Zika Virus Outbreak Conspiracy Theories: If You Can Imagine It, It’s Real

The Zika virus outbreak spreading through Central and South America has prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare the virus’ spread a “global public health emergency,” a status matching that of the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

Zika virus—with its mild fever symptoms and nonexistent mortality rate—wasn’t a public concern until 2015, when the mosquito-transmitted disease spread through the Americas and a possible link was uncovered between Zika and microcephalic deformities in newborns with infected mothers.

In response conspiracy theorists have determined that the Zika virus outbreak was spread by genetically modified mosquitos.

Other conspiracy theorists have concluded that Zika virus is being unfairly blamed—as part of a massive cover-up—for microcephaly actually caused by a new vaccine.

Of course, this can only mean that advocates of the genetically modified mosquito theory are intentionally setting up “a convenient straw man as a way to discredit skeptics of the official story about the Zika virus as a crazy conspiracy theorist,” (sic) as daddie_o of the r/Conspiracy subreddit would have it.

But whether mosquitos or vaccines or just an outright lie, conspiracy theorists know that the Zika virus outbreak is a plan by the global elite—including Bill Gates, the UN through Agenda 21 and the Rockefellers—to reduce the poor population in order to better preserve resources for the Earth’s secret rulers.

Oh, and the global elite killed Fast and Furious star Paul Walker with a drone to cover this all up. “Paul Walker and his friend were killed shortly after they discovered a conspiracy to supply victims of Typhon Haiyan with a prototype permanent birth control drug hidden in the vaccines,” writes The Fullerton Informer.

Just as the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) monitors and learns from the spread of the Zika virus in Brazil, the conspiracy reaction is a valuable test case for precisely how outlandish conspiracies spread through online communities.

How Conspiracy Theories Are Born

It begins with a simple premise: If you can imagine it, it’s real.

Much of conspiracy theory orthodoxy begins as musings, conjecture and theorizing in a vacuum. The first formulation of a conspiracy theory typically ends with a question mark.

“Genetically modified mosquitoes released in Brazil in 2015 linked to the current Zika epidemic?” redditsucksatbanning asks.

“Zika Virus: Weapon of War?” another post reads.

But soon the meme mutates. What was once speculation becomes solid fact, upon which further speculation can be cultured.

“It makes sense… AIDS kills too slowly,” jav253 says, demonstrating how an old conspiracy theory—that AIDs was created to kill off certain segments of the population—become evidence for new ones.

When it comes to evidence for conspiracy theories, any link that can be concocted, plausible or not, becomes immediately real. Dotted lines become solid the moment they’re drawn.

“The world today has 6.8 billion people, that’s heading up to about 9 billion,” Bill Gates said during a TED Talk. “Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.”

Here’s a video of the moment, titled, in part, “Bill Gates wants a Billion Dead!”:

That Bill’s point relies on the simple premise that healthier, wealthier nations have slower, or even negative, population growth doesn’t matter. For Zika virus outbreak conspiracy theorists like KendleC, “Gates has preached publicly about population control” as part of a “war on population.”

That Gates has uttered words related to population control becomes the dotted line link that proves Gates is involved with the Zika virus conspiracy. “Now it looks like hundreds of thousands of babies won’t be born because of the diabolical thing they spread,” tito333 says in response.

In a Facebook post Gates wrote, “The planet does not thrive when the sickest are allowed to die off, but when they are able to improve their lives.”

In a Reddit thread on the Zika virus conspiracy ridestraight says, “Gates should be frog marched to the Hague.”

“Someday I hope their doors are broken in and they string them up on light posts like they did Mussolini,” says KendleC.

That the Zika virus outbreak is part of a conspiracy exists as speculation for less than an instant, a moment marked only by a single question mark. Then a link is drawn, becoming proof positive of the conspiracy’s many parties. The conspirator’s guilt is assured, only their punishment is left as a matter of debate.

When it comes to conspiracy theories, if it can be imagined then it’s already real.