Mysteries and realities behind coronavirus epidemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in conspiracy theories about the scale, origin, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of the disease. False information, including intentional disinformation, has been spread through social media,text messages, and mass media,including the state media of countries such as China, Russia,Iran, and Turkmenistan.It has also been spread by stated-backed covert operations to generate panic and sow distrust in other countries.
Misinformation has been propagated by celebrities, politicians including heads of state in countries such as the United States, Iran and Brazil, and other prominent public figures. Commercial scams have claimed to offer at-home tests, supposed preventives, and “miracle” cures. Others have claimed the virus is a bio-weapon with a patented vaccine, or designed to target a country, a population control scheme, the result of a spy operation, or was released from a laboratory.
Iran’s Press TV asserted that “Zionist elements developed a deadlier strain of corona virus against Iran”. Similarly, various Arab media outlets accused Israel and the United States of creating and spreading COVID-19, avian flu, and SARS. Users on social media offered a variety of theories, including the supposition that Jews had manufactured COVID-19 to precipitate a global stock market collapse and thereby profit via insider trading. In India, Muslims have been blamed for spreading infection following the emergence of cases linked to a Tablighi Jamaat religious gathering
According to the BBC, Jordan Sather, a You Tuber supported the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory and the anti-vax movement claiming the outbreak was a population control scheme created 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
It’s worth repeating, as the World Health Organization (WHO) has pointed out, that viruses cannot travel on mobile networks, as claimed for 5G networks. Even so, this conspiracy theory – after being spread by celebrities with big social media followings – has led to cell phone towers being set on fire in the UK and elsewhere.
Most conspiracy theories, like the viruses they resemble, constantly mutate and have several variants circulating at any one time. Many of these plots and subplots seem to involve Bill Gates, who became a new target of disinformation after gently criticizing the defunding of the World Health Organization by the US President. According to the New York Times, anti-vaxxers, members of QAnon and right-wing pundits have seized on a video of a 2015 Ted talk given by Gates – where he discussed the Ebola outbreak and warned of a new pandemic – to bolster their claims he had foreknowledge of the COVID pandemic or even purposely caused it.
A recent variant of this conspiracy theory, particularly beloved by anti-vaccination activists, is the idea that COVID is part of a dastardly Gates-led plot to vaccinate the world’s population by implanting digital microchips that will somehow track and control people. The spread of misinformation has meant that ID2020, a small non-profit that focuses on establishing digital IDs for poorer people around the world, has had to call in the FBI. The Cornell Alliance for Science is partly funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
According to professional conspiracy theorists like David Icke and InfoWars’ Alex Jones, COVID-19 doesn’t actually exist, but is a plot by the globalist elite to take away our freedoms.
However apart from these theories,the 2019 novel corona virus has the potential to be a global epidemic. Health officials say it originated in a market in Wuhan, China that sold live and dead wild animals that people ate for food, improved health and vitality and a number of other purposes.
Corona viruses are a group of viruses which typically tend to affect human and other mammal’s respiratory tract and their guts. The viruses are closely associated with infections like pneumonia, the common cold and conditions like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). In 1937, corona viruses were first identified as an infectious bronchitis virus with which birds suffered that could devastate poultry stocks. Today, the viruses are the cause of the common cold in 15% to 30% of all cases. In the past 70 years, researchers have found camels, cattle, cats, dogs, horses, mice, pigs, rats and turkeys that were infected with corona viruses. Currently there is no vaccine that can protect the public from this particular corona virus strain. However, there are teams of medical researchers and scientists in Canada, China and the United States that are working to develop a vaccine.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the best way people can prevent themselves from becoming infected with the 2019-nCoV virus is to avoid exposure to people or animals sickened with it. The CDC recommends people who are uncertain of whether or not the people with whom they have made contact have the respiratory viruses take certain steps to prevent getting sickened by or spreading the 2019-nCoV virus. Those steps include:
n Spending at least 20 seconds washing their hands as often as possible using soap and water.
n Make sure your hands are washed before touching the mouth, eyes or nose.
n When people are sick with the virus, avoid close contact with them.
n If you are sick with the virus, stay home.
n Clean and disinfect object and surfaces that are touched frequently.
n If traveling abroad, avoid contact with dead or live animals, sick people, animal markets and animal products like uncooked meat.
n Seek medical care immediately if you have visited abroad and within two weeks you have a fever, are coughing or have difficulty breathing.
n Before going to a medical facility, tell the staff you have recently visited abroad.