Vandals in China and the U.K. destroy cell towers after theories link 5G to COVID-19
With all of the confusion over the COVID-19/coronavirus outbreak in terms of treatment, there also are a number of different stories that try to explain how we got to where we are right now: in the midst of a worldwide pandemic. Some say it came from one man in China who ate an infected bat purchased from a market in Wuhan. Others believe that coronavirus was created in a lab and designed for biological warfare by the Chinese or the North Koreans. And there is another group that firmly believes COVID-19 spread quickly because of radiation from 5G signals.
U.K. carriers release a joint statement calling the conspiracy theories “baseless”
Another celebrity, singer M.I.A., disseminated a tweet in which she wrote “I don’t think 5G gives you COVID-19. I think it can confuse or slow the body down in healing process as (the) body is learning to cope with new signals wavelengths frequency etc.”
U.K. Cabinet Minister Michael Gove calls this “dangerous nonsense” and U.K. national medical director Professor Stephen Powis called the theory “absolute and utter rubbish.” Dr. Michael Head of the University of Southampton told a newspaper in Britain, “Conspiracy theorists are a public health danger who once read a Facebook page. The celebrities fanning the flames of these conspiracy theorists should be ashamed.” Harrelson, for his part, admits that “I haven’t fully vetted it.”
Several U.K. carriers including BT Group’s EE, Telefonica’s O2, Vodafone (VOD) and Three released a joint statement that said, “Not only are these claims baseless, they are harmful for the people and businesses that rely on the continuity of our services. They have also led to the abuse of our engineers and, in some cases, prevented essential network maintenance taking place.”
Facebook said today that it is starting to take aggressive action to “remove false claims which link COVID-19 to 5G technology.” A Twitter spokesman also released a statement saying, “We will continue to take action on accounts that violate our rules, including content in relation to unverifiable claims which incite social unrest, widespread panic or large-scale disorder.”