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Conspiracy theories have their ways of penetrating the subconscious mind of the populace. People tend to believe these theories without logically analyzing them, and they turned out to be false. I have heard many theories that ended up being conspiracies.
The first one that I would like to mention is the belief that the outbreak of the ebola virus in 2014 was orchestrated to checkmate the world population, particularly Africa. People were made to believe that the only way to avoid contracting the virus was to bathe in saltwater. I was sleeping on that fateful night when my landlady came to knock on my door. I woke up from sleep to almost everyone frantically making efforts to warm water and mix with salt before bathing with it to escape the contracting of the virus, which was on an alleged journey from the northern hemisphere that night. People were rushing to take the saltwater bath before the arrival of the virus. I initially hesitated, but I joined the bathing crew when my landlady, a mother figure, pressed it on me. Till today, I don't know the genesis of the theory, but months and years later, it was proven that saltwater has nothing to do with preventing one against contracting ebola or any other viral disease.
Another conspiracy theory was during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic took the world unaware. It created fears in the minds of the people. Many opinions began to flow around regarding the virus. After many weeks or months of uncertainty and unfortunate loss of lives, researchers were able to come up with a vaccine to help control the surge. Just like it was believed by many that the virus was designed to check the world's population, many people doubted the sincerity of the vaccine.
I heard from some quarters that the vaccine would cause sterility in men that take it. When the vaccine was brought to the organization where I worked back then, many of my colleagues didn't take the vaccine. Some of them were so sure that what they were told about the vaccine was true. They didn't just refuse to take the vaccine; they pitied those of us that took the vaccine. About four years on, I don't have any course to regret being vaccinated. Off course, I can confirm that I am not sterile because I welcomed my son about two years after taking the vaccine.
It is in this vein that I would like to talk about the latest experience that I had. The government procured a yellow fever vaccine for children in a certain age bracket. It was very shocking that many parents stopped their children from taking it because they were told that the vaccine was invented to reduce the population of Nigerians, especially northerners. I tried to convince them otherwise, but many of them stood their ground and refused their children from taking the vaccine.
Many Nigerian adults are paralyzed today because their parents refused them polio vaccines when they were babies. They prevented their children from taking the vaccine for the same belief that their population was being reduced by the vaccine inventors. This is where one would fear how potent conspiracies theories could be. The same reason would keep repeating itself in preventing the people from taking vaccines, but they still wouldn't stop believing it.
I am much concerned about conspiracy theories in health and medicine because they have caused harm to many people, some without any fault of theirs, like children. Imagine a child who became paralyzed because his parents denied him vaccination against a virus like polio.
However, we can only keep sensitizing the people, but conspiracy theories can't be eradicated totally. They are always tied around cultural or religious beliefs.