Why Weird Beliefs Are a Normal, Central, Almost Universal Aspect of Human Affairs

BY DANIEL LOXTON

AS WE ENTER INTO OUR SECOND YEAR OF the fight to control the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s clear that misinformation continues to threaten millions of lives. I believe this developing crisis holds critical lessons for the future of skepticism. To bring these lessons into focus, I’d like to begin by considering a far more apocalyptic pandemic from centuries past: The Black Death.

In October of 1347, ships from Eastern ports brought a terrifying, unknown disease to the harbors of Italy. Authorities were quick to confine sick and dying sailors on board their vessels, but the disease still came ashore, where it swiftly annihilated 30 to 40 percent of the population.

The Black Death was the worst pandemic the world had known in 800 years. It was an unprecedented, catastrophic disruption to medieval civilization. It wasn’t just a plague; it was a major depopulation event. The plague altered the society, the economy, and even the ecology of Europe, re-wilding so much of the continent that we can physically measure the effects of the plague from pollen deposits.

Much of the pandemic playbook we’ve used during COVID was conceived during the Black Death.

After the initial outbreaks, most places had warnings about what was coming. They tried their best to prepare for the threat. Many organized central health authorities, created emergency plans, and dedicated vast resources to protecting their people.

By definition, they were working with medieval levels of medical knowledge, but they actually knew enough—or they would have, if they were dealing with a different disease. Despite the prevailing idea that bad air caused disease, the people of Europe did know about contagion, and they knew what to do about it. They had learned how to manage contagious diseases such as leprosy: keep sick people isolated from healthy people. That’s what they tried to do.

Italian cities closed their walls and borders. They first turned away, and then isolated the sick. They quarantined ships from offloading cargo or crew. (This is where we get the word “quarantine”: from the Italian word for 40, or 40 days of isolation). They led massive public hygiene campaigns.

All of their efforts failed. The plague spread to every city and town, claiming rich and poor, righteous and wicked, clever and foolish alike. People fled, or prayed, or looted the riches from abandoned mansions. Others partied to their graves, stumbling drunk and hysterical past bodies rotting in the streets.

“So many died that all believed it was the end of the world,”1 said one man who buried his five children with his own hands. Society broke down completely. There was no rule of law, “for the plague struck so suddenly that at first there weren’t enough officials and then there were none at all.”

Around a third of the people in Europe died in four years. In some places, the death toll reached 50 or even 70 percent. In places struck by the deadlier pneumonic form of the plague, hardly anyone survived.

Emergency measures failed because health authorities simply did not have the information they needed, information that would remain unknown for centuries, through countless waves of plague. No one even suspected that bubonic plague was carried by rats and fleas. Without that knowledge, the best advice was useless.

Medieval people were told to “mix little with people…it is best to stay at home until the epidemic has passed.” One church leader sensibly warned, “In pestilence time nobody should stand in a great press of people because some man among them may be infected.” Also,“it is good to wash your hands oft timesinthe day.”3

Unfortunately, neither individual precautions nor official safety measures offered any protection. Infected rats climbed down the ropes of quarantined ships, slipped into locked down cities, and carried fleas into socially distanced homes.

Illustration by Izhar Cohen

The failure of rationalist responses to the plague left the field open for supernatural explanations and conspiracy theories. Of course, many people interpreted the plague as a punishment from God. What other cause was big enough to explain destruction on such a scale?

The people prayed desperately for mercy that never came. The most extreme was the “flagellant” movement. The flagellants were violent fanatics who stripped down in town squares to whip their own skin to shreds. Great crowds of these zealots travelled from town to town. They called on the people to save themselves from God’s wrath by purging themselves of sin—and purging their communities of God’s enemies. As bad as all this was, it was about to get worse.

In various places, an old rumor resurfaced: epidemics were caused by enemies who poisoned the drinking water. In some places suspicion fell upon beggars and outsiders. In most places, with the encouragement of the flagellants, suspicion fell upon the Jews.

At that time, there were Jewish quarters in many European cities and towns. When they were accused of poisoning their neighbors, authorities arrested Jewish suspects and interrogated them under torture.

As later happened during the witch hunting mania, victims were tortured until they agreed to tell the stories their interrogators demanded. They falsely “confessed” that the Black Death was a vast Jewish conspiracy to destroy Christians. According to this torture-based fiction, every Jew in Europe was in on this genocidal plot—every man, woman, and child above the age of seven. All were guilty. All deserved to die.