As the COVID-19 crisis changed the course of the world, we couldn’t help but still wonder what happened back then. Up to this day, we are still unsure if any of those conspiracy theories that we once heard were true, and if they were, which ones were worth taking into consideration.
One thing we know for sure is that we also dealt with a huge misinformation pandemic. Conspiracy theories that still behave such as viruses themselves spread almost as fast as Covid-19 did.
In retrospect, some of them were really out of touch, but it’s still worth looking back and trying to figure out which ones were closer to the truth we now know.
Blaming 5G
This conspiracy theory should be quite easy to debunk. It is biologically impossible for viruses to actually spread using the electromagnetic spectrum.
The latter would imply photons and waves, while the former are known as biological particles made of proteins and nucleic acids. That’s not the point, really, since conspiracy theories are quite enticing.
The thing with them is that they often link two things which, at first, could seem correlated. In this particular situation, the rapid rollout of 5G networks took place at the same time the pandemic hit.
It’s also worth repeating something that the World Health Organization (WHO) repeatedly pointed out: viruses cannot travel on mobile networks.
Moreover, COVID-19 spread extremely fast in countries that didn’t have any 5G networks. However, this particular conspiracy theory led to cellphone towers being set on fire in the United Kingdom and other places, too.
Bill Gates as scapegoat
The wide majority of conspiracy theories, such as viruses they resemble, mutate and transform into several variants that circulate at once. Many of these plots and subplots involved, for some reason, Bill Gates, who became this new target of disinformation after gently criticizing the defunding of the World Health Organization.
According to the New York Times, anti-vaxxers, members of QAnon and right-wing pundits seized on a video of a 2015 Ted talk given by Gates.
There, he discussed the Ebola outbreak and warned of a new pandemic, just to bolster all those claims that he had foreknowledge of the COVID pandemic or might have purposely caused it.
Another, more recent variant of this conspiracy theory, especially preferred by anti-vaccination activists, revolves around the idea that COVID is part of a dastardly Gates-led plot meant to vaccinate the world’s population.
There is some validity in this since vaccinating much of the world’s population might be the only way to efficiently avoid an eventual death toll in the tens of millions.
However, anti-vaxxers still don’t think that vaccines work. Instead, some said that Gates wanted to use a vaccination program to implant digital microchips that would somehow track and control people.
The overall spread of misinformation meant that ID2020, a small non-profit that is fully focused on establishing digital IDs for poorer people all over the world, has had to call in the FBI.
The virus escaped from a Chinese lab
It’s worth mentioning that this one at least has the benefit of being slightly plausible. It is, in fact, true that the original epicenter of the epidemic, the Chinese city of Wuhan, hosts a virology institute where researchers have been studying for quite some time bat coronaviruses.
One of the researchers, known as Shi Zhengli, is a prominent virologist who spent many years collecting bat dung samples in caves. He was also a lead expert on the earlier SARS outbreak.
Moreover, he was quite concerned about the prospect of spending days frantically checking lab records to see if anything had gone wrong. She also admitted to feeling “relief” when genetic sequencing proved that the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus didn’t match any of the viruses sampled and studied in the Wuhan Institute of Virology by her team.
COVID was made as a biological weapon
A spicier conspiracy theory implies that COVID-19 escaped from a lab. Moreover, it implies that it was intentionally made by Chinese scientists as a biowarfare weapon.
According to Pew Research, “almost three-in-10 Americans think that COVID-19 was made in a lab.” Whether it was intentional or accidental (but the former is more popular, since 23% think it was made intentionally, with only 6% believing it was an accident), this theory is pretty wild.
But as far as the US political right is concerned, the theory is extremely valid. It gained mainstream coverage because of US Senator Tom Cotton, who deeply amplified theories first aired in the Washington Examiner (a highly conservative media outlet) that the Wuhan Institute of Virology is somehow “linked to Beijing’s covert bio-weapons program).
The US military imported COVID from China
The Chinese government responded to the anti-China theories with a conspiracy theory of its own that tries to turn the blame back around on the United States.
This idea was initially shared by Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, who tweeted “It is possible that the US military brought the virus to Wuhan.”
These comments, as the Voice of America explained, “There was a widely circulated rumor in China that the US military personnel brought the virus to China during their participation in the 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan last October.” For China, as the Atlantic explained, this conspiracy theory, and an accompanying attempt to reframe COVID as a “USA virus.”
GMOs are somehow to blame
Genetically modified crops have been quite a target of conspiracy theories for many years, so it was a shock to see GMOs blamed in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In early March, Italian attorney Francesco Billota penned the most bizarre article for Il Manifesto, making false statements that GM crops are to blame for genetic pollution, which further allows viruses to proliferate because of a continuous environmental “imbalance.”
Anti-GMO activists have continuously tried to blame modern agriculture, which is quite strange, especially since the known path of the virus into the human population was through the ancient practice of capturing and killing wildlife.
COVID-19 doesn’t exist
According to professional conspiracy theorists such as David Icke and InfoWars’ Alex Jones, COVID-19 doesn’t really exist, and it’s nothing but a plot meant to take away our freedoms.
Early, much weaker versions of the same theory were quite prevalent on the political right in the notion that the novel coronavirus would be “just like a flu” and later versions turned out to influence anti-lockdown protests across many states in the United States.
The pandemic is being manipulated by the “deep state.”
Some thought there was a “deep state” made by America’s elites plotting to undermine the president. Moreover, they thought that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the US coronavirus pandemic response, was a secret member.
Fauci’s expression of disbelief when the deep state was mentioned during one of his press conferences gave the game away.
COVID is a plot by Big Pharma
There are plenty of conspiracy theory promoters who are, in fact, clever actors in their pursue to sell quack products. Alex Jones, for instance, between rants about hoaxes and the New Work Order, urges his viewers to buy expensive miracle pills, claiming they can cure all known diseases.
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