rats, bats, and vaxes:

urban legends of disease and

contagion from the bubonic plague
to COVID-19
Dr. Sarah M. Gordon Guest Lecture
Department of Folklore BIOC 1600
Memorial University of Newfoundland 17 March 2022
What are your
favourite urban
legends about
COVID-19 or its
treatment?
What is an urban legend?

”Urban Legend” was coined by Richard Dorson, a professor

of Folklore at Indiana University, in 1968
Popularized by Jan Harold Brunvand, a professor of Folklore
at the University of Utah
In academic folklore, “urban legend” has been largely
replaced by “contemporary legend”
 What is an urban legend?

 A story set in the recent past and often (though not always) nearby
 Many versions of it exist, though you might not know this if you weren’t looking for them
 The events in the story are often attributed to a FOAF (“Friend Of A Friend”) or similar
 The story gains credibility through reference to sources of authority (professors, law
enforcement, political leaders, “studies,” connections to people who are supposedly close
to the events described)
 Specific details of time/place (sometimes validated by photoshopped images)
 The story is believed to be true… mostly. Sort of.
Urban legends engage with the possibility of hard-to-believe stuff actually being real.
What is belief?

 “traditionally codified ideology”

 We often frame “beliefs” as things that other people have: “They
believe X, but I know Y.”
 But all knowledge is justified/validated by a surrounding belief
system.
How are urban legends spread?

 Person to person (face to face, texting, phone, etc)

 Social media and internet forums
 E-mail forwards
 Journalism
 Academic publications, including scientific journals
 …And other places that should know better but get hoodwinked like
the rest of us.
Example:
hidden
HIV/AIDS
needles
My name is Captain Abraham Sands of the Jacksonville, Florida Police Department. I have
been asked by state and local authorities to write this email in order to get the word out to
car drivers of a very dangerous prank that is occurring in numerous states.
Some person or persons have been affixing hypodermic needles to the underside of gas
pump handles. These needles appear to be infected with HIV positive blood. In the
Jacksonville area alone there have been 17 cases of people being stuck by these needles over
the past five months. We have verified reports of at least 12 others in various states around
the country.
[…]

E-mail forward documented in 2000 on Snopes.com

So where do these stories come from?

 These stories exist in an atmosphere of other, related stories that all validate each
other.
 Often, people unconsciously adapt stories they have heard before to suit the
concern or issue of the moment.

 Urban legends circulate at sites of widespread social fear.

AIDS Mary/ AIDS Harry
legends
 AIDS Harry: Welcome to the World of AIDS

This girl needed a break and decided to go to Florida for a month or two holiday, I think. While she was there
she met a man, who seemed to be . . . the man of her dreams. He had money, he treated her like gold and he
gave her everything she wanted. She fell in love with him and . . . during her last night there they slept
together. The next day he brought her to the airport for her return to St. John’s. He gave her a small gift-
wrapped box and told her not to open it until she got home. They . . . said goodbye and she left, hoping that
someday they would be married and the gift would be an [engagement] ring. The suspense was killing her and
. . . she decided to open the gift on the plane. It was a small coffin with a piece of paper saying “Welcome To
The World of AIDS.”

Goldstein, Diane. 2004. Once Upon a Virus. Logan: Utah State University
Press. p 101.
AIDS Mary: Welcome to the World of AIDS

[This story] was about this man that cheated on his wife and he went out with a
hooker. It was just one night. He had never done it before. And he woke up the next
morning and the hooker had marked on the window, on the mirror with lipstick
“Welcome to the World of AIDS.”

Goldstein, Diane. 2004. Once Upon a Virus. Logan: Utah State University
Press. p 110.
AIDS Harry in Houston:
Welcome to the World of AIDS

Becky’s friend’s friend, a college sophomore, apparently went to Florida for Spring Break. She met a
guy and spent most of her time with him. And on the day that she left, he brought her a present and he
said, “I hope this doesn’t seem stupid but I got this for your parents.” When her parents opened the box,
they found a small plastic coffin with a note that said, “Congratulations. Your daughter has just been
welcomed to the wonderful world of AIDS.” The girl got herself tested last month and she apparently
tested HIV positive. At least according to Joy, who got from her friend about a friend of hers. So for a
few days I’ve been trying to check out this story.

Source: Houston Chronicle newspaper, reprinted in Goldstein, Diane. 2004.

Once Upon a Virus. Logan: Utah State University Press. p 112.
 Welcome to the World of AIDS

A woman meets a man in a bar. They hit it off right away, and the man asks her to join him on vacation
at his beach house in the Bahamas. She accepts and goes with him. They make love and the woman has
never been happier. On the day she has to leave, the man sees her off at the airport. He gives her a
present telling her not to open it until she gets home. Back home, she finds a coffee maker inside. A note
on it says “this is for all the lonely nights you’ll be facing. Welcome to the World of AIDS.”

Source: Brunvand syndicated column, reprinted in Goldstein, Diane. 2004.

Once Upon a Virus. Logan: Utah State University Press. p 112.
 Welcome to the World of Plague

A poor unhappy gentlewoman, a substantial citizen’s wife, was […] murdered by one of these creatures in Aldersgate
Street[…]. He was going along the street, raving mad, […]; the people only said he was drunk, but he himself said he
had the plague upon him, […]; and meeting this gentlewoman, he would kiss her. She was terribly frightened […]and
she ran from him, but […] there was nobody near enough to help her. When she saw he would overtake her, she
turned and gave him a thrust so forcibly, he being but weak, and pushed him backward. But very unhappily, she being
so near, he caught hold of her, and pulled her down also, and getting up first, mastered her, and kissed her; and which
was worst of all, when he had done, told her he had the plague, and why should not she have it as well as he?

Source: Defoe, “Journal of the Plague Year 1665.” Quoted in Goldstein, Diane.
2004. Once Upon a Virus. Logan: Utah State University Press. p 38.
Welcome to the World of COVID-19

Did you hear about that COVID cluster in Harbour Breton, the one they couldn’t find the source for? Well, my
coworker has a friend who lives down there, and she says everyone down there knows what happened. Well, it
turns out that one of the nurses working in the care home there was having an affair with a man from California.
She was married, and she didn’t want to tell anyone about the affair, so that’s why no official source has been
identified.

Source: personal communication.

How did we get here? COVID-19 edition

UNDERSTANDING INFECTION AS

CONTAMINATION
whomdriven
we chacterize
by as

BAD PEOPLE
INHERENTLY DIRTY
or

MALICIOUS o t h !
Or b
Patients Zero: legends of epidemic origins

European Christians’ black death origin legend: “The Jews are

clearly poisoning our wells with dark magic!”
Western nations’ AIDS origin legend: “Someone in Africa clearly
did something weird with a monkey!”
African AIDS origin legend: “The CIA manufactured AIDS to
decimate the African population!”
North American COVID-19 origin legend: “Chinese people ate
infected bats!“
Scientists fall for these legends too.

African children use dead monkey corpses as toys.

(Green, John and David Miller. 1986. AIDS: Story of a Disease. London:
Grafton. p 66.)
African people inject themselves with monkey blood as an
aphrodisiac.
(Noireau, F. 1987. “HIV Transmission from Monkey to Man.” The
Lancet 329(8548) 1498-1499.)
 Vaccination as Contamination

Major justifications for vaccine questioners:

1. Vaccines cause harm/disease(eg. autism, ADHD, allergies)
2. Vaccines are for profit
3. Vaccines have no effect on immunity
4. Vaccines are not “natural”
COVID-19 Vaccine urban legends

 The vaccine makes your skin magnetic

 Vaccine spike proteins are dangerous to us or to others
 Vaccination is a front for injection with a tracking microchip
 The vaccine makes you infertile/impotent
1. The vaccine makes
magnets stick to you
1. The vaccine
makes
magnets stick
to you
2. The spike protein is toxic

“We made a big mistake. We didn’t realize it until now, we thought the spike protein
was a great target antigen. We never knew the spike protein itself was a toxin and
was a pathogenic protein so by vaccinating people we are inadvertently inoculating
them with a toxin.”

-Dr. Byram Bridle, Viral Immunologist, University of Guelph Veterinary College,

interviewed on ONPoint with Alex Pierson
3. The vaccine has a microchip

“The best way to think about QAnon may not be as a conspiracy theory,
but as an unusually absorbing alternate-reality game with extremely low
barriers to entry.”

-Alyssa Rosenberg, 2019, Washington Post

4. The vaccine makes you infertile/impotent
What makes urban legends and conspiracy
theories so sticky?

 We trust our friends/families more than we trust impersonal institutions

 Relationships are built on shared beliefs
 On social media, displaying agreement and sharing is a performative
element of reinforcing the value of relationships
 We tell these hard-to-believe stories as a part of the process of negotiating
whether or not we believe them
 For many people, these stories are not easier to believe than scientific
narratives are