It’s been barely three weeks since the WHO first confirmed that cases of monkeypox had started spreading throughout western Europe and North America. Over 100 cases of the virus, which is endemic in parts of west and central Africa, have been detected in nearly a dozen countries, including the UK, and Canada and the US. Still, that has offered plenty of time for right-wing conspiracy theorists to push deeply false information about the impact and origins of the virus.
A leading proponent of these unfounded claims is US congresswoman and anti-vaxxer Marjorie Taylor Greene who is pushing the theory that coverage of the outbreak is a coordinated ploy by Bill Gates and the governments of the world to profit off the return of masks and lockdowns.
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In a live video on Facebook, Greene claimed that “disgusting” and “terrifying” images of the skin of monkeypox sufferers will be used to scare people into submission. When that’s done, she told viewers, Gates will then attempt to make money by forcing you to buy a “Bill Gates pillow” to go alongside your “Dr Fauci pillow” that you can “cuddle with every night because Bill Gates is going to save the day.”
“Bill Gates is very concerned about monkeypox because this is something, apparently, he can make a lot of money off of,” Greene added. “Him and his other buddies; you know, all the Democrat donors, that is.”
Throughout the COVID pandemic, Gates has been consistently accused by conspiracists of helping manufacture panic as a way to make money off vaccines and therapeutics. #BillGatesBioTerrorist trended on Twitter on Saturday as conspiracyland pushed unfounded claims that the billionaire Microsoft founder had moved on from spreading COVID around the world to disseminating monkeypox in the West.
Monkeypox conspiracies are not only exclusive to US elected officials and far-right Twitter. In China, influencers on social media have taken to Weibo to push false notions of monkeypox as engineered and unleashed as a bioweapon by the US government. One influencer with 6.4 million followers claimed that a 2021 report by the US government demonstrated an upcoming “plan by the US to leak bioengineered monkeypox virus.” The report said no such thing. Instead, it simply gamed out the government’s potential response to a hypothetical future outbreak. But the reality of the report’s content hasn’t stopped the post and many similar ones from being shared thousands of times across Weibo.
Then there are the conspiracists who believe pharmaceutical companies are using monkeypox to cover up previously unreported side-effects of COVID vaccines. High-profile proponents of this popular theory are the 90s band Right Said Fred, responsible for the 1991 global hit “I’m Too Sexy”.
Amid conspiracies of billionaire profiteering, US-engineered bioweapons and former pop culture icons misrepresenting content labels, organisations such as the WHO and the Foreign Press Association are pushing back against growing discrimination directed especially towards the central and west African countries where monkeypox is endemic.
On Saturday, The Foreign Press Association, Africa (FPAA) released a statement calling on media organisations to stop exclusively using images of Black people to accompany stories about the outbreak in western countries.
“It is… disturbing for European and North American media outlets to use stock images bearing persons of black and dark and African skin complexion to depict an outbreak of the disease in the United Kingdom and North America,” the statement said.
“Shouldn’t it be logical that if you are talking about the outbreak of monkeypox in Europe or the Americas you should use images of hospitals across Europe or the Americas? Or in the absence of such use a collection of electronic micrographs with labelled subcellular structures? We condemn the perpetuation of this negative stereotype that assigns calamity to the African race and privilege or immunity to other races.”
The WHO is also working to fight back against misinformation targeted at the gay community. “There is a lot of stigma and discrimination that surrounds many diseases,” Andy Seal, a WHO adviser on HIV and STIs, said. “This is not a gay disease, as some people in social media have attempted to label it; that’s just not the case. Anybody can contract Monkeypox through close contact.” Andy Seal, a WHO adviser on HIV and STIs, said.
For a conspiracy-free guide to monkeypox, check out VICE World News’ guide here.
