I had been interested in alternative health for many years, and then what happened with the corona virus made me even more interested.
This is what Veronica Haupt says in her seaside home near Cape Town, South Africa. She doesn’t want to share her picture. She is a naturopath, meaning she offers a ‘natural’ approach to health that may not be based on scientific evidence.
And their path is known. Earlier she was interested in ‘wellness’ and enjoyed reading about unconventional health treatments. Then she became suspicious about the ingredients of the covid vaccine and wondered why the vaccination was being made mandatory in some offices.
But this is where his path diverged from many people in this ‘Valence’ community.
“I think the whole idea of infectious diseases that they can be passed from one person to another is a complete myth that has been perpetuated on humanity for decades,” Veronica told me.
Like a growing group of people online who agree with the idea, she doesn’t believe that germs that cause disease even exist, despite all the scientific evidence.
An analysis of social media data containing words or ‘keywords’ used by germ deniers suggests that this type of conversation hardly existed before 2020 and has increased with the Covid pandemic. happened
But the matter did not stop there. It continued to grow and the year 2023 saw the most mentions of relevant ‘keywords’, the highest in the last three years of the peak of the pandemic.
Groups dedicated to germ denial have tens of thousands of members on Facebook and the messaging app Telegram. Some members believe that viruses do not exist at all, while others believe in the existence of germs but deny that they are the cause of disease.
Many cite a false theory from the 1800s. Just as the theory that germs cause disease was being proven at the time, a French scientist, Antoine Beauchamp, proposed a theory known as the Terrain Theory. He claimed that germs are harmless that only transform into disease-causing matter inside an unhealthy body.
Yachamp’s theory was invalidated as more and more evidence emerged that germs caused disease. Now some online groups have adopted Beauchamp’s view.
It seems to have less to do with a sudden affinity with the theory of a 19th-century French scientist and more with an outright rejection of anything mainstream, meaning that if a government or If the health institution says something, there must be some mistake in it.
It is not the same as questioning governments and looking at all available evidence.
Molecular biologist Dr Dan Wilson of the YouTube channel Debunk the Funk says these unscientific beliefs fit into a wider idea of ’wellness’.
It is the pursuit of a general sense of physical and psychological well-being through diet, exercise, and other health practices. This often involves rejecting drugs from pharmaceutical companies as ‘unnatural’ and has been shared in millions of posts on social media.
Wellness, says Dr. Wilson, supports explanations of illness that give individuals a sense of control. This movement claims that simply change what you eat and you will find that you can not only avoid all diseases but also live the best life possible.
“One does not need to reject the germ theory for this,” says Dr. Wilson. It’s just the idea that you can take supplements in a certain way or live a certain lifestyle and then you don’t have to worry about getting sick.”
Of course, not all diseases are caused by germs. Many diseases can be caused by genetics, lifestyle and our environment.
But Veronica believes, without any concrete evidence, that all diseases are caused by toxins entering our bodies and that these things could be pollution, or perhaps electromagnetic frequencies.
And she tells her patients, ‘Your health is in your hands. It is not in the hands of your doctor.
This is where the real consequences of germ denial can appear.
The largest germ-free Facebook group offers advice on how to avoid doctors, drugs and vaccines.
The group had 150 members in 2019 but has grown to more than 30,000 today.
“There’s certainly a lot of overlap between the germ-denialist and the anti-vaccine crowd,” says Dr. Wilson. I would say that the realm of germ denial exists in the realm of anti-vaccine.
They have seen what was once an occasional feature increasingly becoming a feature of anti-vaccine arguments. “I see them as flat-earthers. Like flat-earthers, we can show pictures of the earth being round and people will still deny it,” says Dr Wilson.
He added that today we can take a virus and put it in an animal and make it sick. “We can find the same genetic sequence in humans and trace its spread in the population as it is passed from person to person.”
He also said that viruses and other germs can be seen under a microscope.
“But despite this evidence, various forms of denial of the germ theory continue to take hold,” he said. For example, the idea that HIV does not cause AIDS. I’m concerned that this might not become part of a mainstream conspiracy theory.’
In the early 2000s, in Veronica’s home country of South Africa, then-President Thabo Mbeki refused to believe that AIDS was caused by the HIV virus. They were also reluctant to provide life-saving antiretroviral drugs that prevent the virus from replicating in the body.
According to a Harvard University study, this stance caused more than 300,000 preventable deaths.
People working in HIV prevention and treatment in South Africa say the situation today is unrecognizably different from 20 years ago and that AIDS denial is not a big problem for them.
But even the quiet voice of skepticism from some quarters is enough to prick up the ears of HIV researchers like Roberto Pereira.
“I don’t think it’s right,” he says. Especially when such things cause so much pain in this country. This really makes my blood boil. You don’t want history to repeat itself, but history seems to repeat itself over and over again.