Dark and Conspiracy sides of Coronavirus(COVID-19) Pandemic

Many Dark and Conspiracy sides of the Coronavirus(COVID-19) pandemic emerged soon after the outbreak, recorded in Wuhan, China, and has spread as quickly as the dangerous disease, causing people to destroy cellular towers and risk infection by joining protests. Some people have claimed the virus is a bioweapon that has been accidentally or purposefully leaked from the Wuhan laboratory, some said this is a population-control project, some said it’s a result of a spy operation or the side effect of 5G upgrades to cellular networks. However, the World Health Organization has declared an “infodemic” of incorrect information about the virus, which poses risks to global health.

Below we have discussed most of the similar conspiracy theories related to coronaviruses.

(Before reading this article, please read the main article on Coronavirus: Story of Coronavirus from its origin to the pandemic.)

Dark sides of Coronavirus

Chinese Biological Espionage

When the coronavirus was spreading rapidly, two Chinese scientists in Canada were arrested for spying and were removed from their access to Canada’s Winnipeg-based National Microbiology Lab (NML) which is known to work on some of the most deadly pathogens.

Some reports claimed that the coronavirus was stolen from the Winnipeg-based virus research lab by Chinese scientists. But the Public Health Agency of Canada said that this conspiracy theory had “no factual basis”. These theories were coined from a July 2019 news article stating that some Chinese researchers(spy) had their security access to a Canadian Level 4 virology department, they were dismissed in a federal police investigation. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) described this as an administrative matter and “there is surely no risk to the Canadian people.”

The CBC later stated that “CBC never claimed that the two scientists were spies, or that they took any version of the coronavirus to the lab in Wuhan, yes pathogen samples were transported from the lab in Winnipeg, Canada to Beijing, China, on 31 March 2019, but neither of the samples was a coronavirus“.

The Public Health Agency of Canada said, “the shipment conformed to all federal policies, and there has not been any statement that the researchers under investigation were responsible for sending the shipment”. However, the current location of the Chinese researchers is not being released yet, as they are under investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Dr. Dany Shoham

“Dr. Dany Shoham is a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, is recognized as a top Israeli expert on chemical and biological warfare in the Middle East. He is a former senior intelligence analyst in the Israel Defense Forces and the Israeli Ministry of Defense.”

During this coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Dany Shoham identified suspicions of spying as the reason behind the suspensions from the lab but did not refer that coronavirus was taken from the Winnipeg lab or that it is the result of bioweapons defense research in China.

Dr. Francis Boyle

Dr. Francis Boyle, the creator of the Bio-Weapons Act, claimed that the coronavirus is an offensive biological warfare weapon with DNA-genetic engineering. His alleged policy breach highlighted the bioweapon program of other countries including China.

Accidental leakage inside Wuhan Institute of Virology

Many claims have appeared guessing a link between the virus and Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), among these is that the virus was an accidental leakage from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

An article by Richard H. Ebright who wrote about the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2017 and noted that the SARS virus had accidentally leaked from high-level containment facilities in Beijing before, but editors informed that unverified theories, unsupported by scientists, were being promoted to suggest that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the source of COVID-19.

The first theory appeared in February 2020, when it was claimed that the first infected person may have been a researcher at the institute, named Huang Yanling. Rumors circulating on Chinese social media stating that the researcher was infected and later died, Later Wuhan Institute of Virology denied these rumors by a statement that, “she was a graduate student enrolled in the Institute until 2015. and is still healthy and not the initial patient”. In April, this theory started to circulate on YouTube and was picked up by conservative media, National Review.

General Mark Milley

On 14 April, the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, said “it’s inconclusive, although the weight of evidence seems to indicate natural, we don’t know for certain.”

Push the lab leakage theory

Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin detailed a leaked cable of a 2018 trip made to the Wuhan Institute of Virology by scientists from the US Embassy. The article was referenced and picked up by conservative media to push the lab leakage theory. Rogin’s article wants to say that “What the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much that they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington.”

The cables notified about safety and management weaknesses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab and proposed more attention and help. The first cable, also warns that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic. Rogin’s article showed out there was no evidence that the coronavirus was engineered, But that is not the same as saying it didn’t come from the lab, which spent years testing bat coronaviruses in animals.

The article went to Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, He said, “I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory. I think it’s a legitimate question that needs to be investigated and answered. To understand exactly how this originated is critical knowledge for preventing this from happening in the future.” The Washington Post’s article and subsequent broadcasts drew criticism from virologist Angela Rasmussen of Columbia University, she said, “It’s irresponsible for political reporters like Rogin to uncritically regurgitate a secret ‘cable’ without asking a single virologist or ecologist or making any attempt to understand the scientific context.”

Rasmussen later compared the biosafety method to, “having the health inspector come to your restaurant. It could just be, ‘Oh, you need to keep your chemical showers better stocked.’ It doesn’t suggest, however, that there are tremendous problems.”

Jonna Mazet, Professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Davis, and director of the PREDICT project to monitor emerging viruses has commented that staff at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were trained at US labs and follow high safety standards, and that “All of the evidence points to this not being a laboratory accident.”

US intelligence officials

Days later, multiple media news and articles confirmed that US intelligence officials were investigating the possibility that the virus started in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

On 30 April, The New York Times published that the Trump administration demanded that intelligence agencies find evidence linking the Wuhan Institute of Virology with the origin of SARS-Cov-2. Secretary of State and former Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A) director Mike Pompeo was reportedly leading the push on finding information regarding the virus origin. Analysts were concerned that pressure from senior officials could distort assessments from the intelligence community.

Anthony Ruggiero, the head of the National Security Council which was responsible for tracking weapons of mass destruction, expressed frustration during a video conference that the C.I.A. was unable to reach a definite explanation of the virus’s origin. According to current and former government officials, as of 30 April 2020, the C.I.A has yet to find any information other than circumstantial to reinforce the lab theory.

US intelligence officers advised that Chinese officials tried to cover the severity of the outbreak in the early days, but no evidence has shown China attempted to cover up a lab accident.

One day later, Trump claimed to possess evidence of the lab theory but offered no further details. Jamie Metzl, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, claimed the SARS-CoV-2 virus “likely” came from a Wuhan virology testing laboratory, based on “circumstantial evidence”. He was quoted as saying, “I have no definitive way of proving this thesis.”

On 30 April 2020, the US intelligence and scientific communities issued a public statement dismissing the idea that the virus was not natural, while the investigation of the lab accident theories was ongoing. The White House advised an alternative explanation, along with an apparently conflicting message, that the virus was man-made. In an interview with ABC News, Secretary of State Pompeo said he has no reason to disbelieve the intelligence community that the virus was natural. However, this opposed the comment he made earlier in the same interview, in which he said “the best experts so far seem to think it was man-made. I have no reason to disbelieve that at this point.”

Five Eyes, an intelligence alliance

On 4 May, the Australian tabloid The Daily Telegraph claimed that a reportedly leaked dossier from Five Eyes, an intelligence alliance, alleged the probable outbreak was from the Wuhan lab. Fox News, and national security commentators in the US, quickly followed up The Telegraph story, raising tensions within the international intelligence community. The Australian government, which is part of the Five Eyes alliance, determined the leaked dossier was not a Five Eyes document, but a compilation of open-source materials that contained no information generated by intelligence gathering.

The leaked dossier claim was denied by the German intelligence community, instead of supporting the probability of a natural cause. The Australian government sees the promotion of the lab theory from the United States as counterproductive to Australia’s push for a more broad international-supported independent inquiry into the virus origins. Senior officials in the Australian government speculated the dossier was leaked by the United States embassy in Canberra to promote a narrative in Australian media that diverged from the mainstream belief of Australia.

Beijing rejected the White House’s claim, calling the claim “part of an election year strategy by President Donald Trump’s Republican Party”. Hua Chunying, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, urged Mike Pompeo to present evidence for his claim. “Mr. Pompeo cannot present any evidence because he does not have any,” Hua told a journalist during a regular briefing, “This matter should be handled by scientists and professionals instead of politicians out of their domestic political needs.” The Chinese ambassador, in an opinion published in the Washington Post, called on the White House to end the “blame game” over the coronavirus.

As of 5 May, assessments and internal sources from the Five Eyes nations indicated that the coronavirus outbreak being the result of a laboratory accident was “highly unlikely”, since the human infection was “highly likely” a result of natural human and animal interaction. However, to conclude with total certainty would still require greater cooperation and transparency from the Chinese side.

China’s report

On 16 May 2020, China reported that its current official position on the source of the COVID-19 virus may be summarized as follows: “The conspiracy theory about the origin of the new coronavirus has no substantive content. In fact, there is evidence to support the natural emergence of new coronaviruses, and preliminary genotyping studies have shown the relationship between the coronavirus and other bat viruses. We must be careful not to blame the rumors irresponsibly and use the global crisis to grab political scores”. As of 18 May 2020, an official UN investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 virus, supported by over 120 countries, was being considered.

Conspiracy sides of Coronavirus

Bioengineered virus

In 2015, a study was published in Nature Medicine by an international group of researchers including Shi Zhengli who in 2019 identified SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, (article title “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence”). In 2019, this article arose speculations that SARS-CoV-2 is a variant of such a human-engineered virus.

This conspiracy theory was later argued by Nature Medicine in an article published in 2020, that Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus. “The high-affinity merging of its peplomers to human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) was revealed to be “most likely the result of natural selection on a human or human-like ACE2 that allows another optimal merging solution to arise”.

In the case of genetic manipulation, one of the several reverse-genetic systems for beta coronaviruses would probably have been used, while the genetic data irrefutably showed that the virus is not derived from a previously used virus template. The overall molecular structure of the virus was found to be distinct from the known coronaviruses and most closely resembles that of viruses of bats and pangolins that were little studied and never known to harm humans.”

In February 2020, the Financial Times quoted virus expert and global co-lead coronavirus investigator Trevor Bedford: “There is no evidence whatsoever of genetic engineering that we can find”, and “The evidence we have is that the mutations (in the virus) are completely consistent with natural evolution”.

Bedford further explained, “The most likely scenario, based on genetic analysis, was that the virus was transmitted by a bat to another mammal between 20–70 years ago. This intermediary animal—not yet identified—passed it on to its first human host in the city of Wuhan in late November or early December 2019”. On 19 February 2020, The Lancet published a letter of a group of scientists condemning “conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin”.

But still, conspiracy theories have seemed both in social media and in mainstream news outlets, and are heavily inspired by geopolitics.

Chinese biological weapon

In January 2020, BBC News published an article about coronavirus misinformation, citing two 24 January articles in The Washington Times, and said that the virus was part of a Chinese biological weapons program, based at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The Washington Post later published an article debunking the theory, citing US experts who explained why the WIV was unsuitable for military use, that most countries had abandoned bioweapon programs as failures, and that there was no evidence the virus was genetically engineered.

On 6 February, the White House asked scientists and medical researchers to rapidly investigate the origins of the virus both to address the current spread and “to inform future outbreak preparation and better understand animal/human and environmental transmission aspects of coronaviruses”. American magazine Foreign Policy said Xi Jinping’s “political agenda may turn out to be a root cause of the epidemic” and that his Belt and Road Initiative has “made it possible for a local disease to become a global menace”.

The Inverse reported that “Christopher Bouzy, the founder of Bot Sentinel, conducted a Twitter analysis for Inverse and found online bots and troll bots are making an array of false claims. These bots are claiming China intentionally created the virus, that it’s a biological weapon, that Democrats are overstating the threat to hurt Donald Trump and more. While we can’t confirm the origin of these bots, they are decidedly pro-Trump.”

United States biological weapon

According to London-based The Economist newspaper, a lot of conspiracy theories exist on China’s internet about COVID-19 being the CIA’s creation to keep China down.

According to an investigation by ProPublica, such conspiracy theories and disinformation have been propagated under the direction of China News Service, the country’s second-largest government-owned media controlled by the United Front Work Department.

Global Times and Xinhua News Agency similarly propagated disinformation related to COVID-19’s origins. NBC News however has noted that there have also been debunking efforts of US-related conspiracy theories posted online, with a WeChat search of “Coronavirus is from the U.S.” reported to mostly yield articles explaining why such claims are illogical.

Russia is behind an ongoing disinformation

On 22 February, US officials alleged that Russia is behind an ongoing disinformation campaign, using thousands of social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to deliberately promote unfounded conspiracy theories, claiming the virus is a biological weapon manufactured by the CIA and the US is waging economic war on China using the virus.

Middle East Media Research Institute

According to Washington DC-based nonprofit Middle East Media Research Institute, numerous writers in the Arabic press have promoted the conspiracy theory that COVID-19, as well as SARS and the swine flu virus, were deliberately created and spread to sell vaccines against these diseases, and it is “part of an economic and psychological war waged by the U.S. against China to weaken it and present it as a backward country and a source of diseases”.

Imam of the religious city of Qom

Imam of the religious city of Qom also claimed that U.S. President Donald Trump targeted the Iran city with coronavirus to damage its culture and honor. later Reza Malekzadeh, Iran’s deputy health minister and former Minister of Health, rejected claims that the virus was a biological weapon, pointing out that the US would be suffering heavily from it. He said Iran was hard-hit because its close ties to China and reluctance to cut air ties introduced the virus, and because early cases had been mistaken for influenza. The theory has also circulated in the Philippines and Venezuela.

Side effect of 5G network

On social media, several groups claimed that the Wuhan and Diamond Princess outbreaks were directly caused by electromagnetic fields and by the introduction of 5G and wireless technologies and alleged a link between coronavirus and 5G mobile networks. Some conspiracy theorists also alleged that the coronavirus outbreak was a cover-up for a 5G-related illness.

A holistic medical practitioner, Thomas Cowan, who trained as a physician and operates on probation with the Medical Board of California, alleged that coronavirus is caused by 5G, based on the claims that African countries were not affected significantly by the pandemic and Africa was not a 5G region.

Cowan also falsely alleged that the viruses were waste from cells that have been poisoned by electromagnetic fields and that historical viral pandemics coincided with major developments in radio technology. The video of his claims went viral and was recirculated by celebrities, including Woody Harrelson, John Cusack, and singer Keri Hilson.

The claims may also have been recirculated by an alleged “coordinated disinformation campaign”, similar to campaigns used by the Internet Research Agency in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The claims were criticized on social media and debunked by Reuters, USA Today, Full Fact, and American Public Health Association executive director Georges C. Benjamin.

After arson attacks on telecommunications masts in several parts of the United Kingdom, British Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove said, “the theory that COVID-19 virus may be spread by 5G wireless communication is just nonsense, dangerous nonsense as well”.

Establishment of New World Order

Governments around the world are declaring lockdowns, advising people to stay at home and follow social distancing to contain the spread of Covid-19, but some people are already disturbed that the strict rules will become the new normal. According to some conspiracy theorists, the pandemic is already being exploited by governments to capture more control over society, rolling back hard-won freedoms in the name of virus containment.

It was already estimated that 65 million people would die.

Two months before the outbreak of the coronavirus in the Chinese city of Wuhan, a group of experts conducted the pandemic simulation “Event 201”, which was organized by John Hopkins University in the US and came to alarming results. The aim was to test how governments and authorities would behave in the event of a global pandemic with “potentially catastrophic consequences” and what effects it could have. The virus used to do this was called CAPS: Coronavirus Associated Pulmonary Syndrome. It was estimated that 65 million people would die. Read the full report here: 65 million deaths from corona pandemic simulation two months before the outbreak. (this article is available in the German language you can read it using google translate.)

Jews had manufactured COVID-19

Iran’s Press TV said that “Zionist elements developed a deadlier strain of coronavirus against Iran”. Likewise, several Arab media accused Israel and the United States of creating and spreading COVID-19, avian flu, and SARS.

On social media people proposed many types of theories, including the allegation that Jews had manufactured COVID-19 to accelerate a global stock market collapse so that they can earn profit via insider trading, while a guest on Turkish television said, “a more difficult scenario in which Jews and Zionists had created COVID-19, avian flu, and Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever to design the world, seize countries, and neuter the world’s population”. Some blamed that Israeli tries to develop a COVID-19 vaccine for mass sterilization”.

Population-control Project

According to BBC News, Jordan Sather, a conspiracy theory YouTuber, has falsely claimed the outbreak was a population-control scheme organized by Pirbright Institute in England and by former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. This belief is held mostly by right-wing libertarians, NWO conspiracy theorists, and Christian Fundamentalists.

Apart from this, many other conspiracy theorists claim on social media that this pandemic is a global Population-control Project, however, as always they have no factual proof and data that can support their claims.

Conspiracy theorists also claimed that the billionaire Bill Gates is using COVID-19 to install human trackers, they said, Bill Gates planned the pandemic for his own gain. People who believe in this theory think that when we eventually have a vaccine to prevent COVID-19, Gates will use the opportunity to inject trackers into everyone’s bodies.

These theories come up as Gates gave a speech in 2015 warning that a deadly virus is more likely to kill millions than another global war. But there is no evidence available on these claims.

Conclusion

Note that: “A coronavirus is a group of viruses that cause diseases in mammals and birds. In humans, coronaviruses cause respiratory tract infections, some of which can be fatal, such as SARS, MERS, and recent COVID-19. Symptoms vary among species: in chickens, they cause an upper respiratory tract disease, whereas in cows and pigs they cause diarrhea.”

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic mentioned above has not yet yielded any concrete evidence of all the talk of the dark and conspiracy, but we still cannot reach any definite conclusion, because much of the evidence remains Lack of. It seems from the talk of all the other politicians that they are simply blaming each other, and they do not have any concrete evidence to prove their allegations true.

According to a report published in Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, the largest category of misinformation (39%) was “misleading or false claims about the actions or policies of public authorities, including government and international bodies like the WHO or the UN”.

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