How trust deficit fuels Ebola conspiracy theories

A nurse is assisted by a colleague in donning personal protective equipment (PPE) at an isolation facility prepared to receive potential Ebola patients during a media visit to Nairobi Hospital in Nairobi on October 7, 2026. [AFP]

In 2014, at the height of Ebola outbreak in West Africa, I had reason to visit Monrovia for work. While out there, I had multiple conversations with otherwise reasonable people who peddled the worst conspiracy theories about the outbreak.

Among the more outlandish claims was that then President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was making up the Ebola numbers to attract foreign aid. This was when Liberia was particularly dependent on foreign aid, having only recently come out of civil war. The claim reflected deep distrust of President Sirleaf's government. Everybody knew the reality of the disease. People were dying. There were emergency aid workers everywhere. Monrovia had hand sanitisation stations and all manner of public service announcements about the disease.

It would have had to take incredible levels of coordination (and manipulation) by President Sirleaf to get everyone play their part in service to her conspiracy. The claim simply made no sense.

The same can be said about claims making the rounds about the Ebola outbreak in Kenya. This is not a defence of the government’s handling of the situation so far. The authorities certainly should have done more to ensure no patient passes through a major port of entry like the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and then onwards to a hospital in the city. There is reason to believe the government is not being forthright about the story of how the patient got to Kenya and ended up infecting several family members.

However, the prevarications of the government (on top of the administration’s broader challenges with truth) are no reason to peddle outlandish conspiracy theories about Ebola. That a lot of otherwise smart people are amplifying this is a sad reflection of the extremely low levels of trust in our society.

It takes a lot for grown adults of sound mind to believe their government would deliberately tolerate the spread of a disease like Ebola, perhaps in exchange for aid money. Why would government officials not be concerned about the broader impacts on the economy? Why would they not have any regard for human life? Why would the government expect to get away with such in an election year?

There are two ways of reading the motives behind the conspiracy theory. First, it could simply be a cynical attempt to undercut the current administration by sowing seeds of distrust. In any case, the public is already primed to distrust the administration (and the political class more broadly) on the merits. Second, it might be a reflection of the true beliefs of those spreading the conspiracy theory. At first, I was inclined to believe the former to be true. However, there is reason to believe a lot of people actually subscribe to the latter view.

How do we get out of this low-trust equilibrium? The simple answer is it is upon the administration to repair public trust in the government and policymakers. The reason people are primed to believe these outlandish claims is because they have seen, time and again, government officials engage in blatant lies, corruption, and acts that have cost lives – and get away with it. Many recall this to have been true even during the COVID emergency. In their minds, why would Ebola be any different?

-The writer is a professor at Georgetown University