As the light at the end of the pandemic tunnel becomes clearer and larger, we all feel a sense of relief every day, as if the weight on our collective shoulders is shrinking a little. This influx of positive energy helped me mobilize and look back at conspiracy theories about the SARS-CoV-2 virus, Covid-19 disease, and everything related to the pandemic that has affected our lives for more than a year. I wanted to see what were the most extravagant such theories, how ridiculous their arguments are, how many such theories were dismantled and how, and whether there are theories that survived the pandemic, at least so far. I researched the subject and I share with you what I found.
The first conspiracy theory that has circulated and continues to circulate is related to the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The central idea of this theory is that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was created in China, in a laboratory in Wuhan, and was “escaped” by mistake. As WHO experts have not identified with certainty the origin of the virus even after their visit to the Wuhan area, I am afraid that in the coming years this theory will continue to circulate and, possibly, take on new, more and more extravagant nuances. During the pandemic I collected all the information I found about signaling the presence of SARS-CoV-2 virus in different parts of the world before the outbreak of the pandemic and I will write a separate article dedicated to this topic.
Another conspiracy theory about the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is that both the virus and the Covid-19 vaccines were intentionally created by humans, long before the pandemic broke out, and the pandemic was intentionally triggered having a twofold purpose: to vaccinate all the people, and thus be part of a global experiment, and to have the drug manufacturers and WHO benefit financially substantially from this experiment. This conspiracy theory has lost quite a bit of ground, but I don’t think it’s exhausted. The reason why I think this theory will keep circulating for a while is the following: there are WHO officials, as well as companies (public or private), which have benefited financially considerably from the pandemic. What this conspiracy theory ignores is that Big Pharma have always benefited significantly from their close relations with WHO and policy decision-makers in different countries.
There is a conspiracy theory that has caught on incredibly among those who didn’t even know (and possibly they don’t know even now) who Bill Gates is. So this is the conspiracy theory associated with Bill Gates: Gates conspired with the world’s occult to create the Covid-19 vaccines, which are actually used to inject people with “chips”, so that they can be constantly monitored and controlled by occult forces. In my opinion, this conspiracy theory has been dismantled in two directions.
A first direction refers to the large number of vaccinated people, who can attest that they did not receive any “chip” in the form of serum in their vein. The second direction concerns Bill Gates’ historical position on epidemics. For those who were curious to search, there are some older videos (almost 20 years old) on the internet with interviews by Bill Gates, in which he warned everybody about a future epidemic or even a pandemic. To justify his position, Bill Gates used a number of scientific arguments supported by experts in the field. Together with researchers, doctors, university professors, who are all famous personalities in their fields, he continues to draw our attention to the danger that, in the future, epidemics / pandemics will become cyclical.
A conspiracy theory that, when I first heard it, I thought it was a joke, is this: there is a suspicious link between the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the 5G mobile internet technology. In my opinion this conspiracy theory has been completely dismantled because most people have come to understand that 5G is a technology for mobile phones and that a wireless technology has absolutely nothing to do with a biological virus. This is, in my opinion, the most extravagant conspiracy theory related to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and it is surprising how much ground it has taken for a long time at the beginning of the pandemic.
A conspiracy theory that has caught some people with a more conservative mindset, without necessarily being anti-vaxxers, is this: Covid-19 vaccines that use messenger RNA (mRNA) technology are new in principle and implementation, and have not been sufficiently tested before being administered to the general public; because of this, vaccinated people may have (there is also the option that they will have) health problems later. This theory starts from the fact that, in the past, vaccines were tested on humans for at least two years before they were widely administered. This conspiracy theory is and will continue to be used by many people, not necessarily anti-vaxxers, to justify not getting vaccinated against Covid-19. I will write a separate article in which I will explain why I think the premises of this theory are wrong.
The conspiracy theory that has had the most important effect on my life is this: anti-Covid-19 vaccines that use the mRNA technology will, over time, lead to cancer in vaccinated people. I wanted to understand the idea behind this theory and I started reading, firstly about DNA, RNA and the functions of DNA (replication, transcription and translation), then about viruses and the human immune system. Before I tell you the direction my approach to medical self-education took me in, I want to tell you that I will write a separate article to explain why I think the reasoning behind this conspiracy theory is incorrect.
Returning to my medical self-education, as I was reading about the topics mentioned above, I realized that I was not the only one who did not know these things. So, I thought of doing something to help those who, like me, did not understand the biological and genetic mechanisms involved but wished to, and the lack of time prevented them from studying the topic systematically. I started by communicating, via email, with a group of friends, periodically sending them a list of links to articles about the latest discoveries regarding Covid-19 and SARS-CoV-2 (and last year there were so many such articles), as well as summaries of articles on the same topic that I found particularly interesting. My initiative was much appreciated by my friends and this encouraged me to move forward.
The next step was to create a kind of scientific series, with episodes dedicated to topics that I studied and I consider important to obtain a general understanding of the following aspects: how viruses act to make us sick, how our body reacts to such attacks, and what we can do to preserve a bit of control over our lives when we live in a complex situation like the current pandemy. This series can also be seen as a method of general medical and/or genetic education made by a non-specialist who first tried to educate herself.
My main sources of information were two Biology textbooks used by students enrolled in undergraduate programs at various North American universities and colleges. The textbooks were created by a group of very talented professors and are available for free here and here for anyone interested. I selected from these textbooks certain chapters, partly or wholly, to cover the topics that interested me and I always took care to ensure that there is a logical connection between the episodes of the series.
In order to help the Romanians interested in this subject who do not manage to read scientific texts in English, I have translated the whole series in Romanian. This task was a real challenge for me because, in order to translate the scientific terms as correctly as possible and to render the meaning and nuances of the original text as rigorously as possible, I had to resort to scientific texts of medicine, genetics, virology, epidemiology written in Romanian.
The product of my work is a 15-episode series that you can access from the gallery below or from the Posts menu. If you notice scientific inaccuracies, errors due to translation, or any other errors in the Romanian text of these episodes, please let me know through the comments section or using the contact form and I will correct them. Thank you in advance for your effort.
Basic concepts of Cell Biology and Genetics
Sources: Fowler, Samantha, et al. Concepts of Biology. OpenStax College, Rice University, 2013 and Clark, Mary, Jung Choi, and Matthew Douglas. Biology 2E. 2018.