By Ginny Graves, Prevention, October 12, 2021
Last year, Emma Alda, 38, of Fort Lauderdale, FL, saw a Facebook photo of her brother, Christopher, and some friends huddled, maskless, around a campfire. When Emma commented “Where is your mask?” Christopher unfriended her. “There was no discussing anything with him if your views differed from his,” she says, and his beliefs aligned with a widespread conspiracy theory: that the media and the medical community were exaggerating the danger of COVID-19, that masks and social distancing weren’t necessary, and that people who followed the rules were “sheep,” says Emma.
By December, Christopher, 43, had re-friended her, and Emma read several posts in which he mentioned how terrible he’d been feeling—and then that he was in the hospital with COVID. After three days on a ventilator, Christopher died. “My brother was a good man, a good father, and a hard worker. I feel so much sadness that he’s gone. It has left such a scar on my heart,” she says. “But I’m furious at him for acting so cavalierly about the virus. It makes me sick to think his death might have been preventable.”
Why conspiracy theories take a toll on health
It’s easy to see how believing that COVID is overblown could put a person and their community at risk, and we’ve all heard wrenching stories from health care workers about patients discovering the truth in the hardest way imaginable. But other types of conspiracy theories currently raging across social media also take an insidious toll: Embracing falsehoods about politics, technology, mass shootings, and terrorist attacks can undermine your emotional and physical well-being.
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