(Newswire.net — February 26, 2020) — From US labs and Russian meddling to special wars on Europe, conspiracy theories swarm the Internet. But the world is indeed in grave danger and it is not a health crisis but an economy issue.
Shortly after the corona virus outbreak in China, social networks started speculations about the origin of the virus.
According to AFP, US observers first noticed a misinformation campaign in mid-January, shortly after the third confirmed death from the corona virus.
“In this case, we were able to see their full disinformation ecosystem in effect, including state TV, proxy web sites and thousands of false social media personas all pushing the same themes,” said Lea Gabrielle, the head of the State Department’s Global Engagement Centre.
One of the first floods of misinformation on social networks came from documents that allegedly prove the virus was made in a laboratory in the U.S.
US officials then accused Russians of fabricating false documentation to discriminate the U.S. State Department senior official Philip Reeker earlier said “malign” Russian actors were trying to spread misinformation about the origin of the virus.
Thousands of profiles on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have spread the theory that the corona virus was made in a laboratory in the US, only to be buried under a pile of allegations that the documents allegedly proving the case come from Russian sources.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has responded to the allegations by calling them “fake”.
“This is a deliberately false story,” the ministry’s spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, told Russian news agency Tas.
One of the conspiracy theories – which is floating around the internet in multiple languages – states that the virus is an attempt to wage an “economic war on China.” According to the same theory, Bill Gates was accused of involvement in the outbreak of the virus.
The same posters that have shared pro-Russian messages about events such as protests in Chile or the war in Syria have been recognized in case of corona virus outbreak which may imply that there is an organized false-information attack on the U.S.
According to the US State Department, the damage has been done since some countries in Africa and Asia have begun to be suspicious of the West’s response to the crisis in their region.
Russian television also reported that Western elites, especially the U.S. should be blamed for everything. Channel One, one of the major television networks in Russia, had a special evening program dedicated to the conspiracy theories about the corona virus.
Conspiracy theorists have also often been guests of major political debate shows on Russian national TV, Channel One. They were saying that various actors from the West – pharmaceutical companies, America or its agencies – were somehow involved in the creation and spread of the virus, or at least in spreading panic about it.
There is another theory, however, that claims this is an attack on Europe, since it is economically dependable on trade with China. Some theorists say this is the continuity of special war on E.U. started after millions of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and other eastern countries were deliberately directed toward the E.U. especially Germany, which is the most powerful country in the union.
The proof in favor of this theory is actually a real situation in the E.U. The blockage of transport from china halted the economy of all countries in the world but especially in Europe. In all industries, there are some components that are being made in China, and there is no ongoing delivery because all transportation from China has been halted to fight the corona virus spread. There are estimates that the E.U. can withstand a few more months before Europe’s entire economy collapses.
The situation is especially hard in Italy. Eleven towns across Lombardy, where the outbreak emerged suddenly on Friday, and Veneto region have been quarantined for at least the next 15 days as Italian authorities scramble to contain the worst outbreak of the virus in Europe and the third worst in the world. Italian national television RAI reported about food shortage and empty store shelves because people are stockpiling food and goods in case the lock down gets prolonged. Schools and malls are closed and the famous Carnival in Venice was canceled.
Conspiracy or not, it is possible that the corona virus outbreak may become a trigger for the greatest economic crisis that the world has ever seen.
More than two thousand people have died, mostly in China, and more than 76,000 have contracted the new corona virus.
The virus, which first appeared in the Chinese province of Hubei, causes a respiratory disease called Covid-19.