Historically, the outbreak of pandemics has always been accompanied by the dissemination of rumors and conspiracy theories. As fears about outbreak grow, so too do the number of myths about the virus and many are more dangerous than the disease itself. As countless corona virus rumors circulate online, lets takes a look at some biggest conspiracy theories and Hoaxes about this Pandemics.
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has deteriorated into a full-blown pandemic and has killed 42,000 and infected 850,00 globally.
1. ‘The End Of Days’ and Corona Virus
According to Conspiracy Theories, A book titled End of Days: Predictions and Prophecies about the End of the World, written by Sylvia Browne predicted the global outbreak of corona virus. The book was first published in 2008. A photo of an excerpt from the book is going viral across social media. “In around 2020 a severe pneumonia-like illness will spread throughout the globe, attacking the lungs and bronchial tubes resisting all known treatments,” the excerpt read. The excerpt also mentioned that the illness will vanish soon after its arrival. “Almost more baffling than the illness itself will be the fact that it will suddenly vanish as quickly as it arrives, attack again ten years later and then disappear completely.” Be it the nature of the illness, the year mentioned or the part about the resistance to treatments, the similarity with corona virus is uncanny. (source).
2. A Novel Predicts Wuhan Virus
According to an online conspiracy theory, the American author Dean Koontz predicted the corona virus outbreak in 1981. His novel The Eyes of Darkness made reference to a killer virus called “Wuhan-400”. In this novel Wuhan-400 is described as having a kill rat of 100%, developed in labs outside the city as the “perfect” biological weapon.
According to Reuters, the corona virus disease discovered in Wuhan, China in 2019 drew parallels to the novel’s ‘Wuhan-400’ bio-weapon. However, there were some identifiable differences between the real disease and the fiction bio-weapon. Koontz’s novel predicts the arrival of a fatal virus in 2020. Written in 1981, the writing in the novel is purely fictional and is mostly likely a coincidence.
3. The Film ‘Contagion’ in 2011 Predicts Corona Virus
There’s a moment early in the movie “Contagion” released on 2011, when health officials lay out what’s known about the film’s villain, a novel virus that is sweeping the globe and leaving dead bodies in its path. For many watching in 2020, the scene hits a little too close to home.
Nine years after its release, the world grapples with a very real disease corona virus, which has infected more than 850,000 people in dozens of countries. Some fans believe the film’s fictional destruction and high death toll are signs of what it is to come and suggest that officials are hiding information from the public. In the vacuum created by how little is known about this new virus, fear and misinformation have flourished. On the original “Contagion” poster, in red and all-caps above the title, is the film’s tag-line “Nothing spreads like fear.”
4. The future-teller Simpsons
There is no denying that the longest-running animated comedy series is the indisputable king of predicting major world events. The latest to come out of The Simpsons future predictions is that the show predicted the Corona virus outbreak. Let’s break it down.
Almost 16 years ago, in an episode titled ‘Bart to the Future’, it was shown that Donald Trump will become the president of the United States of America. This time a viral collection of images, apparently taken from the 1993 episode of Simpsons are going viral on social media. In the Simpsons, the viral flu is seen to be originating from Japan and not China as the workers ship the Osaka Flu to Springfield. Part of that chaos is a Japanese worker coughs into a box, and that box makes its way to Springfield where the cloud of germs infects many of the characters.
You might have seen this group of images circulating online. Various Online Outlets have deemed the claim of The Simpsons predicting the Corona-virus as false. Which would be correct as the illness in the episode was called the Osaka Flu. But if you want to believe it and chalk it up to the yellow Fox family, I’m not going to stop you.
5. 5G – Corona Virus Linkage
Conspiracy theorists are infecting YouTube and Facebook with bogus theories that 5G mobile internet is responsible for the corona virus. One prominent anti-5G Facebook group has shared a number of erroneous posts, claiming 5G is the culprit behind a virus that has infected more than 850,000 people worldwide. These Conspiracy Theory states that Wuhan Corona Virus pandemic Staged to Cover up the public health crisis caused by the intensive 5G roll out in Wuhan in 2019.
They states that, It has astutely observed that those nations with the most pervasive and powerful 5G networks fully functioning are those that have suffered the biggest outbreaks of the corona virus to date and the single best proof of the quite obvious 5G – Corona linkage are the various cruise ships that have seen an inexplicable mushrooming of corona virus cases. Many of the biggest cruise lines now advertise the fact that they have the latest 5G technologies in place. What really happened on the quarantined cruise ships is that those folks were likely quite vulnerable to the flu bag for a variety of reasons. Then, when they entered the fully operational 5G space on the ships, their immunity was profoundly weakened so that they would be susceptible any influenza strain, including the Wuhan virus.
6. The Government Introduced Corona Virus in 2015!
On January 21st, A YouTuber and Jordan Sather tweeted a link to a patent for corona virus filed by the U.K.-based Pirbright Institute in 2015. “Was the release of this disease planned?” Sather tweeted. Adding fuel to the fire, Sather followed up by linking the Pirbright Foundation to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, based on a 2019 press release announcing that the foundation would be helping to fund an unrelated project to study livestock disease and immunology. (Along with other so-called “elites,” Bill Gates is a frequent target of Conspiracy Theories).
According to a Pirbright spokesperson the 2015 corona virus patent was intended to facilitate the development of a vaccine for a specific type of avian corona virus found in chickens, which have not been implicated as a potential cause of corona virus. Anyway this theory quickly gained traction in many conspiracy theorist circles and anti-vaccine Facebook groups posting links to the patent suggesting that the government had introduced corona virus, presumably to make money off a potential vaccine.
7. Coronavirus as a Bioweapon
According to this Theory, Corona virus is a bio-weapon engineered by the Chinese government (or the CIA) to wage war on America (or China). Due to the recent history of strained diplomatic relations between the two countries, it makes sense that some would speculate that corona virus was covertly engineered in a lab as part of an extended campaign to weaken the opposing country.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R – Ark.) has publicly endorsed this last month, “We don’t know where it originated, and we have to get to the bottom of that,” Cotton said. “We also know that just a few miles away from that food market is China’s only bio-safety level 4 super laboratory that researches human infectious diseases.” (British tabloid the Daily Mail also published a story on the existence of this lab, heavily implying that it was responsible for the spread of the virus).
Unfortunately for conspiracy theory-mongers, there’s “absolutely nothing in the genome sequence of this virus that indicates the virus was engineered,” Richard Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University, told the Washington Post, adding that “the possibility this was a deliberately released bio-weapon can be firmly excluded.”
8. MMS – Cures Corona Virus
Supporters of the elaborate far-right conspiracy theory have been telling people to drink Miracle Mineral Solution(MMS), a bleach-based product that has been touted by anti-vaxxers for years, as an effective means of warding off corona virus. One popular conspiracy theorist, Jordan Sather, Tweets “‘NO KNOWN CURE FOR CORONA VIRUS’, they say. Well, it sure sounds like chlorine dioxide could wipe it out.” He directed his 116000 followers to a website called Keavy’s Corner, which posted a banner at the top of its sites telling customers, “We are experiencing high order volume that has us a few days behind on shipping.”
Another major proponent of MMS, Kerri Rivera, posted a story on her website under the headline: “Good News: Corona virus Destroyed By Chlorine Dioxide.” Rivera primarily advocates for the use of MMS in treating autism. She was effectively barred in 2015 from selling chlorine dioxide for the treatment of autism in Illinois. None of that is true. The U.S Food And Drug Administration and similar agencies in the U.K, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, have warned against the use of MMS.
9. Vaccines For Corona Virus
A viral Facebook post dated from January 22nd contains a screen grab of a patent filed by the CDC for what is purported to be a corona virus vaccine, suggesting that the virus was introduced by the government for pharmaceutical companies to profit off the vaccine. While this makes no sense on even the most superficial level (novel corona virus is, by definition, brand-new, so it would be impossible for there to already be a vaccine for it), this patent actually applies to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome(SARS), another type of corona virus that also originated in China and killed hundreds of people in 2002 and 2003.
Although there have been reports of companies receives funding to developing a vaccine for Corona Virus, currently “there are no vaccines available for any corona viruses let alone the (Wuhan) one,” Says Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security
10. Corona is a Common Cold
This one was espoused by none other than Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Rush Limbaugh on his radio show. “It looks like the corona virus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump,” Limbaugh said on February 24. “Now, I want to tell you the truth about the corona virus … I’m dead right on this. The corona virus is the common cold, folks.” He went on to claim that the media was drumming up panic about Corona Virus purely to undermine the Trump administration., “They are trying to use this corona virus to scare the hell out of everybody in their madcap hopes of finding something that will get rid of Donald Trump. It’s exactly like the panic and fear mongering you heard for two years over Russia meddling in and stealing the election.”
Corona Virus is not the common cold, for numerous reasons: aside from having completely different symptoms (fever, cough, etc.), it also has a mortality rate of about 2 percent, which the common cold does not. The reason why Limbaugh may have made that claim, however, it is a type of corona virus, an umbrella term used to describe a group of viruses including the common cold. This is a very basic fact about the corona virus. But we are, after all, talking about Rush Limbaugh here.
