---
title: 📖 Started reading "The Other Pandemic"
date: 2026-02-27T07:36:44.006Z
slug: 2026-02-27--started-reading-the-other-pandemic
author: Thomas Wilson-Cook
tags: 
  - book-review
  - reading

---
I picked up James Ball's *The Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World* ([bookshop.org](https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-other-pandemic-how-qanon-contaminated-the-world-james-ball/7618064?ean=9781526642516&next=t)) from the library.  Ball appeared on an episode of the podcast *Oh God What Now?* ([Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/withstanding-the-farage-barrage-can-we-reform-proof-the-uk/id1245265763?i=1000750517915)) and the book sounded interesting.  I've just crossed the one hundred page mark.

Ball makes the useful (if tired) comparison between the spread of conspiratorial beliefs, like QAnon, and a virus[^1].  You could make the same comparison about other bits of being a human: music, language, or stories are all transmitted and evolve like viruses.  Beautiful, sure, but sentimental.  What do I *do* with this?

Fortunately, Ball can think at least one step ahead of some writers and journalists I've read.  They tell us *how* it's like a virus, and it's actually pretty interesting.

Ball reminds us of survivorship bias ([wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias)) and natural reservoir ([wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_reservoir)) of conspiratorial beliefs.  In nature, a natural reservoir might be a population of animals (cows, bats, mice) where a pathogen can live and be transmitted before being passed on to another population.  

In the context of conspiratorial beliefs, there are countless forums, group chats, and social media accounts constantly trying new ideas and framings.  Naturally, the ideas that break containment from one place to another will be the most attention grabbing: the most outrageous, or maybe even the most plausible (to a certain population, if not the general public).

Although countless people (earnest believers, state actors, and now generative artificial intelligence) are posting a new conspiracy every second of every day - the vast, vast majority of them are lost to time.  Shame.

It's no accident that QAnon started on 4chan, says Ball.  A site with a set number of posts visible at any one time.  To hang around, a post would have to have more engagement than its peers.  The users of 4chan were already a self-selecting group of a quite libertarian-leaning, pseudonymous internet image board, initially with an anonymous founder.  It's an environment that could allow a lot of different ideas to appear and then spread.

The book suffers a little from the same condition as Naomi Klein's *Doppleganger*: the author details an overwhelming, negative phenomenon (bad for both individuals, communities, and societies) and then just stands back with you and is like "wow, seems bad".

But also, it's not a book about de-radicalisation or de-programming.  It's a book about the spread of QAnon beliefs.

Who knows, maybe Ball will wrap it up nicely in the next 120 pages.  So far, I'm enjoying it.

---

[^1]: The comparison seems well considered in this case, but it reminds me a little of how the human mind is always compared to the most modern technology of the day.  There was a time when the human brain was complex like a water mill, or like a wax tablet.  ([the *Guardian*](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jul/26/photography-supercomputers-see-ourselves-in-our-inventions-brain-neuroscience))
