A quarter of people in the UK believe that COVID was a “hoax,” according to reports of a new poll—though critics suggest the polls have read too much into the results, which might themselves also be questionable.
Respondents to an April survey sponsored by Savanta for King’s College London (KCL) and the BBC, said that numerous “conspiracy theories” are either “definitely” or “probably” true, suggesting millions more Britons buy into far-out notions than previously thought. Among its most notable results are that
23% of respondents said it was “definitely’ or “probably” true that the COVID pandemic was a “hoax” (numbers 9 and 14 respectively);
30% that the “Great Reset” is “a conspiracy to impose a totalitarian world government” (10 and 20);
33% that the cost-of-living crisis is “a government plot to control the public” (11 and 22), and
35% that digital currencies will be used “by governments to control people’s money and restrict their freedom.”
KCL’s Dr. Rod Dacombe said the findings “underline the importance of conspiracy theories in explaining how many people understand politics and the events which shape their lives.” A Labour MP also described the report (resulting from interviews of fewer than 2,300 UK adults) as a “huge worry” and a BBC documentary maker as “very striking.”
Some critics have, however, argued that the paper ought to be taken with more than a grain of salt, not least because so few were approached for the poll: “Third of UK public think cost of living crisis is government plot,” read a headline in The Guardian (print edition, June 13th) after around 750 people told a polling company online that they (“definitely” or “probably”) believed as much.
Writing in inews, Stuart Ritchie posed a number of serious questions about the findings in the survey which related to COVID. “How many of the respondents,” he asked, “really believe that this is the case, and how many were just fooling around?”
But the biggest problem is with the ambiguity of the questions … As we know from more than three years of debate on the pandemic, there’s a whole spectrum of heterodox views on COVID … I bet a huge number of people answering the very vague question in the poll had other—perhaps still technically untrue, but far less outrageous—things in mind. Since there are no more specific questions with different wordings, or questions asking exactly what they understood by the term “hoax”, it’s hard to know what to conclude from these numbers.
Echoing these sentiments, writer Ben Pile noted online that “perfectly rational ideas can be framed to make them appear as ‘conspiracy theory’.”
