The Rise of Conspiracy Beliefs About the Coronavirus Disease
A man passes graffiti reading 'cov 19: hoax', in South London, as the UK continues in lockdown to help curb the spread of coronavirus. Credit: Dominic Lipinski Most of us are compelled to stay at home due to the widely- spread coronavirus. It’s no brainer that avoiding physical meeting with people can help us prevent getting the contagious virus whose long-term effects and cure are not yet known. During the coronavirus disease pandemic rising in 2020, governments and non-governmental organizations across the globe have taken great efforts to curb the infection rate by promoting or legally prescribing behaviour that can reduce the spread of the virus. At the same time, this pandemic has given rise to speculations and conspiracy theories. Conspiracy worldviews have been connected to a refusal to trust science, the biomedical model of disease, and legal means of political engagement in previous research ( Imhoff and Lamberty,2020). The number of people who deny this curren...