Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

[Dieter]

I wouldn't trust Russia numbers.

But I also can easily believe they responded better to it than the US did.

[WiseOne]

I wouldn't trust Russia numbers.

But I also can easily believe they responded better to it than the US did.

So what did they do in the way of "responding better"?

I'm inclined to believe that plenty of politicians are taking advantage of the situation to promote themselves or pursue their favorite soapboxes - see for example all the ridiculous unrelated pet projects stuffed into the stimulus bill, like the LGBTQ and whatever other initials reporting requirement. Or, Bill de Blasio achieving his wet dream of releasing most of the prison population, which is already resulting in (yet another) big uptick in crime. I think it's disgusting, but it's not a conspiracy in the sense that there isn't an organized effort involved. Just a lot of extremely self-serving individuals. Which, come to think of it, is practically a prerequisite for a political career.

[Kriegsspiel]

Conspiracy Submission #398

If the new evidence is correct that people who've previously had the virus are being re-infected, I'd like to submit the theory that this is an engineered virus meant to cull the old and weak. Forever. The creator was a fan of Orson Scott Card, in particular the Bean storyline (Ender's Game). Likely has ties to the group in China that was working on genetic engineering super-smart babies. Has a penchant for going sockless.

[Mountaineer]

I wouldn't trust Russia numbers.

But I also can easily believe they responded better to it than the US did.

So what did they do in the way of "responding better"?

I'm inclined to believe that plenty of politicians are taking advantage of the situation to promote themselves or pursue their favorite soapboxes - see for example all the ridiculous unrelated pet projects stuffed into the stimulus bill, like the LGBTQ and whatever other initials reporting requirement. Or, Bill de Blasio achieving his wet dream of releasing most of the prison population, which is already resulting in (yet another) big uptick in crime. I think it's disgusting, but it's not a conspiracy in the sense that there isn't an organized effort involved. Just a lot of extremely self-serving individuals. Which, come to think of it, is practically a prerequisite for a political career.

Well said.

[Dieter]

I said I wouldn't be surprised. No idea what they did or didn't do.

[boglerdude]

Deep State/Fourth Estate grabbed Trumpy by the p**

He cant call it overhyped, and has to concede everything to end the recession before election. Whats happening with his tariffs?

Best part is, his supporters (more inclined to be paranoid) prefer the narrative that this cold virus will end the world

[CT-Scott]

Conspiracy Submission #398

If the new evidence is correct that people who've previously had the virus are being re-infected, I'd like to submit the theory that this is an engineered virus meant to cull the old and weak. Forever.

Along these lines, I believe a popular conspiracy theory several years back was that Bill & Melinda Gates were part of a group of elites who wanted to kill off a large swath of the global population. I never read up much on it, but a quick Google search turns up this (FWIW, I'm actually not a big fan of Snopes):
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bill- ... opulation/

In that particular article, it ties in "vaccines" as the supposed method for killing off people. I never really went down the rabbit-hole of reading much on this conspiracy theory when I first heard it a few years back, so I'm not sure if the believers of the conspiracy theory necessarily believed that vaccines were tied to it.

If the theory is true, it would be especially twisted, given that a lot of people have recently been citing Bill Gates for warning about a potential global pandemic, and talking about how smart he was/is for predicting it. Well, of course he was able to predict it if he's one of the people actually behind it.

Turning back around to the older population angle on the current situation...it is rather "fortunate" for the government that Social Security, which many in government have been warning about the insolvency of, could become a lot more solvent if a lot of older people get killed off from this virus.

[CT-Scott]

I think I mentioned somewhere before, that I do sometimes find conspiracy theories interesting to read about and ponder over, and I have a natural tendency toward believing the opposite of whatever someone in the government tells me. I have no particular belief one way or the other about this current situation, in regards to whether it could be man-made, or simply a case where people in the government are going to "take advantage" of the situation to further increase the size of the government, reduce personal liberties, and coordinate some wealth transfer.

All I can do is read the tea leaves as best I can, and do whatever I can (within my power) to protect the health and wealth of myself, my family, and my friends.

[vnatale]

I think I mentioned somewhere before, that I do sometimes find conspiracy theories interesting to read about and ponder over, and I have a natural tendency toward believing the opposite of whatever someone in the government tells me. I have no particular belief one way or the other about this current situation, in regards to whether it could be man-made, or simply a case where people in the government are going to "take advantage" of the situation to further increase the size of the government, reduce personal liberties, and coordinate some wealth transfer.

All I can do is read the tea leaves as best I can, and do whatever I can (within my power) to protect the health and wealth of myself, my family, and my friends.

Except that one could argue that "the government" is at least 75% (or more) controlled by one party. The conservative one which is supposed to be all about "small" government and fiscal responsibility.

It has been ironic these last few days to see them all proudly strutting around while they blithely tack on yet another $2 trillion to the deficit!

Vinny

[flyingpylon]

Except that one could argue that "the government" is at least 75% (or more) controlled by one party.

Yes, the UniParty. Some lean left and some lean right in order to maintain the facade of a two-party system.

[Maddy]

People want to know: just how bad is the COVID-19 virus and is fighting it worth the destruction of the world’s economic and financial system while disrupting the lives of hundreds of millions of people? The story behind the story will make it clear that things are seldom as they seem.

In short and when seen through the lens of Sustainable Development, aka Technocracy, the whole world has just been punked and then panicked into destroying itself over COVID-19.

The culprit? A world-class Technocrat in Britain: Dr. Neil Ferguson, PhD is a professor at Imperial College in London that bills itself as a “global university”. It is thoroughly steeped in Sustainable Development and more dedicated to social causes than academic achievement. In fact, Imperial is very well-known for its alarmist research reports on climate change, carbon reduction, environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity, etc.

The problem with the global warming meme is that it is a tired, worn-out racehorse that much of the world simply ignores. Global warming alarmists have tried every trick in the book to stampede the world into Sustainable Development. They have knowingly falsified climate data, flooded the world with inaccurate academic reports, held world meetings like the Paris Accord in France, threatened and bullied their critics, created a global youth movement to shame leaders into action, etc. All of these strategies have failed to usher in the UN’s Sustainable Development, aka Technocracy, and show little promise of success in the future.

What the Sustainable Development crowd needed was to put their non-performing racehorse “Global Warming” out to pasture and find a brand new horse that could finally run and win the race to what the UN calls “deep transformation” of the entire global economic system. The new horse is named “COVID-19”. Different horse, same jockey, same race, same finish line.

https://www.technocracy.news/the-common ... -hysteria/

[Cortopassi]

I just know everyone here is too intelligent to believe any of these conspiracies, right? But there's that intelligence trap Vinny mentions.

We are losing, and will continue to lose people. But, once this is resolved, we will (probably) discover that we were too aggressive in the measures taken, and/or they weren't the right measures to take (maybe Sweden will be a good example of what countries should have done).

In any event, if this was meant to be a world changing event, we already normally have 150k people who die worldwide every day. This doesn't look to come anywhere near even a few days of normal worldwide deaths.

So in the end, what will change? If anything, the world community will become more resistant to these strong government lockdown measures. Isn't that the opposite effect of what a lot of these conspiracies are worried about?

Take advantage to increase the size of government? If anything, this virus has hastened the path to a federal government collapse and has put many state governments on the brink, and I assume local governments are getting killed also. And what will they be able to do? Raise taxes on a population that now has 10/20/30% unemployment? Impossible. I see a lot of bankruptcies becoming the norm, and with it, smaller governments.

[Kriegsspiel]

We are losing, and will continue to lose people. But, once this is resolved, we will (probably) discover that we were too aggressive in the measures taken, and/or they weren't the right measures to take (maybe Sweden will be a good example of what countries should have done).

In any event, if this was meant to be a world changing event, we already normally have 150k people who die worldwide every day. This doesn't look to come anywhere near even a few days of normal worldwide deaths.

So in the end, what will change? If anything, the world community will become more resistant to these strong government lockdown measures. Isn't that the opposite effect of what a lot of these conspiracies are worried about?

Take advantage to increase the size of government? If anything, this virus has hastened the path to a federal government collapse and has put many state governments on the brink, and I assume local governments are getting killed also. And what will they be able to do? Raise taxes on a population that now has 10/20/30% unemployment? Impossible. I see a lot of bankruptcies becoming the norm, and with it, smaller governments.

I haven't read anything about Sweden, but I can agree with the rest.

[Tortoise]

We are losing, and will continue to lose people. But, once this is resolved, we will (probably) discover that we were too aggressive in the measures taken, and/or they weren't the right measures to take (maybe Sweden will be a good example of what countries should have done).

+1

In any event, if this was meant to be a world changing event, we already normally have 150k people who die worldwide every day. This doesn't look to come anywhere near even a few days of normal worldwide deaths.

Those 150k deaths per day are spread out over the entire year, but the exponential growth of this global pandemic threatened to compress most of the hospitalizations and deaths into a very short time window -- threatening to overwhelm hospitals around the world. Meaning a lot of people who wouldn't normally have to die from this virus would die due to lack of available hospital care. That's what the shutdowns are primarily trying to avoid -- the unnecessary deaths due to overloading the system.

I'm not saying the shutdown strategy is completely valid or justified; I'm just pointing out its driving motivation.

Take advantage to increase the size of government? If anything, this virus has hastened the path to a federal government collapse and has put many state governments on the brink, and I assume local governments are getting killed also. And what will they be able to do? Raise taxes on a population that now has 10/20/30% unemployment? Impossible. I see a lot of bankruptcies becoming the norm, and with it, smaller governments.

I suspect a lot of state and local governments will be bailed out directly or indirectly by the federal government in the coming months and years. Don't you think people would clamor for that before they would accept smaller governments and give up their government benefits and protections?

[Cortopassi]

I suspect a lot of state and local governments will be bailed out directly or indirectly by the federal government in the coming months and years. Don't you think people would clamor for that before they would accept smaller governments and give up their government benefits and protections?

That part will be interesting to see. The system still seems amazingly resilient to an amazing amount of money printing. It feels like something should break, but what do I know?

On the deaths, that was 150k per day in the world. Most are concentrated in certain areas. Overall, the world has seen ~36,000 deaths since, let's say the first time WHO issued an emergency on Jan 30. That's 60 days, or 600 more deaths per day (simplistic, I know). Concentrated in Italy, Spain, China and the US, and doesn't take into account hospitalizations.

The more this goes on here in the US, the more unbelievable the numbers in China seem to become.

As I've found this morning at: https://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php ... arroworld/

2018 flu hospitalizations overwhelmed places in the US:

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2018/01 ... 516800130/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/overwhelme ... alifornia/

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la- ... story.html

https://www.texastribune.org/2018/01/11 ... -be-aware/

I do not recall these stories two years ago, and I have no sense how overflow compares now vs. then.

[Cortopassi]

So in the end, what will change? If anything, the world community will become more resistant to these strong government lockdown measures. Isn't that the opposite effect of what a lot of these conspiracies are worried about?

IDK. Has there been a mass rebellion against TSA at airports? I think we can all agree at this point that it is complete theater and no more, yet the lemmings have seemed to just accept it as part of the process. I, at least, bitch under my breath during the entire time I stand in any line at the airport. I mean, therre's not much you an do except play their game and get TSA-pre, which I did.

An hour lost here and there for theater at the airport is no big deal, and I would guess heavy fliers would do like you did to get around it.

A 24 hour a day, 2 month long lockdown with no schools or businesses open except grocery stores seems like more of a once in a generation type thing and if were to happen again, I think a lot more thought would go into it before doing so. And a lot more people would be like those Spring Break beachgoers, saying screw this. IMO.

[Tortoise]

The more this goes on here in the US, the more unbelievable the numbers in China seem to become.

Agreed. The Chinese government is definitely fudging their numbers -- probably to give the impression that their authoritarian measures worked perfectly as planned.

2018 flu hospitalizations overwhelmed places in the US:
[...]
I do not recall these stories two years ago, and I have no sense how overflow compares now vs. then.

Yeah, I don't doubt that the virus is rapidly spreading, but each day I'm growing increasingly skeptical of the idea that certain hospitals are truly "overwhelmed" with Covid-19 respiratory emergencies. It may be happening, but I just haven't seen convincing ground truth yet.

Luckily many people in my family work at hospitals and clinics, so eventually I'll hear the truth directly from them. In the meantime, I'm very skeptical of all of this potentially fake news.

[Mark Leavy]

Captain's Log
30 March 2020

While patrolling the deserted streets of Kanab I encountered an officer from the pre-pandemic era.
I was unable to determine when he first encountered the virus. I fear I may be the only survivor.

VirusVictim.jpg (150.35 KiB) Viewed 6104 times

[boglerdude]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyz79sd_SDA

Protests over the 08 bailout in NY. Cant do that now can ya

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VprJo2jeWOk

Last year: H3N2 overwhelms hospitals.

I'm on board with this theater if it musters the political will to move the homeless into a zoo.

[I Shrugged]

Kanab is a neat town.

[Kriegsspiel]

Conspiracy Submission #1,694

The virus is a genetic-guided bomb. We can see that it doesn't affect some people, though they can transmit it to others. This is due to the fact that they don't have the genes that it targets.

Attention has focused on a study by Zhao et al. (2020), who, using lung tissue from several donors, studied a receptor, ACE2, that acts as the point of entry for some coronaviruses, including the one responsible for the outbreak in Wuhan. They found that the receptor was concentrated in certain cells and that the number of such cells in lung tissue was five times greater in the Asian donor. Yes, there was only one Chinese donor, but the chances are very low that the same normal distribution would produce such an extreme outlier.

This finding is also consistent with those of previous studies. Cheng et al. (2007) looked at other receptors for viral infections and found differences between Chinese and other human populations. In the specific case of pulmonary diseases, Seitz et al. (2012) studied the prevalence of bronchiectasis in the United States and found a prevalence 2.5 to 3.9 times higher among Asian Americans than among Euro Americans or African Americans. Kwak et al. (2010) likewise found a high prevalence of bronchiectasis in Korean adults.

Cao et al. (2020) looked at the different alleles for the ACE2 receptor gene in two databases: the China Metabolic Analytics Project and the 1000 Genomes Project. They found large differences in allele frequencies among human populations, not only between Asians and other human groups but also between different Asian groups. "These data suggested that there was a lack of natural resistant mutations for coronavirus S-protein binding in [some] populations." via Peter Frost

[shekels]

Conspiracy Theory : a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators.
That does not mean it is not TRUE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JLBXfKDbbI

[dualstow]

Going to put this out there -- I LOVE conspiracy theories. For entertainment value... mostly.

I'm personally 100% of the belief that COVID-19 has totally natural origins where the wrong, say, bat came into contact with a human.
...
That's the realist part of me.

The conspiracy theory part of me? COVID-19 was intentionally released from the weaponized biological research lab in Wuhan. Intentionally released by allowing infected animals to be bought and sold at the Wuhan wet market. The Chinese government is sly. They don't want to face the rest of the world in a toe to toe battle, so they're achieving world domination through economic means, political cloak and dagger, and this virus.

Between this virus, the undermining of the U.S. dollar, the huge population, and the buildup of traditional weapons, China is gunning to be the next global empire.

They didn't do it this time, but they're saying to themselves, hey, we could really wreak havoc in the future and get away with it. They'll have a vaccine for the motherland only. Empire intact.

[Maddy]

You don't keep a common cold virus (common coronavirus) in a P4 lab. P4 labs are intended for the most dangerous pathogens on the planet, and the research there typically involves DNA/RNA recombinance. If this virus came out of a P4 lab, you can be virtually certain it was an engineered one.

[dualstow]

You don't keep a common cold virus (common coronavirus) in a P4 lab.

Unless they're crazy like a fox?
What do I know from P4 labs. Ok, it's in a P5 lab.