Blaming 5G
Easily debunked: Viruses do not spread using the electromagnetic spectrum. But this hasn’t stopped 5G towers from being vandalised in the UK.
Bill Gates done it
An “abstract bogeyman” for the Far Right as well as the Extreme Left, he has no reason to want a global pandemic—not even a connection with big pharma.
Chinese lab
It’s plausible, but not probable. The serendipity of China’s leading institute studying bat coronaviruses being located in the same city as the COVID-19’s origin is a dog-bone for conspiracists.
US military plot
Tired of right-wing conspiracy theories targeting it, the Chinese government let loose Zhao Lijian, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson. He let off a tweetstorm accusing the US of using its military attendees at the 2019 Military World Games to spread the virus to the Huanan seafood wetmarket, where the source of the outbreak was eventually traced. This conspiracy theory, in turn, set off Trump’s by-now-infamous takedown during a White House presser of the “Chinese virus”, and his series of anti-China trade threats that has now culminated in a bilateral faceoff between the world’s two leading economies.
Bioweapon
In a survey in April 2020, the Pew Research Center reported that “nearly three-in-ten [Americans] (29%) say it most likely was created in a lab”. Some 23 per cent of adult Americans believe the neocoronavirus was intentionally developed in a lab, while another 6 per cent say it was accidentally invented.
GMOs
In an article published in early March 2020 in the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto, an attorney named Francesco Bilotta blamed GM crops, claimed falsely that GM crops cause genetic contamination, allowing viral proliferation and interspecies transmission. Researchers debunked the claim as “scientific absurdity”. Indeed, it’s almost inescapable that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) will play a big role in the COVID-19 vaccine solution.
Covid doesn’t exist
Überconspiracists like David Icke and Alex Jones of InfoWars are peddling the idea that COVID-19 is no worse than the common flu and is an enchaining ploy by the globalist elite. It has gained traction in India, among liberals, the Left and the Right, because of the country’s notable deathcount deficit.
Deep State ploy
A global Deep State would make for a borderless Illuminati with a remarkable confluence of intent and purpose, which is why this idea might sound extreme. In the US’s case, the Deep State is exemplified not by Donald Trump, a practising capitalist himself, but by Dr Anthony Fauci, the (mildly rebellious) face of Trump’s neocoronavirus response. The Far Right believes Fauci is working with Hillary Clinton to discredit Trump by causing an economic collapse. For the Euroright, it’s German chancellor Angela Merkel. India’s Deep State, the radical Left believes, exists as a part-and-parcel of the incumbent government.
Big pharma plot
A few major pharmaceutical manufacturers will make millions from the vaccine, but most pharma companies currently engaged in vaccine research will bite the dust. The anti-pharma narrative has been written by anti-vaxxers (for the uninitiated: those against vaccination, a goodly number)—and they have notable support from Greeners, Right Libertarians, and the Far Right that is militantly leading anti-lockdown protests in the US.
Alien organism
British-Sri Lankan astrobiologist Chandra Wickramasinghe believes COVID-19 arrived in a meteor-fall in northeast China on October 14, 2019. The theory caught on in the global community of UFOlogists, already primed by the appearance of the strange, cigar-shaped extrasolar object, the ‘Oumuamua’, in October 2017. Wickramasinghe also insists that SARS originated in space. Since 1979, ever since he co-wrote the book Diseases from Space with Fred Hoyle, he has been trying to establish that the flu and the common cold have extraterrestrial origins.
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