Disputes over the figures of the COVID-19 pandemic: Epistemic diversity, dissemination of science, and political opposition

The health policies imposed by multiple national governments after the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 were publicly justified by official figures on the deaths that the new virus would have caused and could cause in the future. At the same time, however, groups of people from different countries expressed their scepticism about those figures. Although they were categorised as ‘anti-science’, ‘spreaders of misinformation’ or ‘conspiracy theorists’ in some media, many of those sceptics claimed to be based on scientific evidence. This article qualitatively analyses a sample of the content published by sceptics on their social media between 2020 and 2022. More specifically, it examines the shared documents supposedly coming from the scientific community. We find very diverse content ranging from unsubstantiated assumptions to documents produced by prestigious scientists inviting questions about the fatality rates, the mathematical models anticipating millions of deaths, and the real numbers of people who died from COVID-19. The disputes surrounding the official figures lead us to a reflection about the relationship between, epistemic diversity, the dissemination of science, censorship, and new forms of political opposition. We also touch upon the nature and ethics of scientific controversy in times of a ‘war’ against ‘misinformation’.