Plus ça Change, Plus C'est la Même Chose

Abstract

Plus ça Change, Plus C'est la Même Chose Ruth Macklin (bio) it is striking to see similar themes in articles written 35 years ago about the AIDS epidemic and reports today in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. While there are many similarities between the decadeslong AIDS epidemic, which continues to rage in many countries, and the COVID-19 pandemic, differences exist as well. In this brief commentary, I draw on articles in this collection to illustrate these themes. Joshua Lederberg was prescient when he wrote in 1988 that "the progress of medical science during the last century has obscured the human species' continued vulnerability to large-scale infection" (Lederberg 1988, 343; this volume 317). Since Lederberg wrote those words, the world has witnessed widespread outbreaks of infectious diseases: annual seasonal influenza; the novel swine flu (H1N1) pandemic in 2009; and perhaps most surprisingly, a resurgence of measles as a result of the refusal of parents to vaccinate their children. This last example illustrates how widely a false belief—that vaccines can cause autism—can be disseminated by social media despite having been thoroughly discredited by scientists. The "anti-vax" movement is only one example of the tenacity of misinformation in today's interconnected world. LAYING BLAME Dorothy Nelkin and Sander Gilman cited a 1985 article that appeared in the official journal of the Soviet Writers Union, Literaturnaya Gazeta; the article claimed that AIDS was the result of a virus made by biologists at Fort Detrick, Maryland, in conjunction with scientists at the [End Page 265] Centers for Disease Control. Nelkin and Gilman wrote: "That blame for this dread disease was placed on a political adversary is not very surprising in light of the freeze on American-Soviet relations during the summer of 1985" (Nelkin and Gilman 1988, 361; this volume 335). Now, 35 years later, the Cold War is over but the blaming tactics continue and take new forms. An article in the New York Times reported that President Vladimir Putin of Russia has spread misinformation about health for more than a decade. The article says that Putin's agents "have repeatedly planted and spread the idea the viral epidemics—including flu outbreaks, Ebola and now the coronavirus—were sown by American scientists" (Broad 2020). Just as myths existed about the origin and spread of AIDS, so too are myths abundant today about the COVID-19 pandemic in posts on social networks. One recent article begins with this observation: "When AIDS began rampaging through major US cities in the early 1980s, it wasn't long before conspiracy theories sprouted. One widely repeated and baseless rumor had it that scientists working for the CIA had created HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, as part of an experiment that spun out of control. So it perhaps should be no surprise that a raft of myths and conspiracy theories are circulating online in connection with the coronavirus pandemic" (Castaneda 2020). The AIDS epidemic emerged a decade before the Internet became a method for widespread dissemination of information—and disinformation. Today's preferred way of disseminating these conspiracy theories is through social media, a method that can reach millions of people in a very short time. The possibility and danger of perpetrating false and damaging claims are heightened not only by the huge numbers of regular users of social media but also by the sharp political divisions that exist among politicians and the public in the United States. Nelkin and Gilman noted that "the placing of blame has been a pervasive theme in the popular discourse on AIDS" (362; this volume 336). Laying blame is alive and well today, and not only in the form of false conspiracy theories. A subtler tactic is Donald Trump's continued [End Page 266] reference to the coronavirus as "the Chinese virus" and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's use of the term "Wuhan virus." Although no plot perpetrated by Chinese scientists lies behind the use of those terms by US government officials, it is clear that the point is to lay blame on China, where illness caused by the coronavirus first emerged. Reports of racist comments and even physical attacks against Asians in...