Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

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Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by Tortoise » Sat Mar 28, 2020 5:04 pm

I thought it might be interesting to start a thread dedicated to the discussion of coronavirus conspiracy theories.

Feel free to share any conspiracy theories you have, or have heard about, that relate to the novel coronavirus in some way.

Here are a few I've heard:
  1. The virus is engineered and was intentionally released from a Chinese government lab near Wuhan
  2. The virus is engineered and was unintentionally released from a Chinese government lab near Wuhan
  3. The virus mutated naturally and wasn't released from a lab, but powerful global elites are exploiting the pandemic as an opportunity to impose bigger, more intrusive government control as the "solution" to the crisis
#3 seems at least somewhat plausible, given that we already saw an example of it in the months and years following 9/11. But I also recognize that the expansion of government control is sometimes proposed by people with good intentions, not always by scheming global elites.
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by vnatale » Sat Mar 28, 2020 5:49 pm

Tortoise wrote:
Sat Mar 28, 2020 5:04 pm
I thought it might be interesting to start a thread dedicated to the discussion of coronavirus conspiracy theories.

Feel free to share any conspiracy theories you have, or have heard about, that relate to the novel coronavirus in some way.

Here are a few I've heard:
  1. The virus is engineered and was intentionally released from a Chinese government lab near Wuhan
  2. The virus is engineered and was unintentionally released from a Chinese government lab near Wuhan
  3. The virus mutated naturally and wasn't released from a lab, but powerful global elites are exploiting the pandemic as an opportunity to impose bigger, more intrusive government control as the "solution" to the crisis
#3 seems at least somewhat plausible, given that we already saw an example of it in the months and years following 9/11. But I also recognize that the expansion of government control is sometimes proposed by people with good intentions, not always by scheming global elites.
I know that there are other Rickards readers here.

Didn't he say in one of them that he did not generally believe in conspiracies due to the three C's? I tried to memorize them so I could recall them for times like this. But I'm somewhat failing.

I think one of them is that you require Competence for them to succeed. You also need no one turning on one another.

Seems to me that to believe in any conspiracy requires a level of faith (while remembering that faith requires high trust in something not provable) that surpasses the level of faith exhibited by all but the most fervent religious believers.

Also requires a belief in humans behaving completely opposite to all normal ways of human nature. Keeping secrets. Not exhibiting greed. Cooperating.

Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole assassin and the only person involved in the killing of President Kennedy!

Occam's Razor!

Vinny
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by Tyler » Sat Mar 28, 2020 6:48 pm

Tortoise wrote:
Sat Mar 28, 2020 5:04 pm
Feel free to share any conspiracy theories you have, or have heard about, that relate to the novel coronavirus in some way.
The most plausible one to me is that the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab when scientists there sold lab animals for food in local wet markets.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/dont- ... 2020-02-22
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by mdwilson1991 » Sat Mar 28, 2020 7:00 pm

I posted this elsewhere.

Rather than provide merit to nonsense conspiracy theories, we could consider this:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 175442.htm

Science done by people who do it for a living every day, and actually understand things like virology, immunology, microbiology, etc.

But I guess the conspiracy theorists will just say they were in on it too!
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by vnatale » Sat Mar 28, 2020 7:03 pm

mdwilson1991 wrote:
Sat Mar 28, 2020 7:00 pm
I posted this elsewhere.

Rather than provide merit to nonsense conspiracy theories, we could consider this:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 175442.htm

Science done by people who do it for a living every day, and actually understand things like virology, immunology, microbiology, etc.

But I guess the conspiracy theorists will just say they were in on it too!
When it came to the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories you sometimes had to believe that almost everyone in the world was in on it except for you and me!

As I stated belief in any conspiracy theories require an enormous amount of faith. Far more than the type of faith to which Jesus refers to here: "Jesus tells us that even the smallest seed of faith – like the tiny mustard seed of the Gospel – can move mountains."

Vinny
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by Smith1776 » Sat Mar 28, 2020 7:10 pm

Going to put this out there -- I LOVE conspiracy theories. For entertainment value... mostly. O0

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. The Joe Rogan podcast with Michael Osterholm was very insightful. There was one part where he said that the virus' origins were traceable based on its genetic makeup. It seems pretty clear, apparently, that the virus has natural origins and jumped species probably sometime in November.

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.
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by vnatale » Sat Mar 28, 2020 7:22 pm

Tyler wrote:
Sat Mar 28, 2020 6:48 pm
Tortoise wrote:
Sat Mar 28, 2020 5:04 pm
Feel free to share any conspiracy theories you have, or have heard about, that relate to the novel coronavirus in some way.
The most plausible one to me is that the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab when scientists there sold lab animals for food in local wet markets.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/dont- ... 2020-02-22
I put the article on Facebook and got these responses from someone I know who is in medical school:


"I've also read the paper and am currently working on the virus, if it was lab made it would have optimized the binding for ace2 better"

"The sequence for the Spike protein of the Corona virus that binds to the ACE2 receptor is like 24 amino acids long, and the binding to the receptor, while far better than the 2004 Sars strain, is still far from what is could be.
If it was man made, they would have made it better."

Vinny
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by ochotona » Sat Mar 28, 2020 7:48 pm

Another theory

Trump wants to instill confidence in his base that they are safe to come vote for him in November, that they won't get sick. Apparently many of them believe him. He's happy with the virus so long as it suppresses urban liberal voters.
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by vnatale » Sat Mar 28, 2020 7:51 pm

ochotona wrote:
Sat Mar 28, 2020 7:48 pm
Another theory

Trump wants to instill confidence in his base that they are safe to come vote for him in November, that they won't get sick. Apparently many of them believe him. He's happy with the virus so long as it suppresses urban liberal voters.
I assume that this falls into the category of the theory you are just throwing out but which you yourself do not believe and, thus, do not have to further provide any necessary details to give it credence?

Or, do you believe it as a possibility?

By the way, did he do a conference today? I turned off C-Span relatively early today and since then it's been a TV blackout since then while I listen to various music since then (Rob Zombie right now).

Vinny
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by Tyler » Sat Mar 28, 2020 8:37 pm

vnatale wrote:
Sat Mar 28, 2020 7:22 pm
If it was man made, they would have made it better."
Just because a virus escapes containment in a research lab doesn't necessarily mean it was engineered. I imagine a level-4 infectious disease research facility has lots of samples for study.

IMO it makes for a plausible conspiracy theory mostly because it fits the facts on the ground without requiring an elaborate scheme. It's actually less conspiracy and more colossal screw-up and cover-up.
Last edited by Tyler on Sat Mar 28, 2020 11:53 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by vnatale » Sat Mar 28, 2020 8:41 pm

Tyler wrote:
Sat Mar 28, 2020 8:37 pm
vnatale wrote:
Sat Mar 28, 2020 7:22 pm
If it was man made, they would have made it better."
Just because a virus escapes containment in a research lab doesn't necessarily mean it was engineered. I imagine a level-4 infectious disease research facility has lots of samples for study.

IMO it makes for a plausible conspiracy theory mostly because it fits the facts on the ground without requiring an eloborate scheme. It's actually less conspiracy and more colossal screw-up and cover-up.
While I never believe in the former, the latter is always quite plausible. Conspiracies (successful ones) never conform to human nature while the latter conforms perfectly with human nature.

Vinny
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by ochotona » Sun Mar 29, 2020 2:13 pm

As of now, USA has 86.5 TIMES the number of cases as Russia.

It would not surprise me in the least if the "it's just the flu" and "we can't let the cure be worse than the disease" talking points originated or at least have been picked up and amplified by state actors like Russia working through social media.

Why? Because they just want to f*** with us,

If Russia's 1534 cases is a true number, they did a brilliant job. Russians are some of the most mathematically and scientifically talented people on Earth. Putin probably got an immediate grasp on what exponential growth really means... they closed their borders to avoid infection... now they can just contract trace, isolate, and mop-up. While we burn.

Fauci says today we could have 100-200k deaths in the US by the time this is over.
Last edited by ochotona on Sun Mar 29, 2020 4:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by Dieter » Sun Mar 29, 2020 4:00 pm

I wouldn't trust Russia numbers.

But I also can easily believe they responded better to it than the US did.
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by WiseOne » Sun Mar 29, 2020 4:20 pm

Dieter wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 4:00 pm
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.
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by Kriegsspiel » Sun Mar 29, 2020 4:50 pm

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.
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by Mountaineer » Sun Mar 29, 2020 4:51 pm

WiseOne wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 4:20 pm
Dieter wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 4:00 pm
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. 8)
DNA has its own language (code), and language requires intelligence. There is no known mechanism by which matter can give birth to information, let alone language. It is unreasonable to believe the world could have happened by chance.
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by Dieter » Sun Mar 29, 2020 8:38 pm

I said I wouldn't be surprised. No idea what they did or didn't do.
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by boglerdude » Sun Mar 29, 2020 11:35 pm

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
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by CT-Scott » Sun Mar 29, 2020 11:58 pm

Kriegsspiel wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 4:50 pm
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.
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by CT-Scott » Mon Mar 30, 2020 12:04 am

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.
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by vnatale » Mon Mar 30, 2020 12:28 am

CT-Scott wrote:
Mon Mar 30, 2020 12:04 am
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
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by flyingpylon » Mon Mar 30, 2020 5:06 am

vnatale wrote:
Mon Mar 30, 2020 12:28 am
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.
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by Maddy » Mon Mar 30, 2020 9:47 am

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/
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by Cortopassi » Mon Mar 30, 2020 11:39 am

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.
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Re: Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories

Post by Kriegsspiel » Mon Mar 30, 2020 11:49 am

Cortopassi wrote:
Mon Mar 30, 2020 11:39 am
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.
You there, Ephialtes. May you live forever.
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