, when some cases showed up in America. Now, at the time we recorded episode 24, the outbreak in America had just sort of started. It would eventually go on until about 2016 and result in 11.
00:06:03
Speaker
11 cases of Ebola, which are to this day, the only recorded cases of Ebola in the United States. And that was one of the things we're not by the way, we're going to be talking about infectious diseases today, we're not going to be talking about COVID, because we've everybody's had enough of COVID, except to say that America kind of lost its mind over 11 cases of Ebola. And yet a million odd COVID deaths was seen as an overreaction, something to overreact to. But anyway,
00:06:32
Speaker
Yes, but we have to remember, Josh, according to many Republicans, COVID is just like the common cold. And unfortunately, there isn't, there aren't that many analogous diseases to Ebola. You can't tell you, Ebola is just like common... It's just like the...
00:06:49
Speaker
Yeah, it's just like, no, as you know, we don't have the Marburgavirus. It's just like flesh eating. No, as you know, that doesn't work either. Actually, Ebola is not like many common diseases. But COVID, it's just a cold, Josh. It's just a cold. There might be something to that. But yes, back in 2014, when Obama was president, he actually assigned an Ebola czar to look into what was going on with it, which at the time, I believe, remarked if there were any poetry in the world, he would have been called the Ebola Ayatollah. But but no,
00:07:19
Speaker
No, that's not good enough for the American administration. Just always has to be a czar for some bizarre reason. And actually, the other link to COVID, as I believe Fauci was involved in the Ebola treatments around about this time, which is kind of his first big prominent media appearance, was as a medical director who was actually willing to suit up and go and treat Ebola patients on the notion that
00:07:49
Speaker
He had to kind of lead from the front. He was going to ask the other doctors to go and treat them unless he was also willing to suit up and do it himself. But of course, at the time, nobody knew who Fauci was. He only became a big deal with COVID. But yes, it goes all the way back. So at the time, back in October of 2014, we thought we'd have a look at the sort of conspiracy theories that go around Ebola.
00:08:12
Speaker
And dug up some interesting facts, the first of which is that the CDC in America actually holds a patent on a strain of Ebola, which seems a little bit odd. Yeah, although the whole painting of DNA, tricky, tricky subject.
00:08:32
Speaker
And one of the reasons why many people are, again, GMOs, not just from the worry that genetically modified organisms may have a unfultled effect upon the environment, but also if genetically modified organisms supplant, say,
00:08:48
Speaker
Natural seeds. I know natural here's a weird way to put it because plants are plants But if you have a genetically modified organism that supplants the commonly Available say rice or grain you use and someone happens to own the genetic sequence behind that GMO Then suddenly you're going these plants which used to be just free for me to seed and plant I now have to pay licensing fees and look at the UL at you EU LA for my rice crops
00:09:18
Speaker
So, why do you want that for a disease is the weird thing, which of course, you know, simply the fact that this patent exists gets people saying, you know, obviously, it's a manufactured disease, things that we've seen with various other diseases. And, you know, it was made in a lab, blah, blah, blah,
Western Intervention and Vaccine Conspiracies
00:09:38
Speaker
blah, blah. Apparently, it's just
00:09:41
Speaker
America has this weird fascination with the control of intellectual property, which then leads people, when something comes up, then it's like, well, if I don't paint it, someone else will, so might as well be the CDC. If anyone's going to be patenting diseases, it should be the CDC.
00:10:01
Speaker
And then supposedly it also ties into the development of vaccines, which also want to be patented, which is, I would argue, equally dodgy, but dodgy for more sort of anti-capitalist reasons than hardcore conspiratorialist reasons.
00:10:19
Speaker
Mmm, yeah. Yeah, as you say, the America's fascination with intellectual property sometimes leads to behaviors that non-Americans find, if so slightly bizarre, if not actually creepy.
00:10:36
Speaker
I guess the main conspiracy theory when it comes to Ebola is that it is a manufactured disease and it's used for population control. That's often with diseases. We'll see that's the thing. The powers that be, whoever they are, make these diseases and deliberately infect the population because they want to kill off large parts of the population to make them easier to control. There's a small problem
00:11:02
Speaker
with that hypothesis. Ebola's actually quite hard to contract. It is. Yes, as far as diseases go, it's
00:11:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's a tricky one to control. And in fact, because of this, we came across another interesting article with the the wonderful title, Ebola, man living in Ghana confirms Ebola as a hoax. And it basically it seemed to be the kind of this article was that, yes, the population conspiracy theories are obviously false because Ebola has been around a lot and it doesn't actually wipe out whole populations. It's a horrible disease. It's very nasty. You don't want to get it.
00:11:40
Speaker
but it's also not a disease that's going to clear out decent portions of the population. But the argument here goes that it is a disease which is being deliberately introduced into areas, but the idea is that it's being done so that countries can then bring in their troops in the guise of humanitarian efforts helping to control this disease, but in fact going in to seal oil reserves and diamonds and stuff like that.
00:12:10
Speaker
I mean, part of me is going, that's kind of plausible, because look at what happened in 2003, where the US and the UK manufactured an excuse to invade Iraq. But also, once again, see 2003, sometimes you just invade a country because you want to.
00:12:27
Speaker
Yes, they didn't need to come up with the disease as a pretext, but certainly invading other countries for oil is by no means unheard of when it comes to international origin. It's a long and storied tradition by Western nations. The UK used to do it, the US does it. It's just something the West likes to do. You have oil, it's ours.
00:12:50
Speaker
So yeah, that was the claim. I think this article claimed that Ebola was actually spread via vaccinations. I don't remember that wrinkle coming up in COVID itself. With the COVID stuff, it was more that the vaccine itself is actively harmful, not that the vaccine is what's giving people COVID, I think, because it took a while for the vaccines to show up. So you probably couldn't have made that claim back then.
00:13:16
Speaker
But yes, certainly, what was the bin Laden? Was it Pakistan, where they had the vaccination campaign that they used to gather genetic data? Which was used as a information collecting system. Yeah. The other virus which was associated with the vaccine calls, there were claims that HIV was
Sociological Insights and Historical Parallels
00:13:37
Speaker
caused by people being given the polio vaccine.
00:13:41
Speaker
based upon badly cultured polio vaccine and ampules. So this is not the first time people have made a claim that the vaccination is the cause of the disease. And it probably won't be the last time. But yes, it doesn't seem to be the story we got with COVID because the vaccinations came well after the first waves of the pandemic.
00:14:04
Speaker
So we also, at the time, in October of 2014, the New York Times published an article about Ebola conspiracy theories that we had to look at because it was old Michael Barkun, who wasn't a name I knew probably back in 2014, but I'm sure was familiar to you, was quoted. And they sort of looked at the types of conspiracy theories that were going around with Ebola as being
00:14:31
Speaker
they took the sort of the sociological view of it, that worries about conspiracy theories were actually people expressing their worries about private health care and health research and stuff like that, and that it was all just sort of a symptom of societal angst or something like that.
00:14:48
Speaker
So yes, we got to see Michael Bakun and Mark Fenster. I mean, Bakun worries that Ebola conspiracy theories are profligating because of worries about private health care in the United States. Fenster was more concerned that they stem from historic lows of trust in government. It's kind of amazing to think that at the time we thought that was a historic low of trust in government.
00:15:10
Speaker
people were not predicting where we were going to be some seven years later. The article was also noteworthy for pointing out that Chris Brown had tweeted at the time. I don't know, but I think this Ebola epidemic is a form of population control. Shit, it's getting crazy, bro. Which I'm going to guess it's true. Alright, Chris Brown, whatever happened to him? Domestic violence. Well, actually, domestic violence and then a little bit of censure and then you sort of came back, I think you just kind of
00:15:38
Speaker
of went out of style on his own really, didn't he? I actually do not know. I do not follow the Chris Brown news. I just know that Chris Brown is a bad, bad man. I remember we talked about him on the podcast years ago and I didn't feel bad for him, but I did feel
00:15:58
Speaker
Like I can see that he's acting exactly the way he had been conditioned to act. He did committed these crimes, which no doubt about that, and then watched as the entire apparatus of the sort of music and publicity industry mobilized itself to minimize his crimes and get him back in the spotlight as soon as possible. So I almost couldn't blame him for being annoyed that people kept bringing it up. But
00:16:28
Speaker
But obviously I do, because he's a dick who hits his girlfriend. But anyway, we're not here to talk about Chris Brown. Like, I really hope... I mean, you did bring him up. I did. Well, our notes brought him up. So past you and me, I think, are to blame for talking about Chris Brown. I'm blaming you entirely for this one. Fair enough.
00:16:47
Speaker
So yeah basically conspiracy theories around Ebola that it was created in a lab which now sounds awfully familiar that it's used as a form of population control and then the idea that it's being used as an excuse for invading other countries which I didn't I didn't really because again at the time
00:17:03
Speaker
Ebola briefly popped up in America, but it was mostly a thing that happened to those other people over there. So the pretext for invading other countries, one I can see as being a bit more relevant to Ebola rather than other diseases, which were more worldwide and did affect a lot of the English-speaking world.
00:17:22
Speaker
Now, we haven't actually really brought up why we're talking about Ebola again. So Josh, what is a Burning Man? Well, that's just it. So yes, obviously, Burning Man is a festival, we know this much. And yes, it was in the news over the last couple of weeks, or the last week or so, because Burning Man, which is at the time we were recording, finished last weekend, but there was a whole bunch of rain and the whole area turned into mud.
00:17:50
Speaker
And it was not possible to get cars in or out for a few days. I believe at that time of recording the cars, the traffic is moving. I'm not sure if everyone's left by now. There were like 75,000 people or something trying to get out of there. But at the time, there were rumors going around that there had been an Ebola outbreak at Burning Man.
00:18:08
Speaker
and that perhaps all these stories of muddy roads were a cover for the fact that it was under some sort of quarantine or what have you. Now, there doesn't seem to have been any substance to these theories at all. It was just weird rumour mongering. But it was interesting to see Ebola turn up in the news again. But that did highlight numerous people, myself included,
00:18:31
Speaker
that we didn't actually know what Burning Man was. Like I assumed it's a music festival because that's why that's the only reason I know of why a whole bunch of people will get together in the same place, but it's not. Did you know what Burning Man was? No. No. Yeah. So I've actually met some burners in the past, people who've both been to Burning Man in the US and to local Burning Man festivals back home in Aotearoa, New Zealand. And it's much more than a music festival. I don't think it's a music festival at all.
00:19:05
Speaker
There's music, there's contemporary art, there's sculpture building, there's survival prepping. It's basically a festival of like-minded people who come together. Now, Burning Man has been in the news in the past because there
00:19:20
Speaker
is a dark side to Burning Man. Sexual violence is actually quite prevalent at the Burning Man Festival, which led to a few years ago there being a discussion by the Burning Man community as to what we can do to make the environment safer, particularly for women and trans people in those kinds of situations. But yes, it's a
00:19:44
Speaker
It's a festival of festivals which brings a lot of people who I have to say probably have a slightly libertarian anti-authoritarian bent to one location in the desert where for about a week
00:20:01
Speaker
They create their own society, their own structures, and are remarkably self-sufficient during this time. There's a kind of joke that goes on that there are the actual burners, the people who know what to do in Burning Man. And then there are the celebrities who rock up with a bottle of water and then can't survive for more than an afternoon in the burning heat.
00:20:26
Speaker
There was one clip going around a couple of days ago of a guy at Burning Man just sort of saying, you know, this is the whole point. It's all about self-sufficiency. We're okay. You know, we can't get him around now, but we can survive. We've got the thing. We all come together. It's great. And he was just sort of talking about it. And like less than it was, it was only about a minute or a minute and a half long. And just partway through it, he's just like, you know, this has happened. That has happened. We lost a couple of people last night. Blah, blah, blah.
00:20:54
Speaker
you lost some people, are you saying people have died there? Or did he just just dropped that in there? And it wasn't entirely clear that he was saying whether he was actually saying people are dying here, or if he just meant people had gone somewhere else. It was a very bizarre how nonchalantly he dropped that in.
00:21:13
Speaker
But anyway, AIDS. AIDS is the other one. We talked about Ebola, and basically anything you can say about Ebola, you can also say about AIDS when it comes to conspiracy theories, especially again, it's a disease that has disproportionately affected the African continent. And there does tend to be a decent amount of racism either in conspiracy theories around Ebola,
00:21:38
Speaker
or within conspiracy theories, which is to say people are offering conspiracy theories that other people with racist motives are trying to kill off Africans or something like that. So we wrapped up that episode with saying that, yeah, you got a bowl of conspiracy theories, you got AIDS conspiracy theories, pretty much the same. It's all a little bit racist.
00:22:01
Speaker
Yeah, the AIDS conspiracy theories are fascinating because the West is very, very, very concerned about the prevalence of AIDS in Western societies. And thus we have entire pharmaceutical industries based around treating people with AIDS, making sure that people's viral load with AIDS is as low as possible to prevent subsequent infections.
00:22:25
Speaker
And yet, when it comes to the prevalence of AIDS in Africa, pharmaceutical companies go, well, I mean, if you can't afford the medication, then you can't afford to get treated. So we're very concerned about AIDS when it comes to Westerners. We're not very concerned about AIDS when it comes to Africans. Yes, it's all just a little bit depressing.
00:22:49
Speaker
But, so that was October of 2014, episode 24.
Introduction and Overview of Zika Virus
00:22:55
Speaker
But that's not the only time an infectious disease that wasn't COVID showed up in the news, because in March of 2016, in episode 89, we talked about Zika. Does anyone remember Zika? That was a real flash in the pan of diseases.
00:23:10
Speaker
I remember it involved mosquitoes. Involved mosquitoes, that's about all there is you can say, yeah. But yeah, in fact, that was, again, this was a disease threatening the United States suddenly becomes newsworthy. I can't remember because it was an outbreak in South America which threatened to spread to North America. Do you remember if it actually did? I don't recall that it actually got that far. I think it was, we're concerned.
00:23:39
Speaker
or suspected cases, but yeah, it certainly wasn't anything big. Yeah, and I think from memory, the suspected cases were North Americans who were in South America, got infected by a mosquito in South America, and then returned back home to North America. I think the worry there was, because Zika was spread by mosquitoes, and there was a suspicion it might be spread by sexual contact as well.
00:24:06
Speaker
But the primary vector was mosquitoes. The worry was if a North American who gets Zika in South America returns to North America, is bitten by a North American mosquito, that species of mosquito which is common in North America might also be the kind of mosquito which can transmit Zika to other people in North America.
00:24:30
Speaker
since there are certain diseases that certain species of mosquitoes are very good at transmitting, and certain diseases that certain species of mosquito go, no, I'm, I'm just not going to be a vector for that disease, you can shrug off. So if you're anything like me listener, you probably had forgotten all about the Zika virus, I said until I saw it in our episode, our old episode notes, it had slipped my mind entirely. So you could probably do with a bit of a refresher just like I did.
00:24:59
Speaker
So the Zika virus, you may or may not recall, was a virus that was spread, as you say, by mosquitoes, possibly sexual contact. In 2016, our notes said there was no vaccine. I don't know if that's still the case. I believe that this little outbreak had sort of spurred efforts into the development of one.
00:25:19
Speaker
It's dangerous because it causes Zika fever, which is similar to a mild form of dengue fever. The fever itself has fairly mild symptoms and is usually just treated with bed rest. The real danger, though, is to unborn children. In pregnant women, a Zika virus infection can be associated with fetal death, placental insufficiency, fetal growth restriction, and central nervous system injury.
00:25:49
Speaker
which can result in microcephaly ventricular calcifications or other lesions, according to my old notes. Now, it wasn't a new disease that had just popped up in 2016. It had been known about since the 1940s
00:26:08
Speaker
but had made the news in 2016 because there had been an outbreak in Brazil, which was correlated with a significant increase in microcephaly over there. And back in 2016, it had become serious enough that certain agencies had been issuing travel warnings for the areas where the outbreaks had occurred, especially for pregnant women.
Zika Conspiracies and Scientific Counterarguments
00:26:32
Speaker
So it was not without its threats. And so obviously, in this case,
00:26:40
Speaker
although the disease in most people was not particularly threatening, it did have these really serious consequences if a pregnant woman were to be infected with it. So they had to worry about it a bit. And of course, like we said, the worry here, the reason why it made the news agencies in the English-speaking world is simply because there was a danger it might have got from South America into North America.
00:27:06
Speaker
And whenever you have a big name disease, you of course have conspiracy theories. Now, a lot of the theories that popped up around Zika were the same as the ones we just talked about that we always see when you get AIDS and when you get Ebola. But there were some interesting
00:27:25
Speaker
some interesting variations on it. So yes, again, you had conspiracy theories that Zika is some sort of a biological weapon for depopulation. There were suggestions that again, it was being spread via vaccinations of pregnant women, but then there were also the idea that maybe it was being spread by genetically modified mosquitoes.
00:27:48
Speaker
And it was true. Now see, the thing is this sort of theory had some legs because there were genetic experiments being done on mosquitoes in Brazil. There's this company called Oxitec, which was trying to combat dengue fever.
00:28:04
Speaker
and it was doing it by experimenting on mosquitoes. I don't know the exact nature of the experimentation, whether it was to make it so they couldn't carry this disease anymore, or it didn't affect them in a different way, whatever it was. There was this project. Now, to add fuel to the fire, this project was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Bill Gates at the time was already, I think, becoming the
00:28:33
Speaker
as we said a while ago, the new George Soros, the new guy who was blamed for wanting to destroy the world or something.
00:28:44
Speaker
Maybe we should come back to Bill Gates. I don't know. There was the quote about him a while ago where he was misinterpreted as saying he wanted to kill off tens of millions of people when I think the context was he was saying, if you're not careful, this thing could happen, which would kill tens of millions of people, and that would be a bad thing. But anyway, the fact that Bill Gates' name was associated with it
00:29:06
Speaker
set certain conspiracy theorists alarm bells ringing. Now, the problem with the whole genetically modified mosquito thing was that while there were genetically modified mosquitoes that had been released in a controlled area in Brazil, the point was that these mosquitoes were all sterile males. And if you know anything about mosquitoes, you know, it's only the female mosquitoes
00:29:32
Speaker
that actually bite people and therefore spread diseases. And not only that, but the area where the mosquitoes had been released to wasn't anywhere near where the actual Zika outbreak had been.
00:29:45
Speaker
So the specifics of that particular conspiracy theory did fall down a bit. And then on top of that, the fact that under most conditions, it's a disease that basically just gives you a nasty cold, affects on unborn children aside, hard to see how such a thing could be used as a weapon for depopulation.
00:30:12
Speaker
So we've talked about depopulation conspiracy theories in the past, haven't we? I'm sure we must have. Now, it was at this point in the podcast that Em had dropped off the call for a little while, which is why I'd been talking for a bit. But when I noticed that they were back online, that's why I threw back to Em. But unfortunately, the connection just wasn't working and we couldn't really get it going again. So
00:30:40
Speaker
That was it for the recording call. We decided what we'd do is I will record the rest of this episode by myself and put that out for you, and then Em's going to record the bonus episode alone. And so you'll get the usual amount of content. You just won't quite have as much of the back and forth that we know you love, probably, we assume.
00:31:03
Speaker
So where I was at was I had just asked Em, thinking that they were still on the line, we must have done an episode about population control, mustn't we? In the time between that call and my recording this bit of the episode I went back and had a look at it, of course we've talked about population, we did a whole episode on population control, conspiracy theories, episode 175, and the main takeaway
00:31:25
Speaker
from that episode is that the idea of making the population smaller so it's easier to control doesn't really work. It doesn't make sense, mostly just in an economic sense. Your population is your workforce, and if you make the workforce smaller,
00:31:46
Speaker
you make labour more scarce and therefore more valuable and therefore give your workers more bargaining power. And in fact, we've actually seen this play out in real life. The Black Death back in the, when was that, 1600s, reduced the population, not enormously, but significantly, significantly enough that
00:32:07
Speaker
pretty much ended feudalism in Europe. The reduced number of workers suddenly gave them a lot more bargaining power, and a reduced population ended up being not easier to control, but in fact harder to control. So much for population control conspiracy theories, quite frankly.
00:32:27
Speaker
Now, that was one part of the conspiracy theories around Zika. There was another interesting little sort of wrinkle with the conspiracy theories there, because there was also the conspiracy theory that Zika was taking the blame for a rise in birth defects in the Syria of Brazil, because we know it can cause birth defects if a pregnant woman can track the virus.
00:32:48
Speaker
But people claim that Zika was being blamed for these defects, but actually they were a result of some other contamination, usually pesticides or something. So it's a big agriculture conspiracy theory. So at the time, when we're looking into this, in 2016 the World Health Organization
00:33:07
Speaker
had said a causal link between the Zika virus and microcephaly was strongly suspected but not yet scientifically proven, and went on to say although the microcephaly cases in Brazil are temporarily associated with the Zika outbreak, more robust investigations and research is needed to better understand this potential link, and if I'd remembered that...
00:33:28
Speaker
when I was doing that episode about the about the Spanish toxic oil syndrome thing that would have been an interesting parallel because here we have another case where they saying they haven't actually proven specifically
00:33:43
Speaker
that the Zika virus definitely caused this microcephaly, but it really looks like they did go and buy all the evidence around it. And then the final conspiracy theories around Zika, of course, were the whole GMO business, that the Zika outbreak was an accidental, I guess you'd say an older version of the lab leak hypothesis, that the Zika outbreak was accidentally caused
00:34:08
Speaker
by releasing these genetically modified mosquitoes. It wasn't a deliberate plan to infect a whole bunch of people. It was an accident because these wacky scientists had been making their genetically modified mosquitoes and then they sent them out. But again, as in with the previous conspiracy theory, the mosquitoes that this particular company was working on were sterile males who do not bite people, or that's what they would have you think.
00:34:36
Speaker
So there you go. That is Ebola and Zika, the two infectious diseases we looked at conspiracy theories around before, of course, COVID came along and became the only game in town.
Recurring Patterns in Disease Conspiracies
00:34:47
Speaker
Although, of course, it's probably worth mentioning another more recent episode. In February of last year, I did a What the Conspiracy episode where I talked to him about the cholera riots, pointing out that back when cholera was a thing, this is 100, 200 years ago,
00:35:06
Speaker
People reacted to the disease and to the efforts by the authorities at the time to control the disease in largely the same way they reacted to COVID. I'm not going to recap the whole episode now because it was not much more than a year ago. Go back and look at that episode from February of last year if you're interested and you haven't heard it already. But it just goes to show that there does seem to be sort of a common template when it comes to conspiracy theories around diseases.
Technical Struggles and Episode Conclusion
00:35:35
Speaker
And no matter what the disease, whether it's cholera or Ebola or AIDS or Zika or COVID or any other one you care to think of, you'll tend to see the same sorts of conspiracy theories crop up, which I guess is useful in that it
00:35:51
Speaker
in that they can be addressed or debunked more easily because we've seen the exact same thing already. But then of course that was the problem with COVID wasn't it? All these conspiracy theories are coming up we'd seen that were just variations on we'd seen before and yet they still spread around perfectly nicely much like a disease.
00:36:11
Speaker
And I think that's about all we have to say for this episode. So apologies for the communication difficulties we have. It seemed to be some sort of VPN issue cropping up that worked nicely for the first half of our recording and then just died completely and wouldn't come back.
00:36:31
Speaker
Fingers crossed next week we'll have the issue sorted out. It may be a little bit out of our hands, but we'll make do as best we can. And now, having listened to this episode, rounded out by me going solo, you can, if you are a patron, listen to him flying solo on the bonus episode. We have some stuff to talk about. There's nuns, there's rotten tomatoes in the movie rating sense,
00:36:59
Speaker
And actor Jay Johnston has been up to stuff. I won't give you any details if you want to know. Go and listen to the bonus episode. And if you want to listen to the bonus episode, you of course have to be a patron. And if you want to be a patron, you can go to betrayon.com and look for the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy and sign yourself up. I don't feel you have to. You're our listeners. That's quite enough for us, I think, especially given that you put up with the sorts of difficulties that we've experienced this week.
00:37:29
Speaker
So I believe there is nothing more to say for this particular episode. See you again next week, probably, somehow, some way or another. We'll figure something out. But until then, goodbye.
00:37:49
Speaker
You've been listening to the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy, hosted by Josh Ederson and Imdentive. If you'd like to help support us, please find details at our pledge drive at either Patreon or Podbean. If you'd like to get in contact with us, email us at podcastconspiracy at gmail.com.
00:38:21
Speaker
Marty, we gotta go back to the conspiracy.