While coronavirus infects celebrities and ordinary people, entire countries are being quarantined, and Russians have begun to slowly stock up on food, as theories about how Covid-19 originated and who benefits from it multiply like mushrooms.
We present to you the top 10 conspiracy theories related to the coronavirus.
10. Bill Gates did it
If you don't understand how Bill Gates fits into the coronavirus story, let's go back to October 2019. It was this month that Bill and Melinda Gates, in conjunction with the World Economic Forum and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, hosted the Event 201 pandemic exercise, simulating a massive coronavirus outbreak.
Ironically, the Covid-19 virus emerged two months after this test. Conspiracy theorists believe the program was just a prelude to an upcoming epidemic that the three organizations jointly planned.
9. Chinese-eaten bats are to blame
According to the most common theory about the emergence of the coronavirus, it all started with a seafood market in China's Wuhan. There you can buy not only seafood, but also live and dead animals, including bats - probable carriers of Covid-19.
Therefore, information appeared on social media that the propensity of some Chinese to eat bats was to blame for the spread of the disease. This assumption was supported by a number of viral videos, which showed people, ostensibly with an appetite for devouring bats or soup from them.
However, there is no evidence that eating bats was the source of the coronavirus outbreak. And one of the studies even links the Wuhan coronavirus with snakes.
8.5G internet did it
Wuhan is one of the first Chinese cities to introduce 5G mobile internet. And he also became the first city from which the spread of the coronavirus began. "Coincidence? I don't think so! ”Dana Ashley, one of the conspiracy theorists, tells us.
In her opinion, the Covid-19 virus was triggered by the waves emitted by 5G towers. Ashley based her opinion on a study conducted in 2000, which revealed that the 5G network poses a danger to human health. Ashley says the so-called coronavirus is actually radiation poisoning that weakens the immune system and makes people more vulnerable to disease.
7. Pharmaceutical companies created SARS-CoV-2
Although Runet is already full of jokes about the fact that manufacturers of toilet paper and buckwheat are negotiating the purchase of Apple and Yandex, the coronavirus epidemic has become a fertile time not only for them, but also for pharmaceutical companies.
They are the obvious beneficiaries, which means they are in the spotlight of conspiracy theorists. One of these theories says that all the hype associated with the coronavirus is deliberately stirring up panic, and its main PR customers are major players in the global pharmaceutical market.
In 2009, the world has already seen something similar, then hysteria was associated with the spread of swine flu. At the time, Roche ran a massive advertising campaign for Tamiflu, which earned nearly $ 1 billion.
This year, the manufacturer of "Arbidol" has already declared its drug effective against coronavirus. How much will he make from this - who knows?
6. The Canadian government is involved
Although this theory is less popular than the version about the creation of the coronavirus in China or the United States, it has a place to be. So, we must tell you about it. The Covid-19 virus is believed to have been created at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Canada. In this institution, as in the Chinese laboratory in Wuhan, deadly viruses are studied.
Some conspiracy theorists believe that Chinese spies stole the virus and sent it to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where it eventually sparked an epidemic.
5. The Chinese made 2019-nCov
One of the most popular coronavirus-related conspiracy theories states that Covid-19 was created as a biological weapon and commissioned by the Chinese government.
However, the virus then "leaked" from the research laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology due to a breach of the security protocol.
According to another version of this rumor, the virus was studied in a laboratory (after it was detected in animals), but the ending of this story completely coincides with the first version.
Some experts only laugh at the theory that the coronavirus is a biological weapon. Such a weapon does not make sense, because Covid-19 does not always cause death or serious 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. By comparison, the global Covid-19 death rate is around 3 percent.
4. Americans created Covid-19
One of the insane theories surrounding the origin of the coronavirus is that it was created at the behest of the United States government to wipe out the Chinese economy. And it was distributed by the American military, who arrived in China in October 2019.
I must say that all economies of the world, including the Russian one, suffer from Covid-19. In it 5 industries are hardest hit by coronavirus.
Others link the Covid-19 epidemic to the fact that thousands of Americans developed lung disease last year. Electronic cigarettes were blamed for this. Conspiracy theorists think this outbreak of lung disease was just a cover for the new coronavirus.
3. The Simpsons predicted the coronavirus
Enterprising "conspiracy bloodhounds" often dig very deeply and find warnings and hints about current events in various written sources, in films and even animated series such as The Simpsons.
Since The Simpsons is one of the longest-running animated series that has remained popular for over 30 years, it is simply a treasure trove of different topics for conspiracy theorists.
Case in point: Episode 21 of Season 4 (filmed in 1993) focuses on an outbreak of a mysterious disease called Osaka Flu. Osaka is in Japan, not China, but the great series is forgivable for minor mistakes, right?
https://youtu.be/Gu4Ir4EoiwY
2. Dean Koontz predicted the coronavirus
The coronavirus was "discovered" in the 1981 novel Eyes of Darkness by science fiction writer Dean Koontz. He talks about the global epidemic caused by the Wuhan 400 virus, created in a Chinese military laboratory.
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 was scattered across the Web was taken from the collection of prophecies of Sylvia Brown - a self-proclaimed medium and psychic. She actually predicted that in 2020 there will be an outbreak of the disease, not only 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 a publication published by the Berkley publishing house. The Americans have known for a long time that a laboratory studying viruses is located in Wuhan, but the USSR is no longer there, apparently because of this the virus in the book changed its registration and "name".
1. Coronavirus flew from space
On the night of October 10-11, 2019, the sky over northeastern China was lit up with a bright flash from an exploding meteorite.
Conspiracy theorists did not ignore this incident, and believe that the coronavirus came to Earth from outside, from space. Moreover, this was stated not by some anonymous British scientist, but by Professor Chandra Wickramasingh from the Buckingham Center for Astrobiology.
However, other scientists believe that this is unlikely, since the meteorite did not fall to the ground, and even if it did, the virus would not survive the extreme landing temperature. Meteors that do not burn up in the atmosphere can heat up to 650 ° C by the time they touch the ground. This is more than enough to kill the coronavirus, which cannot stand temperatures above 40 degrees.
But what about the blood of babies ?! Where is this theory? :)))