Historical Pandemic Conspiracies More Crackers Than Today's

Even though the international scientific community had ample, conclusive evidence linking HIV to AIDS by 1983, some people weren't entirely convinced. In 1984, psychiatrist Casper G. Schmidt proposed a different reason as to why people were suddenly dying in droves: a group fantasy. You know the set-up to your virus explainer belongs in the trash when it's basically the same as the series finale reveal of Lost. That same year, he published "The Group-Fantasy Origins of AIDS" in the Journal of Psychohistory. Schmidt, who was also gay and HIV-positive, was convinced that the gay community had taken on a collective shame, which caused "an epidemic of depression with psychogenically-reduced cell-mediated immunity." He also posited that leprosy in the Middle Ages was also all just a bunch of hysterical, guilt-ridden peasants making their own skin melt off in agonizing pain.

Schmidt died due to complications caused by AIDS in 1994 but was survived by his bullshit. There are still plenty of HIV/AIDS "Rethinkers" that took on the baton and managed to continue passing it on, despite the fact that all of these Rethinkers are dying. Leading to some HIV Denialists attributing their fallen comrades' demise to Big Pharma, drug addictions, or anything that wasn't the actual cause of their death.

The super sucky part about this epidemic hoax is that it doesn't just hurt those who refuse antiretroviral treatments (ARV). HIV was the cause of 330,000 premature deaths in South Africa between 2000-2005, thanks to then-South African President Thabo Mbeki, a prominent HIV Denier. He chose not to equip his country's hospitals with ARV, despite nearly 20% of the adult population having tested positive for HIV. Spoiler: It didn't go well.

That's not the only way that the Germans allegedly spread their bioweapon. In some versions of the conspiracy theory, German soldiers snuck into American movie theaters and crowded places to unleash the disease, Outbreak-style. They also purportedly put the virus into aspirin tablets and put them out for sale to the unsuspecting public, which is why you should only take the loose tablets of medicine you find from parks that you trust.

But Americans weren't the only ones inventing wild H1N1 flu origin stories. In Japan, it was called the "American disease." In Germany, it was a "Russian plague," which couldn't POSSIBLY be true, since the Russians deemed it to be a "Chinese sickness." In a way, it was a little bit of every country, as the trenches allowed the virus to spread and mutate rampantly. See? We all can work together to create something.

The rich might not have created the disease, but they did their part (as did everyone) in spreading it by dumping their waste into drinking water sources, like the Thames River in England. Some members of the upper class believed that God sent the plague to punish poor people for all of their sins. This theory went down the toilet as soon as rich people, who couldn't possibly have sinned, also started dying from the horrific disease.

Despite the fact the contagion, a novel coronavirus, had been isolated in patients suffering from the mysterious respiratory disease a couple of weeks before these theories were presented, some Chinese citizens believed it. After all, China was hit the hardest by the disease, which automatically means that it was a bioweapon created by the US and Taiwan to take down China.

The Russian scientists' unfounded claims paved the way for even more detailed conspiracy theories, which blossomed online. Some believed that "the reason that no one has died in Taiwan, the United States or Japan is because they have a special medicine." Others kept their windows closed because they read that giant planes would be dumping harmful disinfectant to kill the disease. Which marked the rare time conspiracy loons might be happy about contrails.

This particular strain of influenza, also known as the Asiatic Flu, was the first to hit in a world full of railroad tracks and speedy, definitely not sinkable steamships. People were more and more connected, making it easier for the virus to spread.

Scientists didn't even discover viruses, let alone viruses that could infect humans, until 1892, so they didn't piece together how it was spreading. Some attempted to track it, and since telegraph wires ran right next to train tracks, they came to the most logical conclusion: the electricity in the telegraph poles was spreading the illness.

An eerily similar conspiracy theory made its social media rounds at the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020, conspiracy theorists claimed that Wuhan, China, was not only the origin point of the virus, but was also one of the first cities to have 5G rolled out. Some versions of the conspiracy say the 5G causes it, others say that it speeds up the virus's ability to spread. All versions are bullshit.

In both instances, killer phone lines weren't even the most out-there conspiracy theories. During the 1889-1890 flu pandemic, Dr. William Gendry, claimed to isolate the cause of the illness: stardust. And not just any stardust -- special stardust that only passes through our atmosphere every 16-17 years.

The rest of the medical community rejected these wild ideas ... but, threw their own into the mix, like bird migration patterns and volcanic dust, which was somehow made sense to some doctors even though they thought the space dust theory was bonkers.

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