From Pandemic to “Plandemic”: What COVID-19 Taught Us About Conspiracy Thinking

If you searched for “plandemic”, you’re not alone.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, that word—part insult, part rallying cry—became one of the most powerful symbols of modern conspiracy thinking. It suggested that COVID-19 wasn’t just a tragic global health crisis, but a planned event orchestrated by shadowy elites, scientists, governments, or corporations. For millions of people, plandemic felt like an explanation that finally made sense of fear, confusion, and loss of control.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: the success of “plandemic” thinking tells us far more about how humans process uncertainty than about hidden plots.

In this post, we step back from the heat of pandemic politics and look at what science has learned—before and after COVID-19—about conspiracy theories: why they arise, who is vulnerable, how they spread, and what (if anything) actually helps reduce their impact.

This isn’t about mocking believers. It’s about understanding one of the defining cognitive and social challenges of our time.

Conspiracy Theories Are Not New—But Crises Supercharge Them

Conspiracy theories have existed for as long as humans have told stories about power. Plagues, wars, assassinations, and technological shifts have always produced alternative explanations that challenge official accounts. What COVID-19 did differently was combine multiple uncertainty engines at once:

• A novel virus with evolving scientific knowledge
• Conflicting public health guidance
• Global economic disruption
• Highly visible political polarization
• Algorithm-driven social media amplification

When uncertainty spikes, the human brain looks for coherence, not necessarily accuracy. Conspiracy theories thrive in these moments because they offer:

• Clear villains
• Simple causal stories
• A sense of insider knowledge
• Moral certainty in a morally confusing world

COVID-19 was not just a pandemic. It was an epistemic stress test—and many information systems failed it.

The “Plandemic” Case: A Masterclass in Modern Disinformation

The viral Plandemic video was not just misinformation. It was designed disinformation. Unlike older conspiracy narratives that spread organically, Plandemic used modern marketing logic:

• Emotional storytelling
• Pseudo-scientific framing
• Calls to “bypass gatekeepers”
• Encouragement of mass peer-to-peer sharing

Crucially, it decentralized dissemination. Instead of relying on influencers or centralized accounts, it coached ordinary users to upload and re-share content themselves. That structure made moderation harder and made participants feel like freedom fighters rather than consumers.

This wasn’t accidental. It exploited how social networks work—and how people psychologically respond to perceived censorship.

Ironically, attempts to remove the content often strengthened belief in it. For many viewers, takedowns were not evidence of falsehood, but proof of conspiracy.

Who Believes COVID Conspiracies? It’s Not About Intelligence

One of the most persistent myths about conspiracy believers is that they are uninformed or unintelligent. The evidence does not support that.

COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs appeared across education levels, including among science students, healthcare trainees, and professionals. What mattered more than intelligence was:

• Trust
• Identity
• Epistemic style (how people decide what counts as truth)

People were not “fooled” because they couldn’t understand science. They were vulnerable because science itself was changing in real time, and trust in institutions was already fragile.

Populism, Anti-Elitism, and the COVID Moment

Research during the pandemic revealed a powerful pattern: populist attitudes predicted COVID conspiracy beliefs—independent of left/right ideology. Populism isn’t just a political position. It’s a worldview characterized by:

• “The people” vs. “the elites”
• Moralized distrust of institutions
• Preference for simple explanations
• Suspicion of expertise

COVID-19 policy responses—top-down, expert-led, rapidly evolving—fit perfectly into populist narratives of elite overreach. Scientists, epidemiologists, and public health agencies were reframed not as protectors, but as technocratic villains.

In this context, plandemic thinking wasn’t fringe. It was a coherent extension of a broader worldview that already distrusted institutions long before COVID-19 arrived.

The Epistemic Core: How People Decide What Is True

Perhaps the most important lesson from COVID-19 conspiracy research has nothing to do with politics—and everything to do with epistemology. Scientists distinguish between two broad justification styles:

1. Personal Justification

• “I trust what feels right to me”
• “I’ve done my own research”
• Intuition and personal experience outweigh external evidence

2. Authority-Based Justification

• “I check expert consensus”
• “I evaluate sources and credentials”
• Knowledge is provisional and revisable

COVID conspiracy beliefs were strongly associated with personal justification and negatively associated with authority-based justification.

Once someone adopts a personal justification style, contradictory evidence often reinforces belief rather than weakens it. Attempts to debunk conspiracies can backfire because they are interpreted as attacks on autonomy or identity.

This is why conspiracy theories are so resistant to correction. They are not just claims. They are ways of knowing.

Why COVID Conspiracies Cluster Together

One striking finding across studies is that people who believe one COVID conspiracy are likely to believe many—even contradictory ones. For example:

• The virus is harmless and a deadly bioweapon
• The pandemic is fake and a global population control scheme

This isn’t irrational from the believer’s perspective. It reflects a general conspiratorial mindset, where official explanations are rejected wholesale.

The specific content matters less than the underlying frame:

“Powerful actors are lying, and nothing they say can be trusted.”

Once that frame is activated, coherence gives way to suspicion.

Social Media Didn’t Create Conspiracies—but It Turbocharged Them

Social media did not invent conspiracy thinking. But it dramatically altered its speed, scale, and structure. During COVID-19:

• Algorithms rewarded emotionally charged content
• Closed communities reinforced belief without challenge
• Visual storytelling outperformed nuanced explanation
• Misinformation spread faster than corrections

Platforms also collapsed boundaries between:

• Experts and non-experts
• Peer testimony and scientific evidence
• Personal narrative and empirical data

In this environment, plandemic content didn’t need to convince everyone. It only needed to activate enough nodes in the network to sustain itself.

Why Fact-Checking Alone Doesn’t Work

One of the most sobering lessons of the pandemic is that more information does not automatically reduce misinformation. Fact-checking fails when:

• Trust is low
• Identity is threatened
• Corrections come from distrusted institutions
• People feel talked down to

In some cases, debunking can increase belief by strengthening perceptions of suppression or elite coordination. This does not mean truth doesn’t matter. It means how truth is communicated matters as much as what is said.

What Actually Helps Reduce Conspiracy Belief?

Research points to a few promising strategies—none of them simple.

1. Teaching How Disinformation Works

Instead of correcting specific false claims, effective interventions focus on:

• Common manipulation tactics
• Emotional framing
• False authority cues
• “Too good to be true” narratives

This builds cognitive antibodies, not compliance.

2. Lateral Reading Skills

Encouraging people to:

• Check multiple independent sources
• Investigate author credentials
• Compare claims across outlets

These skills outperform traditional media literacy approaches.

3. Lowering the Emotional Temperature

Fear and anger fuel conspiracies. Calm, respectful engagement reduces defensiveness—especially when autonomy is preserved.

4. Restoring Institutional Trust (Long-Term)

No short-term fix can substitute for:

• Transparency
• Accountability
• Consistent communication
• Acknowledgment of uncertainty

Trust lost during COVID-19 will not be regained overnight.

What COVID-19 Changed Forever

The pandemic permanently altered the information ecosystem. It showed that:

• Scientific uncertainty can be weaponized
• Expertise alone is insufficient without trust
• Disinformation campaigns can be highly professional
• Conspiracy thinking is not marginal—it is mainstream-adjacent

COVID-19 didn’t create conspiracy culture. It revealed its infrastructure.

If You Searched “Plandemic,” Here’s the Takeaway

The desire to believe COVID-19 was planned isn’t stupid or evil. It reflects deeply human needs:

• To reduce chaos
• To assign blame
• To feel agency in powerless moments

But the evidence is clear: pandemics emerge from complex biological, ecological, and social systems—not secret coordination.

The real lesson of plandemic thinking is not about COVID-19. It’s about how fragile our shared understanding of reality has become—and how urgently we need better tools to protect it.

Science doesn’t just need better facts. It needs better relationships with the public.

Sources (Further Reading)

• Gökalp, Z. (2025). Pandemic or “plandemic”? The mediating role of epistemic justification strategies in COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs. Brain and Behavior, 15
• Hameleers, M., Brosius, A., & de Vreese, C. H. (2021). From populism to the “plandemic”: Why populists believe in COVID-19 conspiracies. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 31(sup1), 1–19.
• Jolley, D., Douglas, K. M., Leite, A. C., Schrader, T., Guay, S., Brown, M., & van der Linden, S. (2020). Plandemic revisited: A product of planned disinformation amplifying the COVID-19 “infodemic”. Frontiers in Public Health, 9, 649930.
• Nyhan, B., Reifler, J., Richey, S., & Freed, G. L. (2014). Effective messages in vaccine promotion: A randomized trial. Pediatrics, 133(4), e835–e842.