While the coronavirus infects celebrities and ordinary people, entire countries are closing for quarantine, and Russians have begun to slowly stock up on food, theories about how Covid-19 arose and who benefits from it are multiplying like mushrooms. We present you with the top 10 conspiracy theories and myths related to the coronavirus.
10. Bill Gates did it
If you're wondering how Bill Gates fits into the coronavirus story, let's go back to October 2019. That month, Bill and Melinda Gates, along with the World Economic Forum and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, conducted a pandemic exercise called Event 201, simulating a large-scale coronavirus outbreak.
Ironically, the Covid-19 virus emerged two months after this test. Conspiracy theorists believe that the program was merely a prelude to the coming epidemic, which was jointly planned by the three organizations.
9. The bats eaten by the Chinese are to blame
The most common theory about the origin of the coronavirus is that it all started in a seafood market in Wuhan, China. There you can buy not only seafood, but also live and dead animals, including bats, which are likely carriers of Covid-19.
So social media began to speculate that the disease was spreading because some Chinese people were addicted to eating bats. This suggestion was supported by a number of viral videos showing people allegedly wolfing down bats or bat soup.
However, there is no evidence that eating bats was the source of the coronavirus outbreak, and one study even links the Wuhan coronavirus to snakes.
8. It's because of 5G internet
Wuhan was one of the first Chinese cities to get 5G mobile internet. And it was also the first city where the coronavirus began to spread. “Coincidence? I don’t think so!” Dana Ashley, one of the conspiracy theorists, tells us.
She believes that the Covid-19 virus was caused by waves emitted by 5G towers. Ashley based her opinion on a study conducted in 2000 that found that the 5G network posed a health risk to humans. Ashley says that the so-called coronavirus is actually radiation poisoning, which weakens the immune system and makes people more vulnerable to disease.
7. Pharmaceutical companies created SARS-CoV-2
The coronavirus epidemic has become a fertile time for pharmaceutical companies. They are obvious beneficiaries, which means they have come under the attention of conspiracy theorists. One of these theories is that all the hype surrounding the coronavirus is a deliberate attempt to stir up panic, and its main PR customers are major players in the global pharmaceutical market.
The world saw something similar in 2009, when the hysteria was linked to the spread of swine flu. At that time, Roche ran a large-scale advertising campaign for Tamiflu, and earned about $1 billion from it.
This year, the manufacturer of Arbidol has already declared its drug effective against coronavirus. How much will it earn on this – who knows?
6. The Canadian government is involved
Although this theory is less popular than the version that the coronavirus was created in China or the United States, it is true. And that means we have to tell you about it. The Covid-19 virus is believed to have been created at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Canada. This institution, like the Chinese lab in Wuhan, studies deadly viruses.
Some conspiracy theorists believe that Chinese spies stole the virus and sent it to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where it eventually caused the epidemic.
5. The Chinese did everything
One of the most popular conspiracy theories surrounding the coronavirus is that Covid-19 was created as a biological weapon and commissioned by the Chinese government.
However, the virus then "leaked" from a research lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology due to a breach of safety protocol.
Another version of this rumor claims that the virus was studied in a lab (after being identified in animals), but the ending of this story is completely consistent with the first version.
Some experts laugh at the theory that the coronavirus is a biological weapon. Such a weapon makes no sense, because Covid-19 does not always cause death or severe complications, and there are much more dangerous pathogens. For example, Ebola, Lassa fever or Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, which have a mortality rate of 30 to 50 percent. For comparison: the global mortality rate of Covid-19 is about 3 percent.
4. Americans created Covid-19
One of the wild theories surrounding the origins of the coronavirus is that it was created by the US government to destroy China's economy, and was spread by US troops who arrived in China back in October 2019.
It must be said that all economies in the world are suffering from Covid-19, including the Russian one. Five industries are the most “affected” by the coronavirus.
Others have linked the Covid-19 epidemic to the fact that thousands of Americans developed lung disease last year, which e-cigarettes were blamed for. Conspiracy theorists believe that the lung disease outbreak was a cover for the new coronavirus.
3. The Simpsons predicted the coronavirus
Enterprising "conspiracy sleuths" often dig very deep and find warnings and hints about current events in various written sources, in films and even in animated series such as "The Simpsons".
Since The Simpsons is one of the longest-running animated series, remaining popular for over 30 years, it is a treasure trove of conspiracy theories.
Case in point: Episode 21 of Season 4 (filmed in 1993) focuses on the outbreak of a mysterious disease called the Osaka Flu. Osaka is in Japan, not China, but a great show can forgive minor errors, right?
2. Dean Koontz predicted the coronavirus
The coronavirus was "discovered" in the 1981 novel The Eyes of Darkness by science fiction writer Dean Koontz, which tells of a global epidemic caused by the Wuhan-400 virus, created in a Chinese military lab.
However, the chorus of voices claiming that Koontz is a prophet quickly died down when it turned out that 2020 was not mentioned in the novel at all, the lethality of the “book infection” was 100%, and the screenshot of the page that flew around the Internet was taken from a collection of prophecies by Sylvia Browne, a self-proclaimed medium and psychic. She really did predict that there would be an outbreak of disease in 2020, only not coronavirus, but pneumonia.
In the original text of Koontz's book, the virus was created not by the Chinese, but by the Soviet military, and was called "Gorki-400". From the former USSR, it migrated to China, and at the same time changed its name in 2008, in the edition published by Berkley. The Americans had long known that there was a laboratory studying viruses in Wuhan, and the USSR no longer existed, apparently because of this, the virus in the book changed its registration and "name".
1. Coronavirus came from space
On the night of October 10-11, 2019, the sky over northeastern China was lit up by a bright flash due to an exploding meteorite.
Conspiracy theorists have not ignored this incident, and believe that the coronavirus came to Earth from outside, from space. And this was not stated by some nameless British scientist, but by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe from the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology.
However, other scientists believe this is unlikely, as the meteorite did not fall to earth, and even if it did, the virus would not have survived the extreme temperatures of landing. Meteors that do not burn up in the atmosphere can be as hot as 650°C by the time they hit the ground. That is more than enough to kill the coronavirus, which cannot tolerate temperatures above 40 degrees.
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