The fear and anger that surround pandemics have always made fertile ground for conspiracy theories. In medieval Europe, fear of the Black Death inspired widespread violence against Jews, who were blamed for propagating the disease. Mass pogroms during the plague exterminated more than one thousand Jewish communities across Europe, while judges ruled that Jews had spread the disease by poisoning wells. During cholera outbreaks in the 1830s, rumors spread that doctors and other government agents were spreading the disease to cull the number of poor people reliant on welfare programs. In Russia,
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