Coronavirus spawns conspiracy theories

Coronavirus spawns conspiracy theories

David KnowlesEditor
,Yahoo News•April 18, 2020
2,551 Comments

As the coronavirus continues to spread around the world, infecting millions and killing more than 153,000, conspiracy theories about its origin and treatment have also been multiplying.

Economic activity has ground to a halt as countries battle what President Trump has called “the invisible enemy,” and political leaders have themselves floated conspiracy theories about the virus, so rumors and disinformation — some spread by Russia and China — have taken root in social media.

Here are just a few of the bogus claims that have arisen during the pandemic.

Bill Gates is using the coronavirus to seize control of health care

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates gave a 2015 TED Talk in which he issued a stark warning that the world was “not ready for the next epidemic.”

“If we start now, we can be ready for the next epidemic,” Gates told his audience, making the case that world governments needed to prepare for pandemics with as much attention as they prepared for possible warfare.

As the New York Times reported Friday, that speech, in conjunction with remarks Gates has made recently that are critical of Trump’s decision to withhold U.S. funding from the World Health Organization, have led right-wing pundits, QAnon followers and anti-vaccination advocates to make the case that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is using the coronavirus pandemic, or that Gates manufactured the virus, for his own personal gain.

In reality, the Gates Foundation spends approximately $3 billion a year to boost public health in disadvantaged countries, including the distribution of infant vaccines to prevent diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough and hepatitis B in Africa.

That hasn’t stopped pro-Trump social media luminaries Diamond & Silk from going after Gates.

“I have a problem receiving any vaccine from any entity, especially anybody like Bill Gates who pushed for population control,” the woman who goes by “Diamond” said on Wednesday.

Bill and Melinda Gates have donated $100 million of their fortune to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

5G cellphone towers cause COVID-19

Is the rollout of new 5G cellular service somehow responsible for the spread of COVID-19 around the world? That seems to be the belief among some of the people who have set fire to new 5G towers being erected in Europe.

At least 60 of the towers have been torched in the U.K., where the conspiracy theory gained traction when a host on the ITV daytime show “This Morning” said he didn’t believe the “state-run narrative” that 5G towers were safe, Ars Technica reported.

The baseless linkage between 5G towers and the coronavirus has since spread across the English Channel. YouTube videos promoting the idea that 5G kills wildlife and damages human lungs have been proliferating since January, with some receiving more than 12 million views.

YouTube and Facebook have both recently banned videos that purport to show a connection between 5G towers and the coronavirus, saying none exists.

U.S. soldiers introduced the coronavirus to China

Conspiracy theories aren’t limited to fringe elements of society, however. Facing criticism from U.S. officials over its disclosure of the extent of COVID-19 infections, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian suggested on March 12 that the virus was brought into China by members of the U.S. military. “Be transparent!” Zhao wrote on Twitter. “Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!”

In response, the Trump administration lodged a complaint with the Chinese ambassador to the U.S.

“Spreading conspiracy theories is dangerous and ridiculous. We wanted to put the government on notice we won’t tolerate it for the good of the Chinese people and the world,” a State Department official told Reuters.

The coronavirus is a bioweapon developed for use against China

Back in late February, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said that scientific analysis of the coronavirus showed it to have been “created for the biological war against China.”

“There are analyses in the world that show that the coronavirus can be a strain created for the biological war against China, there are already many elements that are seen in the global analysis and you have to raise your voice, ring the bell and alert, in case the coronavirus is a weapon of war that is being used against China and the peoples of the world,” he said.

Maduro, who the Trump administration has been trying to oust from power, did not provide any data to back up his theory. To date, Venezuela has reported just 204 confirmed cases of COVID-19.

George Soros owns the Chinese lab where the coronavirus originated

No conspiracy theory list is complete without an item on billionaire philanthropist George Soros.

In March, as the virus began spreading across the United States, he was accused by some of his enemies of owning the WuXi AppTec pharmaceutical company that operates a lab in Wuhan, China, where many Trump supporters believe the virus originated.

As Snopes reported, the company has “no discernible connection to Soros himself.”

A YouTube video produced by conspiracy theorists Democrepublix News, however, has hypothesized that Soros hatched the virus as a way to ensure Trump would not win reelection in 2020.


Soros has pledged $130 million to combat the coronavirus.
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Virus-fueled conspiracy theories take aim at hospitals

MICHAEL KUNZELMAN
,Associated Press•April 17, 2020
18 Comments

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Virus Outbreak Conspiracy Theories

FILE - In this April 13, 2020, file photo, a patient arrives in an ambulance cared for by medical workers wearing personal protective equipment due to COVID-19 concerns outside NYU Langone Medical Center, in New York. The coronavirus has breathed fresh life into old conspiracy theories and inspired a mishmash of new ones, with a cast of villains that includes Bill Gates, 5G wireless technology, the United Nations and President Donald Trump’s political foes. The baseless claims spreading on social media also feature videos taken outside hospitals treating COVID-19 patients. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)


The video lasts just 13 seconds and shows nothing more than the view from a car quietly driving past a hospital entrance. But the person who posted it on Twitter used the footage to sarcastically question reports of “apocalyptic conditions” at Mount Sinai Queens in New York City.

That video and dozens of others like it have been spreading on social media through the #FilmYourHospital hashtag. The people taking and posting videos of quiet scenes outside hospitals are promoting a right-wing conspiracy theory that fear-mongering media outlets and Democrats are intentionally exaggerating COVID-19’s deadly toll. The clip from Queens racked up more than 227,000 views in less than three weeks.

“It’s very sad because I’m working with a team of thousands of people who are putting their lives at risk.

They are struggling every day to provide the best care they can in horrendous conditions,” said Dr. David Reich, president of Mount Sinai Queens and Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. The Mount Sinai system has treated thousands of coronavirus patients.

Hospitals aren’t the only targets of the far-right fringe during the pandemic. The coronavirus has breathed fresh life into old conspiracy theories and inspired a mishmash of new ones, with a cast of villains that includes Bill Gates, 5G wireless technology, the United Nations and President Donald Trump’s political foes.

New York is also the setting for one of the wildest virus-related conspiracy theories circulating on social media — that the pandemic is masking a military operation to rescue thousands of deformed “mole children” from the clutches of sex traffickers in underground tunnels beneath medical tents recently erected in Central Park.

Many of the social media accounts driving that baseless story and the #FilmYourHospital campaign belong to followers of “QAnon,” a far-right, apocalyptic conspiracy theory that believes Trump is waging a secret campaign against “deep state” enemies and Satan-worshiping Democrats who prey on children. The Twitter user who posted the March 29 video of Mount Sinai Queens has a profile that includes the QAnon slogan “WWG1WGA,” which stands for “Where we go one, we go all.”

Alex Friedfeld, an investigative researcher for the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, said quarantine conditions are ripe for conspiracy theories to mutate and quickly spread. The purveyors are scared and cooped up inside their homes with abundant free time to spend on the internet.

“We are in a time of crisis, so people are frightened,” he said. “They are looking for explanations. Conspiracy theories can be comforting because they basically place order on chaos. A lot of them give you somebody to blame, and that can be comforting to people at an uncertain time.”

Friedfeld said the virus has become fodder for old tropes like “Agenda 21,” a conspiracy theory that a network of global elites are using a United Nations resolution adopted in 1992 to control citizens and depopulate the earth.

Other new conspiracy theories being fueled by the virus include one that claims maps show a link between 5G networks and coronavirus outbreaks. Another holds that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates intends to use a COVID-19 vaccine to track and control the world's population. Fox News host Laura Ingraham amplified the narrative with an April 7 tweet that said,

“Digitally tracking Americans’ every move has been a dream of the globalists for years.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Tuesday that COVID-19 misinformation is a poisonous threat to the world and urged social media organizations to do more to counter it. Social media platforms say they are trying to stop the spread of coronavirus hoaxes and connect users with reliable information.

Facebook is removing content related to the “#FilmYourHospital” hashtag when it violates the social network's policies, according to company spokesman Andy Stone. The company says it removes coronavirus-related misinformation from Facebook and Instagram that could contribute to “imminent physical harm.”

Twitter says it is removing COVID-19 content “when it has a call to action that could potentially cause harm.” One of the first and most popular tweets promoting #FilmYourHospital remains on the platform. DeAnna Lorraine, a California Republican who unsuccessfully challenged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, posted a video taken outside a Los Angeles-area hospital and urged her followers to get the hashtag trending. The video she tweeted on March 29 has 1.4 million views.

A copycat video posted on Twitter showed an empty parking lot and vacant tents outside University Medical Center Tucson in Arizona. “We should be picketing in protest of this hoax!” the user tweeted.

A hospital official said the exterior appears quiet because the medical center is not allowing visitors, has furloughed nonessential employees, canceled elective procedures and stopped using the tents to test outpatients with mild virus symptoms.

Dr. Christian Bime, medical director of the intensive care unit at the Tucson hospital, said he has treated approximately 20 COVID-19 patients, some of whom have died.

“This is not a hoax. This is real. These are real patients who have real families,” Bime said.

A Mount Sinai spokeswoman says the lobby inside its Queen hospital appeared empty in the video because it also barred visitors.

Another Twitter user posted a copycat video outside Mount Sinai's Manhattan hospital, which normally has about 970 patients but had approximately 1,250 on Wednesday.

Around 700 were COVID-19 patients, including roughly 150 on ventilators, according to Reich. He called it “the worst crisis of our lifetimes.”

“There is so much obvious evidence that this is real. It almost defies imagination that anybody would have to try to prove it,” Reich said.

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