ABSTRACT
Before the coronavirus, the West African Republic of Guinea was hit by the Ebola epidemic (2013–16), a public health crisis that was equally permeated with rumors and conspiracy theories. However, while Covid-19 was largely interpreted as a rich people’s virus, Ebola had been widely associated with a disease of the poor, and the previous experience with Ebola shaped subsequent collective interpretations of Covid-19. A good number of Guineans, for instance, suspected Covid-19 to be a divine intervention to restore justice and punish the same elites who had been conspiring before to benefit from “Ebola-business,” the financial and humanitarian aid that had disappeared in their pockets. Class conflict, which is otherwise comparatively subtle in Guinea, thus emerged as a core theme of the two viral outbreaks. Our comparison also shows that both viruses were interpreted as political phenomena, especially the Corona virus, which spread in an electoral context of social contestation and political crisis. Drawing on multiple qualitative and quantitative data by both authors, it thus reflects on the Corona virus not as an unprecedented singularity, but studies it in relation to a previous epidemic that had already given rise to similar suspicions.
