It is important for government messaging to work against fears, dread ( Honigsbaum, 2013) and anxieties. In such a context false claims, misinformation narratives and rumour-mongering on social media can achieve high levels of currency. In addition, during a pandemic more people than normal are spending time at home searching online for answers to the threats about which they have read or about which they have seen reports on television. During a pandemic, fuelled by alarmist saturation publicity, and propagated by social media, the contagion of fear stalks alongside the disease itself ( Debiec, 2020 Taylor, 2019 Honigsbaum, 2009 Honigsbaum, 2020), resulting in a preparedness on the part of a cross-section of patients or potential patients to panic, to suspend rationality and to invest hope in unlikely offerings of prophylactic agents, treatments and cures ( Taylor, 2019).
Anxiety, fear and the beguiling temptations of a vulnerable patient group provide the unscrupulous with incentives for lucrative quackery and exploitation. In times of crisis these needs are unmet so conspiracy theories can seem appealing” ( Knapp, 2020 Van Prooijen & Douglas, 2018). Conspiracy theories can propagate ( Uscinski and Enders, 2020 Anderson et al., 2020 Taylor, 2019) as Douglas has observed, “People have an epistemic need to know the truth and they also have an existential need to feel safe.
When pandemics manifest, novel and sometimes unscientific ideas proliferate as to how they can be prevented, treated and cured. Using examples from the United States, Japan, Australia and the United Kingdom, it argues that during a pandemic there is a need for three responses by government to the risks posed by conspiracy theories and false representations: calm, scientifically-based messaging from public health authorities cease and desist warnings directed toward those making extravagant or inappropriate claims and the taking of assertive and well publicised legal action against individuals and entities that make false representations in order to protect consumers rendered vulnerable by their emotional responses to the phenomenology of the pandemic. It identifies consumer protection strategies and interventions formulated during the 2020 pandemic. This article notes the eruption of quackery during the 1889–1892 Russian Flu and the 1918–1920 Spanish Flu and the emergence during 2020 of spurious claims during the COVID-19 pandemic. In turn such vulnerability creates predatory opportunities for the unscrupulous. They can also lead people to give credence to simplistic and unscientific misrepresentations about medications and devices which are claimed to prevent, treat or cure disease.
They can render people vulnerable to engage in implausible conspiracy theories about the causes of illness and governmental responses to it. Such conditions, even when subclinical, tend to be a product of personal and predispositional factors, as well as shared cultural influences, including religious, literary, film, and gaming, all of which can lead to emotional and less than rational responses. Fear, anxiety and even paranoia can proliferate during a pandemic.
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