Angels in White Coats or Angels of Death? Rumours and Conspiracy Narratives about Medical Specialists in Bulgaria during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Angels in White Coats or Angels of Death? Rumours and Conspiracy Narratives about Medical Specialists in Bulgaria during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses a thematic group of rumours and conspiracy narratives, propagated mainly through Facebook, according to which the real culprits for the spread of the coronavirus infection and the growing number of deaths in Bulgaria are medical specialists. Since the very beginning of the pandemic, rumours about false COVID-19 diagnoses and particularly about falsified death acts have been intensively circulating on social media. In Facebook groups of COVID sceptics, a conspiracy theory has been constructed by stories, opinions, and ideas of monstrous corruption, fabrications of data, deliberate contaminations during COVID-19 testing procedures, and putting to death through hospital treatment protocols. Following the approval of COVID-19 vaccines and their administration, pre-existing mistrust in medicine and pharmaceutics has escalated into open hostility and aggression towards medical specialists. The interpretation of these narrative forms unfolds in two directions. On the one hand, the peculiar logic and cultural practice of constructing a “medical conspiracy theory” are discussed. On the other hand, attention is drawn to its broad socio-cultural context and the longstanding problems of the Bulgarian healthcare system.

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