World Health Organisation chief slams US for politicising coronavirus crisis

Tedros denies he is favourable to China and thanks the US for its generous funding, but says the two countries should work together

He also singles out the Taiwan government for condoning what he says were online attacks against him

Stuart Lau Published: 9 Apr, 2020 SCMP

World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Photo: AFP

The World Health Organisation’s chief slammed the US for politicising the Covid-19 pandemic and singled out the Taiwan government for condoning what he said were online attacks against him.

In a series of scathing attacks, WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also blamed the media for “adding fuel to the fire” on Wednesday amid escalating geopolitical tensions from US President Donald Trump, who blamed the 

WHO for being China-centric and threatened to stop funding the international body.

Tedros denied he was favourable to China and thanked the United States for its generous funding, but said the two countries should work together.

“Now, the US and China should come together and fight this dangerous enemy,” Tedros said. “[There is] no need to use Covid to score political points.”

“We don’t do politics at WHO,” he said. “We care for the poor. We care for those who are vulnerable.”

On Tuesday, Trump threatened to withhold US funding from the World Health Organisation. He had castigated the WHO on Twitter earlier that day and issued a veiled threat against the agency

“The W.H.O. really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China-centric. We will be giving that a good look,” he said.

Fortunately, I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?”

The W.H.O. really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
April 7, 2020



Responding to a question about Trump’s criticism, Tedros said: “Please don’t politicise this virus. It exploits the differences you have at the national level. If you want to be exploited and if you want to have more body bags, then you do it.”

Tedros also turned to what he said were personal racist comments that started in Taiwan.

“I can tell you personally attacks which have been going on for more than two, three months: abuses, or racist comments, giving me names, black or negro,” he said. “Maybe for the first time I will make this public: even death threats. I don’t give a damn.


“Three months ago, this attack came from Taiwan … And Taiwan, the foreign ministry, they also know the complaint. They didn’t dissociate themselves. They even started criticising me in the middle of all that insult and slur. But I didn’t care – three months.

“Since I don’t have any inferiority complex when I’m personally affected or attacked by racial slurs, I don’t care, because I am a very proud black person or negro. I don’t care being called even negro – I am.”

Taiwan has criticised the WHO for not working with the self-ruled island, which Beijing insists should not be individually represented on the international level.

Two weeks before the WHO said in a tweet on January 14 that the new coronavirus did not appear to spread via human-to-human transmission, citing Chinese government information, Taiwanese health authorities had reached the opposite conclusion.

But Taiwanese foreign minister Joseph Wu said they never heard back from the WHO even though Taiwan tried to reach out to the United Nations about its finding.

On Thursday, Taiwan demanded an apology from the WHO chief over his accusations that the island’s government led personal attacks against him and his agency’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

“Our country has never encouraged the public to launch personal attacks against him or made any racially discriminatory comments,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou said.

In a Facebook post, President Tsai Ing-wen invited Tedros to visit Taiwan and learn from its handling of the epidemic, challenging him to “resist pressure from China”.
“We have been blocked from international organisations for many long years and we know what it feels like to be discriminated against and isolated more than anyone else,” she said.

Taiwan is seen as one of the few places in the world which has successfully stemmed the spread of Covid-19 without resorting to draconian measures.

Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse


Trump continues tirade against WHO, threatens ‘investigation’

Trump threatens to cut off WHO funding over agency’s handling of outbreak

Trump says he didn’t know of Navarro memos on possible pandemic

QAnon conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic are a public health threat

April 8, 2020
Author
Marc-André Argentino

First there was the pandemic, then came the “infodemic” — a term the head of the World Health Organization defines as the spread of false information about COVID-19.

The most dangerous conspiracy theories about the coronavirus are now part of the QAnon phenomenon. For months now, actors in QAnon have downplayed the severity of the crisis, amplified medical disinformation and have been originators of hoaxes.

The QAnon movement started in 2017 after someone using an anonymous account known only as Q posted wild conspiracy theories about U.S. President Donald Trump on the internet forum 4chan.

QAnon conspiracy theorists believe a deep state cabal of global elites is responsible for all the evil in the world. They also believe those same elites are seeking to bring down Trump, whom they see as the world’s only hope to defeat the deep state. QAnon has now brought the same conspiracy mentality to the coronavirus crisis.

As a researcher of online movements like QAnon, I use a combination of data science and digital ethnography to research how extremist movements use technology to create propaganda, recruit members to ideological causes, inspire acts of violence or impact democratic institutions.

Bottom-up approach

A central component of QAnon is the crowdsourcing of narratives. This bottom-up approach provides a fluid and ever changing ideology. My analysis of Twitter shows from January to March, there was a 21 per cent increase (a total of 7,683,414 posts) in hashtags used by the QAnon community. This means the misinformation they spread has the capacity to reach a wider audience.

For instance, QAnon community influencers on Twitter promoted Miracle Mineral Supplement as a way of preventing COVID-19. The toxic product was sold by the Texas-based Genesis II Church of Health and Healing for US$45. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had previously issued a warning about the dangerous and potentially life threatening side effects of the supplement.

In January, QAnon was amplifying narratives on 8kun (the internet forum formally known as 8chan), Facebook and Telegram (an encrypted instant messaging plaform) about a false theory that Asians were more susceptible to the coronavirus and that white people were immune to COVID-19. Not only are there racist undertones associated with this disinformation, it minimizes the threat posed by the virus.


Downplayed threat

From February until the second week of March, QAnon followed the lead of Trump in downplaying the threat of the virus and calling it a hoax. They believed the virus was a deep state plot to damage the president’s chance at re-election. The QAnon community said those warning about the pandemic threat were trying to detract from U.S. domestic politics, stop Trump rallies and remove all the economic gains they contended had occurred during the Trump presidency.

After Trump initially said COVID-19 posed no threat to the United States, the QAnon community reinforced that message by spreading disinformation about the disease. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

After the WHO upgraded COVID-19 to pandemic status and the U.S. announced it was closing its borders to most people from Europe for 30 days, QAnon changed the narrative again. Suddenly, QAnon thought the pandemic was something to celebrate because it was a cover for the Trump administration’s secret plan to arrest deep state agents.

Evangelicals within the the QAnon movement viewed the pandemic as the promised coming of the Kingdom of God on Earth. David Hayes, who is better known as the Praying Medic and an influencer in the QAnon community with 300,000 YouTube subscribers, said in a March 14 livestream that there was no reason to be concerned about COVID-19. Hayes reassured his viewers that they may not be affected by the disease because this was “spiritual warfare” — only those who have not been chosen by God will be affected by the disease.


The person known as Q, who spawned the QAnon movement, didn’t post anything online about COVID-19 until March 23. Up until then, all of the medical disinformation, hoaxes and downplaying of the pandemic had been sourced from QAnon influencers and community.
Public health threat

In his first post on the topic of COVID-19, Q pushed a conspiracy theory with racial undertones about COVID-19 being a Chinese bioweapon and that the virus release was a joint venture between China and the Democrats to stop Trump’s re-election by destroying the economy.

The QAnon conspiracies have created an environment of complacency among its followers who aren’t taking the risks posed by the virus seriously.

Rodney Howard-Browne, pastor of The River Church in Florida , was charged on March 30 with violating a safer-at-home order intended to limit the spread of the coronavirus. His megachurch held two Sunday services with hundreds of people after the order was issued. (Hernando County Jail via AP)

Florida pastor Rodney Howard-Browne, who has given credence to QAnon in the past and has preached that the coronavirus was planned by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was arrested after holding Sunday services and disregarding federal, state and county orders to limit gatherings to less than 10 people. His conspiratorial beliefs led to his negligent actions, which put hundreds of people from his congregation at risk.

In another instance, right-wing media figures were spreading an “empty hospital” conspiracy, downplaying the pandemic and its death toll.

A QAnon account originally launched the #FilmYourHospital hashtag. This was amplified by QAnon influencers such as former California congressional candidate DeAnna Lorraine Tesoriero and QAnon influencer Liz Crokin. This hoax was then picked up by mainstream right-wing media figures promoting COVID trutherism to a wider audience.

The FBI once called conspiracy theories spread by QAnon and others a “potential domestic terrorism threat.” It’s time to call the infodemic a public health threat.

MORE ON THIS SEE  
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-conspiracy-theory-that-5g-is-causing.html

Author
Marc-André Argentino

PhD candidate Individualized Program, 2020-2021 Public Scholar, Concordia University
Disclosure statement
Marc-André Argentino receives funding from Concordia University.
Universitié Concordia provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA-FR.

FROM THE CONVERSATION 

TIN FOIL HATS AND CORONAVIRUS 

A Conspiracy Theory That 5G Is Causing The Coronavirus Is Spreading Alongside The Pandemic 

Even actor Woody Harrelson has succumbed to the baseless hoax that cellphone infrastructure is spreading the coronavirus.

5G = HUAWEI= CHINA= WUHAN=CORONAVIRUS

Ryan BroderickBuzzFeed News Reporter Posted on April 3, 2020,
A screenshot from the second most-shared anti-5G video on YouTube.

New Agers, right-wingers, and QAnon conspiracy theorists think global elites are using 5G to spread the coronavirus pandemic.

The paranoia about 5G — the industry term for the fifth generation of wireless communications infrastructure — has risen for the last few years, but as the world battles the pandemic, a baseless hoax has spread that the technology that runs cellphones could secretly be causing the outbreak.

On Wednesday, actor Woody Harrelson posted about the conspiracy theory on his Instagram, writing, “a lot of my friends have been talking about the negative effects of 5G.” On Thursday, a 5G tower in Birmingham, England, went up in flames after a local Facebook group was flooded with anti-5G comments. (Local authorities said that it could have possibly been an electrical issue, but are awaiting further information before investigating.)

SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU QUIT SMOKING POT YOU GET PARANOID LIKE WOODY

5G has so far rolled out in about 40 countries worldwide, most notably South Korea and China, but also in dozens of US cities, including Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio.

Before the coronavirus, fears about 5G tended to focus on cancer, the risk of which people feared could be increased from cellphone radiation. The evidence to support such a fear is weak to nonexistent, although meteorologists have worried that the technology could disrupt weather satellite forecasts.

Misinformation falsely claiming the coronavirus is a bioweapon has circulated since English-language reports of the outbreak began circulating in January. Depending on which internet rabbit hole you fall down, the coronavirus was created by the Chinese government, is part of a human depopulation scheme by former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, or stemmed from a tainted batch of children’s blood that the world’s celebrities drink to stay young.

So perhaps it was somewhat inevitable that these two separate conspiracy theories — that 5G had some evil purpose and that the coronavirus was a bioweapon — would graft themselves onto each other

The ever-changing nature of the global pandemic has meant that groups like New Agers, right-wingers, and conspiracy theorists, along with other misinformation communities, are both seeing huge internet traffic and need to reinvent their belief systems to fit the outbreak. These parallel news cycles give their followers a twisted, but orderly, sense of control in a genuinely chaotic moment.


The five most-shared links on Facebook about 5G from the last year, according to BuzzSumo.

According to five years’ worth of Facebook sharing data via social metrics site BuzzSumo, the majority of the most-shared links on the platform about the “dangers" of 5G are YouTube videos that were all published in the last year, starting around the same time that the British telecom company EE announced 5G service in six cities across the United Kingdom.

The UK’s early push into 5G cellular coverage has led to an especially active British anti-5G movement. In 2018, the Democrats and Veterans Party, an offshoot of the British far-right political party UKIP, hosted at their party conference British YouTuber and conspiracy theorist Mark Steele, whose speech on the dangers of 5G is featured regularly in conspiracy theory videos. The dangers of 5G were also a major talking point in the 2019 election for UKIP and its supporters.

One of the largest Facebook groups for the movement is the Stop 5G U.K. group, which has over 50,000 members, where rumors that the tower had been set on fire on purpose spread as soon as Friday.

“People setting fire to 5G towers in Birmingham,” one commenter wrote.

“Get me a saw, I'll cut the fuckers down, the elite have had this planned for years, people are starting to wonder now, we all need to stand up and be counted,” another commenter replied.

And a video by a supposed former manager at British telecom company Vodafone, based in the UK, went viral, claiming COVID-19 wasn't a disease caused by a virus but rather the human immune system reacting to 5G radiation.

The most-shared video on Facebook about 5G was published in June 2019 by the YouTube channel Yebo, and it has 3.8 million views on YouTube and 270,000 shares on Facebook. It purports to be a video leaked from a whistleblower who works on 5G cellular towers — who wears a Make America Great Again hat in the video — warning people about the technology’s dangers.

The second most-shared video is from a verified channel with 6.45 million subscribers called Be Inspired. The video, which has over 153,000 shares on Facebook, is from May 2019 and collects quotes from British conspiracy theorist David Icke and claims 5G will cause a disaster “bigger than Chernobyl.” Be Inspired recently added a new quote to the video: “5G is worse than coronavirus.” Its two biggest referrals are from March 2020, from the Facebook groups Galactic Federation of Light and the Mindvalley Community.

A screenshot from the most-shared anti-5G video on YouTube.

The uptick in engagement that Be Inspired’s video received reflects a larger explosion in interest around the conspiracy theory in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

The most-watched anti-5G video on YouTube currently, according to BuzzSumo, is a Russian-language video titled “Here's Why 5G Is Dangerous.” Published in January, it has been viewed 1.2 million times.

A YouTube video titled “5G Bill Signed Into Law While Everyone Is Distracted By Coronavirus,” by the channel The Last American Vagabond, has been watched over 800,000 times since it was published last week and has been shared over 120,000 times on Facebook — its biggest referral being a chemtrails Facebook group. The video claimed that the coronavirus quarantines are being used to secretly install 5G technology in schools in California.

“They have just set off phase 2 of their depopulation AGENDA,” one commenter wrote beneath the video. “This is a MILITARY WEAPON PERIOD!”

There are countless more of these kinds of videos being shared on Facebook right now, with commenters connecting the supposed dangers of 5G to the real dangers of the coronavirus. Eight out of the ten most-engaged-with Facebook posts in the last six months about 5G were either a video or article warning people that 5G was dangerous and relating it to the pandemic.

Earlier this week, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones connected 5G to a popular QAnon theory that April 1, 2020, would be the start of "10 days of darkness" — or an electricity, internet, and social media outage signaling the end of the world.

Almost nothing QAnon supporters believe is original. Their sprawling conspiracy theory that the president is waging a secret war against the deep state is full of repurposed and contradictory beliefs lifted from other communities. Q followers have recently latched on to 5G in the same way. One QAnon influencer tweeted a thread last week sharing a screenshot from an article about the health effects of electromagnetic radiation, claiming they are similar to the symptoms of COVID-19 (they are not), and arguing that Italy’s high infection rate is because the country has the most 5G-enabled cities in Western Europe.

“The media will tell you it is a conspiracy theory,” they wrote. “That should indicate you are on the right path. Live in a higher mind and research!”

British hotelier John Mappin, who, in January, raised a QAnon flag over his castle, has tweeted about his desire to see the world health community investigate the 5G–coronavirus connection (which does not exist).

On Thursday, Mappin shared the same video as Woody Harrelson. Both Mappin and Harrelson claimed it was footage of Chinese citizens destroying 5G towers. It wasn't. It was footage from last year’s pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

That didn’t stop Mappin from tagging President Trump and a slew of other right-wing influencers in his tweet. “The Chinese are destroying their 5G towers,” he wrote. “They know.”

Lifestyle Influencers Are Now Sharing Some Bogus Far-Right Conspiracy Theories About The Coronavirus On Instagram

If 2020 wasn't weird enough, let's throw radicalized influencers into the mix. 

Stephanie McNealBuzzFeed News Reporter

Ryan BroderickBuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on April 4, 2020




As if things aren't bad enough right now, some lifestyle and parenting bloggers are now spreading completely baseless conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic to their tens of thousands of followers on Instagram.

The influencers are seamlessly weaving in evidence-free far-right conspiracy theories that are usually found in the significantly less Instagrammable parts of the internet, such as 4chan and 8chan, in between their usual idyllic family snaps.

It's unclear if these influencers believe some of the theories spouted by QAnon supporters — or where exactly they are getting their information. But they are sharing some of the unfounded conspiracies, or some people who are posting about them, on their feeds.

None of the people mentioned in this article responded when asked if they believe QAnon conspiracy theories.

It is jarring, to say the least. Take @roseuncharted, or Rose Henges, a Christian mom blogger and YouTuber who advocates for "holistic living" to her 73,000 followers. She's also an anti-vaxxer, but is mainstream enough to be followed by many prominent Christian influencers like Audrey Roloff and Korie Robertson from Duck Dynasty.

Over the past week, Henges has been posting bogus QAnon conspiracy theories amid her normal filtered grams of her family, her holistic medicine business, and nature

Instagram: @roseuncharted

First. Supporters of the completely unfounded QAnon conspiracy theory believe that President Donald Trump and the American military are waging a secret war against the deep state, which they believe is a global cabal of pedophiles. They get their updates from off-shoots of the anonymous message board 8chan and a website called QAlerts, which they comb through for barely coherent secret messages from a person they believe has Q-level security clearance within the US government.

If you are still confused about QAnon, my colleagues made this super-informative video last year breaking down how fake it all is:

The QAnon movement has seen increased activity on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter since the outbreak of COVID-19. Some Q followers baselessly claim the virus is a human-made bioweapon, which they believe was created by either the Chinese government or Bill Gates, depending on which Twitter account you read. And some followers believe that the virus is a deep state plot and doesn’t exist at all, even though it has killed thousands upon thousands around the world.

In the last two weeks, as the American death toll has continued to rise and the ramifications of how bad things are getting have begun to sink in, many Q followers, realizing their earlier beliefs don't comport with the truth, have suddenly decided that COVID-19 is real, but that much of the emergency response we’re seeing is actually cover for Trump’s military operations against the deep state (which is not what is happening).

Recently, QAnon supporters have been fixated on the US Navy Hospital Ship Comfort since it docked in New York City. Influencers in the movement found messages on QAlerts they believe allude to the ship. Conspiracy theories also abound about the makeshift hospital being built in Central Park.

Part of the evidence-free QAnon conspiracy theory is the baseless claim that thousands of children are secretly being held captive by the rich and powerful, trafficked in tunnels under major cities. According to those in the movement, the Mercy hospital ship is being used to covertly rescue those children from sexual slavery, and they are being treated at the Central Park hospital.

Now, some of these unfounded theories are being shared by lifestyle and parenting bloggers on Instagram.

While these theories obviously originated on the internet and have been circulating there for years, seeing them pop up in the feeds of previously mostly innocuous parenting and lifestyle bloggers is a strange new development.


Ivy Carnegie, who describes herself on her page as: "Jesus • wife’n•mom’n💍 to my high school sweet heart," has about 87,000 followers and mostly posts lifestyle, wellness, and parenting content.

On Thursday, Carnegie posted unfounded claims on her Instagram story from a conspiracy theorist John Mappin about the coronavirus. Mappin, a British hotelier, has been promoting the hoax that Mercy could be connected to QAnon. In January, Mappin raised a QAnon flag over his castle.


In an Instagram story amid all this on Thursday, Carnegie claimed, in a video she filtered with "retro cam" as her toddler played in the background, that in the past year she has started to understand human trafficking is a problem.

Carnegie told BuzzFeed News she decided to speak out publicly because "human trafficking is an issue close to my heart and has been for a long time."

"Coronavirus set aside, there’s a lot of things happening with human trafficking right now. It’s an exciting time for those that have been praying for things to change," she said.

Carnegie added that her followers have been incredibly supportive of her posts.

"Many mamas already knew about it, some didn’t. But it’s been nothing but positive," she said. "Protecting children is something everyone can get behind, and it's important."

Carnegie said she knew about QAnon but didn't elaborate. She said she has been getting information about human trafficking "all over," in both mainstream media and online.


Ivy Carnegie

Jalynn Schroeder, a beauty and fashion influencer, told her followers in an Instagram video that she had an awakening and used a hashtag popular with QAnon followers.

View this photo on Instagram 
Instagram: @jalynnschroeder

Schroeder now has five different conspiracy theory Instagram story "highlights" on her profile, along with highlights like "my food" and "meditation."

Schroeder didn't return a request for comment.



Instagram: @jalynnschroeder

The highlights feature several references that resemble QAnon material

Instagram: @jalynnschroeder


It's unclear what impact, if any, this will have on their brands. On Schroeder's posts, comments varied from supportive to complimenting her on her makeup











instagram.com

On Henges' page, some criticized her views, and some just seemed confused. Henges didn't return a request for comment.













instagram.com

However, many commenters on a recent photo she posted of the USS Mercy seemed to believe in the same things she did.

"Infinite blessings to all involved in saving and aiding the children," one person wrote. "Tears stream down my face at the images and the energy of this moment. Must be true because I feel it so deeply."

Right-Wing Influencers Are Convinced Dr. Anthony Fauci Is Working With Hillary Clinton To Undermine Donald Trump 

The fringe debates whether the coronavirus is the real deep state plot — or the federal government's response to it. 

Ryan BroderickBuzzFeed News Reporter
March 25, 2020


Right-wing influencers and QAnon supporters are waging an information war against Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and top-ranking member of the White House's Coronavirus Task Force. They are falsely claiming that Fauci is working with Hillary Clinton and the deep state to cause an economic collapse and discredit President Donald Trump.

Followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory, a labyrinthine belief system that posits that President Trump is waging a secret war against a global criminal organization, have spent much of the COVID-19 outbreak struggling to fit the disease into their narratives. At first, they theorized the virus was a bioweapon created by former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. Then, following remarks last month from radio host Rush Limbaugh, a sizable contingent suggested that the virus was actually a deep state hoax meant to damage Trump politically.

In recent days, their baseless speculations have settled on Fauci. QAnon-supporting radio host Bill Mitchell has been the biggest promoter of the latest theory. For weeks, Mitchell has been spinning a conspiracy theory that Fauci is a “Democrat plant" and nicknamed him “Dr. #FearPorn.” Mitchell’s first tweets about Fauci date back to March 3, when Fauci first suggested the closure of schools and businesses.

“Sorry President Trump, but replace this crackpot,” Mitchell tweeted. Several minutes later, Mitchell tweeted about Fauci again, “Have you ever seen the market drop 1000 points AFTER a 50 basis point Fed cut? That's #FearPorn. Thanks Dr. Anthony Fauci.”


Mitchell’s ire against Fauci has seemed to grow over time, as he insists the doctor is spreading fear about the outbreak to hurt the US economy. On March 8, Mitchell tweeted a link to a Fox News article about Fauci, writing, “AM I WRONG THINKING THIS FAUCI GUY IS A BIG DEMOCRAT SPREADING FEAR PORN?

A week later, Mitchell shared a 2009 NIH interview with Fauci providing an update about the then-outbreak of H1N1 influenza. Mitchell insisted Fauci’s apparently calmer demeanor in the video — which was conducted during the Obama administration — was proof that the doctor was now sowing fear about the coronavirus to discredit Trump.

“You'll notice none of the over-the-top hyperbole - none of the panic inducing rhetoric. Watch for yourselves,” Mitchell tweeted.



On the evening of March 20, Mitchell tweeted about Fauci 36 times in 30 minutes. Mitchell was enraged at Fauci going on CNN and publicly disagreeing with Trump’s suggestion that the CDC should allow the use of the anti-malaria drug chloroquine. Subsequently, a man died and his wife needed critical care after they both took a drug containing chloroquine phosphate meant for aquariums after hearing the president speak about the drug.

Mitchell’s tweetstorm against Fauci was intense. He repeatedly accused Fauci of being a Democrat plant, reshared the 2009 H1N1 interview, ran Twitter polls asking his followers if they thought Fauci was a Democrat, accused him of destroying the economy, and demanded Trump fire him.

Mitchell finished his tweetstorm by digging through WikiLeaks’ collection of leaked emails and found an email Fauci sent to Clinton in 2013. “Is Fauci a Hillary plant? Think about this. Trump makes a hopeful statement on #hydrochloroquine and Fauci immediately runs to #CNN, Trump's most hated #FakeNews outlet to contradict him? That is EXACTLY what a Hillary plant would do,” he tweeted.


It created a swarm. Mitchell’s discovery was written up by pro-Trump blog the Gateway Pundit, which linked to his tweet and another containing a screenshot of a different Fauci email to Clinton.

The next day, conservative online magazine American Thinker published a piece titled “Anthony Fauci, the NIH's face of the coronavirus, is a Deep-State Hillary Clinton–loving stooge.” American Thinker also picked up the 2009 H1N1 interview. “It seems some viral infection pandemics are more equal than others. At least when it comes to burning a vibrant Trump economy to the ground,” the article read. (The piece was shared Sunday by Fox News host Laura Ingraham.)

The same press conference during which Fauci sparred with Trump over chloroquine ended with a viral moment where the doctor put his hand over his face, seemingly in embarrassment, as the president joked that the State Department was "the deep state Department." (Fauci later claimed he had a lozenge stuck in his throat.)

The Fauci facepalm was seized on by Shiva Ayyadurai, a GOP Senate candidate in Massachusetts who questionably claimed to have invented email and was briefly romantically connected to actor Fran Drescher. On March 20, Ayyadurai tweeted, “Time to expose ‘Deep State’ Emperor Fauci & his ‘illustrious’ career of #FakeScience imposing ‘one-size-fits-all’ Medieval Mandated Medicine to profit his BIG PHARMA minions, [at] the expense of crashing our economy.”


Ayyadurai also shared Fauci’s email to Clinton and has made several Periscope videos accusing Fauci of being a member of the deep state. Ayyadurai’s video, titled "How To Kill Coronavirus," was removed from YouTube for violating community standards. It told people to breathe in hot air from hair dryers.

On Tuesday, QAnon influencer Greg Rubini accused Fauci of making the novel coronavirus in 2015, receiving over 3,000 retweets.

The conspiracy theory has also been spreading on 4chan. On the site’s /pol/ message board, anonymous users have posted dozens of huge threads about Fauci, implying he’s part of a global pedophile ring after surfacing a photo of him and singer Elton John, claiming Trump has secretly fired him, and accusing him of being part of a global Jewish cabal.


Gateway Pundit

The campaign against Fauci is quickly becoming more mainstream — especially as Trump looks to put economic growth ahead of mitigating the damage caused by the virus. Fauci could become a target for conservative outlets like Fox News. Right now, the channel is still backing him, but that narrative could already be shifting. On Sunday, Fox News host Steve Hilton sniped at Fauci for saying that he would be fine overreacting to a public health crisis.

“Well that's easy for him to say. He'll still have a job at the end of this, whatever happens,” Hilton said. “Our ruling class and their TV mouthpieces — whipping up fear over this virus. They can afford an indefinite shutdown, working Americans can't, they'll be crushed by it.”

Ingraham may have already telegraphed Fox News’ newest narrative for Fauci in a tweet the Fox anchor posted Tuesday. “The left-wing media’s methods are so transparent,” she wrote. “1. Pressure Fauci to criticize @realDonaldTrump in interviews. 2. Hope this leads to a blowup. 3. Slam Trump for not listening to doctors. 4. Blame him for everything.”

Here's the Bonkers Conspiracy Theory Blaming 5G for the ...
https://www.gq.com › story › coronavirus-5g-conspiracy-theory-explaine
2 days ago - In one popular YouTube video, a QAnon-associated conspiracy theorist, who is also an anti-vaxxer with ... with 5G coverage have been most affected by COVID-19 outbreaks. ... it very interesting," is a screenshot of a theory posited by Martin Pall, PhD, a professor emeritus at Washington State University.

How false claims about 5G health risks spread into the ...
https://www.theguardian.com › technology › apr › how-false-claims-about...
2 days ago - A popular claim that Wuhan was the first city in the world to receive 5G ... Users on one of the biggest anti-5G Facebook groups in the UK mix ...
Missing: screenshot ‎second

A Conspiracy Theory That 5G Is Causing The Coronavirus Is ...
https://watchtechmarket.com › Tech
4 days ago - YouTube. A screenshot from the second most-shared anti-5G video on YouTube. The journalists at BuzzFeed News are proud to carry you

YouTube says it will remove content spreading ... - Techmeme
https://www.techmeme.com › ...
4 days ago - ... YouTube, Twitter to stop the spread of a conspiracy theory linking 5G to ... Jeffery Katzenberg and Meg Whitman's Quibi short-video streaming service ... NetMarketShare: Microsoft Edge becomes the second most popular ... To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

Social media conspiracies blame coronavirus on 5G internet
https://thenextweb.com › Coronavirus
Feb 26, 2020 - One prominent anti-5G Facebook group has shared a number of erroneous posts, ... The video Kuhles is referring to resides on the YouTube page of a ... The second talking point is that 5G damages the immune system, leaving ... There are some kinks that need to be ironed out, but for the most part, the ...

Stephanie McNeal is a social news editor for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

Ryan Broderick is a senior reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York City.

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Why the West’s coronavirus response shows it isn’t better than the rest of us

Complacency and hubris caused economically advanced societies to believe they could easily handle the threat without understanding it fully

The failure of Western leaders to properly prepare has exposed their weaknesses, and could mark a turning point in global history

Tan Tarn How Published: 6 Apr, 2020 SCMP

A woman arrives in an ambulance at a hospital in New York on Sunday. Photo: AFP

The coronavirus story was not supposed to unfold like this. While China has clawed itself out of its self-made pit, most of Europe and the United States remain mired in an escalating crisis, with the prospect of relief not yet in sight.

This unexpected reversal of fortune had happened because the Western world should have learned from China and other countries in East and Southeast Asia – but dithered until it was too late.

How did the West end up being the epicentre of the global pandemic? The main reasons are inexperience, a disunited population and hubris.

Its inexperience is not its own fault. Five of the six places that have been praised for their management of the novel coronavirus – Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, China (eventually) and my own country Singapore , which is now threatened by a second, graver wave of infections – were some of the worst affected by severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2002 to 2004. The sixth, South Korea, escaped relatively unscathed that time around.

A man has a swab taken at a ‘drive though’ testing centre in South Korea, which has been lauded for its handling of the pandemic. Photo: Reuters

That outbreak, which was similarly caused by a coronavirus thought to have originated in China, killed 774 – or 9.6 per cent – of the 8,098 people it infected. So when the novel coronavirus that causes the Covid-19 disease arrived in January, these places deployed the same strategies that eventually subdued Sars: early detection, contact tracing and social isolation.

The governments and peoples of the West, however, had not seen something like Covid-19 in living memory.

The second reason for the crisis in the West is that their populations are not working together, with many defying attempts to enforce social isolation and quarantines. Governments are partly to blame for a lack of clarity in communications. In the US, for example, official advice has varied wildly. At first, the virus was dismissed as a hoax or no worse than the flu, but now citizens are being told the threat it poses is real and serious.

This has led to “deniers and disbelievers” defying restrictions on movement and travel, according to The New York Times, which said the crisis had “exposed the relationship between individuals and society and our responsibility to others”.

Members of the public walk on a beach in northwest England on Sunday, despite official advise to stay indoors. Photo: AP

To be sure, Asia has also seen its share of people flouting movement controls, but not on the scale seen in the West. Perhaps aware of this, a European embassy in Singapore recently messaged its citizens living in the country reminding them to follow local rules.

Though it should not be overstated in this modern age, it is interesting to note that the six places mentioned above that have been praised for their handling of the pandemic are all to a certain extent Confucian societies, where a greater emphasis is placed on the role of the community than the individual – a trait shared by many Asian societies. 

MY BELIEF IS THAT MAO TZE TUNG WAS A CONFUCIAN MORE SO THAN A MARXIST READ HIS TEXTS LIKE "ON CONTRADICTION", THEN READ SOME CONFUCIUS BOTH ARE APHORISTIC TEXTS.

This might be dismissed as meek obedience to authority, but it is not. It is born from the understanding that each individual’s self interest is best taken care of by contributing to the welfare of the community as a whole – pay out to get paid in. So even in Hong Kong, racked by anti-government protests right up to the onset of the pandemic, the population remarkably complied with an administration many see as lacking political legitimacy and as caring more about Beijing than what the people think. They realised the dire threat facing society – and themselves – and that political differences notwithstanding, they had better stick together than face the alternative.

The most important reason that Western societies failed is their complacency, hubris even. They believed that as economically advanced nations, they could easily handle the threat without understanding it fully.

A nurse tends to a coronavirus patient in a hospital’s intensive care unit in Wuhan last month. Photo: Xinhua

Clearly, China must take the blame for not snuffing out the outbreak right from the start and hopefully it will learn from its mistakes. But the pandemic in the West would not have happened if countries had not ignored the early warnings of the
World Health Organisation for all to prepare for the deluge.

From January to February, the West sneered at China’s initial missteps: for allowing wildlife markets to operate and for censoring early whistle-blowers and hiding the truth. Later, when Beijing finally woke up to the danger and put in place lockdowns and other measures to contain the escalating outbreak, the West scoffed. Such “draconian” approaches would not work, they said, and could never happen in the “free world”. It was “brutal” when China did it, but has become “necessary” now that the West is doing the same.

The thinking seems to be that China is economically huge but fundamentally part of the Third World. China is communist and can only fumble, which is why it got into trouble in the first place.

This hubris meant that the West – believing itself to know better – squandered the lead time it had to plan, act and learn. The few relatively bright spots in this picture are New Zealand, Iceland and Germany, all with women leaders, which is probably not a coincidence.

The coronavirus has been called an equaliser, which is true to the extent that nations rich or poor, big or small, democratic or authoritarian can be equally ravaged – though the more developed countries are better placed to look after their sick. The other side of the coin is that governments can lessen the blow irrespective of size, wealth and political systems. Hong Kong and Singapore are tiny specks compared to China, Vietnam and South Korea. Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan are advanced economies, while Vietnam is a developing country with scant resources that has won kudos for its low-cost but successful strategy. China and Vietnam are communist but Taiwan and South Korea are full-fledged democracies.

The point of this article is not to kick someone when they are down. The rest of the world hopes, for everyone’s sakes, that the pandemic in the West will be over soon. Humanity is in this together. But there is a lesson to be learned. Up until now, much of the West saw itself and was often seen by others – consciously or not – as more advanced, superior to the rest of the world and deserving of its lecturing of others. Its handling of the pandemic has put paid to much of that. Its leaders failed their citizens, and the world. This crisis will perhaps mark an inflection point in global history.


Tan Tarn How is an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow in the National University of Singapore and a Singapore playwright and arts activist.

For the coronavirus-stricken West, blaming China is a dangerous waste of time

Consigning the problem to the Chinese regime and culture – ‘the other’ – has just bred negligence and hubris in the West, which contributed to delays in containing the outbreak and wasted the precious head start China won with its draconian lockdowns

Bai Tongdong Published: 9 Apr, 2020

Consigning the problem to ‘the other’ – China’s regime and culture – has just bred negligence and hubris in the West, writes Bai Tongdong. Illustration: Craig Stephens

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has used “ Wuhan virus,” and, until recently, President Donald Trump often used “ Chinese virus,” to refer to the novel coronavirus. These terms contribute to the discrimination against East Asians in America and Europe. Their use has also been criticised as an attempt to cover up the failure of the American government’s responses to the outbreak.

A more serious problem is that the idea implicit in these terms – that the outbreak is a Chinese problem – and the negligence and hubris associated with it, contributed to a Western failure to properly respond to the outbreak. The danger is that humanity learns the wrong lesson and blindly awaits the next disaster, after paying a terrible price this time.
For some, the origin of the pandemic is the problem of “the other”, in that the outbreak originated in the “weird” and “backward” eating habits of Chinese. But anyone with just a basic knowledge of the history of pandemics should know that the main sources of contagion are livestock and other animals (such as rats) that have been with us since humans became settled farmers.

We have had many diseases from these animals in the long history of agrarian life and, as a result, have developed either immunity or treatments. The real danger of eating exotic meat is to introduce a new source of contagion.

But increased human exposure to nature through economic activity and tourism also brings new sources of contagious diseases, such as the Zika virus and Lyme disease. The focus on the meat of exotic and wild animals is thus misleading.

Moreover, the danger of consuming exotic meat does not come from the occasional eating of game by a hunter or a wealthy man in an isolated area, but from the large demand from China’s fast-growing middle class for what were once rare delicacies for the wealthy or the isolated few. This demand leads to problems of how to regulate the raising, transport and slaughter of these “wild” animals as well as “normal” livestock.

Therefore, if there is a cultural issue, it is about a fast-growing middle class in an industrialised country, in a globalised world, that still holds on to the attitudes of its agrarian and relatively isolated past. The focus should be on the regulation of the whole process of bringing meat to consumers, and of human encroachments on nature: a pressing political problem in this globalised and industrialised world.

Some people also believe that the cause of this pandemic is the Chinese regime, “the other” to the Western liberal democratic regime. It is true that although the Chinese government failed to regulate wet markets and people’s mouths, in terms of what they eat, it has
succeeded in shutting people’s mouths in terms of what they say.

China orders complete ban on trade in wildlife for food to combat coronavirus epidemic
Some people then conclude that this outbreak must be a failure of “the other” regime, as well as “the other” culture. However, partly due to the complacency of such thinking, many Western democratic countries have failed to respond to the outbreak properly.

To be sure, other countries’ failure to respond is different from China’s failure to kill the spread in its infancy. But could liberal democracies guarantee that they would be able to suppress a similar outbreak?

Chinese leaders suppressed information because they thought the spread was under control, and if they had known what would happen, they would probably have taken drastic action earlier to control the spread, although they may still have silenced people.

Trump says US approaching a ‘horrendous’ time as coronavirus death toll rises
But since the Wuhan lockdown on January 23, in spite of possible government suppression of information, the terrible power of this new virus has been obvious, yet many Western democracies still failed to respond properly, in spite of the weeks of preparation time China won for the West through its draconian lockdowns.

Trump claimed that the summer heat would kill the virus (and the threat to his re-election), and politicians in the West had all sorts of reasons to ignore the threat. One cannot help but wonder, is it necessarily the case that a free and democratic society could do better?

It should be common knowledge among political observers that effective governance is not necessarily the strong suit of liberal democracies. Rather, the true merits of a liberal society are its freedom of the press and information, and its rule of law. This does not guarantee a timely response to a virus outbreak, but at least whistle-blowers would not have been harassed by the police, and people’s anger would not be suppressed online through permanently blocking their accounts in an arbitrary manner.

But are we doomed to choose between dying with our anger suppressed or dying with our emotions vented? Can we not combine effective governance and free speech? 

Singapore tolerates far more freedom of information than China, and South Korea is a liberal democracy.

Their responses to the pandemic have been relatively successful so far, although their situations have not been as dire as in China’s Hubei province. As I argue in my book, Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case, the democratic part of a liberal democracy contributes to the ineffectiveness of governance and may even threaten the “liberal” part.
The solution is a hybrid regime that combines the voice of the people through popular elections with more decision-making power given to the “meritocrats”, people such as
Dr Anthony Fauci, which is firmly built on the protection of rights and the rule of law.


Globalisation blurs the boundaries between the self and the other, and the dilemma is that this process of transcending nations is led by nation states. International organisations such as the World Health Organisation and the United Nations are toothless.

The solution, then, may be an alliance of the humane (the Confucian idea of ren) and great powers that police the world under the banner of “humane duty overrides sovereignty”. Unfortunately, given the obsession with blaming “the other”, the future of humanity remains uncertain.

Bai Tongdong is a professor of philosophy at Fudan University in China and the author of Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case

Bai Tongdongis a professor of philosophy at Fudan University in China and a global professor of law at NYU’s Law School

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Why China is not responsible for pandemic

Beijing bought time for the world with its draconian lockdown of the city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, but many countries, notably Britain and the United States, squandered it


Alex Lo Published: 8 Apr, 2020

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

In early February, The Wall Street Journal published the by-now infamous opinion piece titled “The real sick man of Asia”, by Walter Russell Mead, an international politics professor.
If you read it now, its scientific ignorance is far more illuminating than its “analysis”. But it was a myopia shared by many people around the world: they thought
the epidemic was mainly China’s problem. Medical authorities, though, knew by then that it would be a global problem.

Mead knew as much about epidemiology as the next taxi driver. That may be why he thought, like many pundits at the time, that the global impact of the outbreak in China would be on the supply chains of international companies.

“The likeliest economic consequence of the coronavirus epidemic, forecasters expect, will be a short and sharp fall in Chinese economic growth rates during the first quarter, recovering as the disease fades,” he wrote.

“The most important longer-term outcome would appear to be a strengthening of a trend for global companies to “de-Sinicise” their supply chains.”


By December 31, Beijing had informed the World Health Organisation about the outbreak. By January 23, an unprecedented lockdown was imposed in Wuhan. Whatever cover-ups and concealment of cases China was guilty of, by January, the entire world knew about the severity of the Chinese epidemic.

What The New York Times wrote about Spain is equally true of many countries, notably Britain and the United States: “Spain’s crisis has demonstrated that one symptom of the virus … has been the tendency of one government after another to ignore the experiences of countries where the virus has struck before it.”

Yet, in trying to evade responsibility, British and American political leaders such as British cabinet minister Michael Gove, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Donald Trump are now claiming: if only China had told us earlier, if only they hadn’t lied about their cases, we would have responded in time.

No, they would not have, and in fact, did not. They had time to prepare but chose not to.

Whatever malfeasance Beijing had committed, locking down Wuhan cut the number of coronavirus cases exported to the outside world by 77 per cent, according to an international study that was led by Matteo Chinazzi of the Laboratory for the Modelling of Biological and Socio-technical Systems at Northeastern University in Boston and published in Science.

China bought time for the world; many governments squandered it.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Why China is not responsible for pandemic

Alex Lo has been a Post columnist since 2012, covering major issues affecting Hong Kong and the rest of China. A journalist for 25 years, he has worked for various publications in Hong Kong and Toronto as a news reporter and editor. He has also lectured in journalism at the University of Hong Kong.