4chan has always been a meme making machine that loves transgressive humor, the American variant didn't have explicit political themes until the Trump era.
Before that it was just chaotic, creative, transgressive social input.
Anything from hunting down animal abusers with the "crush fetish", to spam printing fake coupons to get free shit from stores
Student charged with posting counterfeit coupons to 4chan
The fake Internet coupons cost retailers hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to the FBI
Robert McMillan (IDG News Service) on 12 May, 2011 10:14
By the time of the Trump era however it started to be described in terms of... a virus
Here's Why There's Anime Fan Art Of President Trump All Over Your Facebook
Here's how Japan's infamous online army, the netto-uyoku, has shaped the far-right movement in America.
...If nationalist internet trolling has become a global pandemic, from India’s WhatsApp armies to Russian troll farms — and reports that Trump supporters are now attempting to help influence France’s upcoming election — the netto-uyoku might be patient zero.
Another article, except this one talking about issues from a more left-wing perspective
http://archive.is/iKPMa
Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown
Thursday 12 June 2014 07.00 BST
Social science is being militarised to develop 'operational tools' to target peaceful activists and protest movements
A US Department of Defense (DoD) research programme is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various US military agencies. The multi-million dollar programme is designed to develop immediate and long-term "warfighter-relevant insights" for senior officials and decision makers in "the defense policy community," and to inform policy implemented by "combatant commands."
Launched in 2008 – the year of the global banking crisis – the DoD 'Minerva Research Initiative' partners with universities "to improve DoD's basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral, and political forces that shape regions of the world of strategic importance to the US."
Among the projects awarded for the period 2014-2017 is a Cornell University-led study managed by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research which aims to develop an empirical model "of the dynamics of social movement mobilisation and contagions." The project will determine "the critical mass (tipping point)" of social contagians by studying their "digital traces" in the cases of "the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the 2011 Russian Duma elections, the 2012 Nigerian fuel subsidy crisis and the 2013 Gazi park protests in Turkey."
Twitter posts and conversations will be examined "to identify individuals mobilised in a social contagion and when they become mobilised."
They use the term "contagion" as if it's an infection once again.
Now let's look back at the pre-4chan 2003 SARS virus outbreak, there were serious questions raised about the disease to the extent where a "Conspiracy theory" page was created on wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS_conspiracy_theory
Anytime anyone is upset enough to "denounce conspiracy theorists", there is usually something controversial at play.
Idiotic, incorrect speculation is not the same as as "conspiracy theories", "conspiracy theorists" are allegedly mentally ill people, usually people targetted politically.
Like MKUltra, or what the psychologist march against Trump tried to do
Psychologists march through NY to call for Trump's removal
BY REBECCA SAVRANSKY - 10/14/17 09:00 PM EDT
A group of psychologists and mental health professionals on Saturday marched through New York calling for President Trump to be removed from office.
It's the same thing our MSM would denounce the USSR for
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union
Anyways the "conspiracy backlash" after Ebola was much more restrained. It seems almost like the "culture war involvement" acted to redirect and disrupt anti establishment questions to idiocy:
http://archive.is/OU0zI
About
Ebola-chan is a female anime character designed as an anthropomorphic representation of the Ebola virus. The character was created on 4chan in response to growing concerns regarding the West African Ebola outbreak in the summer of 2014.
"White People" Conspiracy Hoax
While the character began as a relatively innocuous fan art trend, others on the site soon began rallying behind an international scheme to fabricate a death cult movement based on a conspiracy hoax that Ebola was "invented by white people," hoping it would catch on in the internet forums in regions where the local population have been heavily affected by the virus.
According to the excerpts of 4chan posts as cited by Vocative[7] and International Business Times[8], some users openly expressed their desire to see the dissemination of such a racially divisive rumor, which would further incite the escalating tension between the blacks and whites in the continent
By September 17th, the fandomization of Ebola-chan on English-speaking imageboard communities had reached the earshot of Nigerian discussion forum Nairaland, where the character quickly became vilified as a "plague goddess" summoned by ill-wishing Westerners who perform “magical rituals in order to spread the disease and kill people.”
While that transgressive humor is the type of thing 4chan would always do, the rapid spread and dispersion was remarkable, especially in light of the fact no equivalent movement happened with natural disasters.
There have been countless natural disasters in the past two decades. A disease outbreak should usually be considered part of that category.
There was no "earthquake-chan" or "tornado-chan" meme war that ever spread. There is "Earth-chan" of course, but that meme was never part of a movement the same way Ebola-chan was.
And now we've been seeing "Corona-chan" catch on quite quickly...
there doesn't seem to be anything here