CSM EDITORIAL
The Covid-19 crisis has now gone global. Of course there will be those who exploit the chaos and today there are reports of bogus companies selling non-existent products like masks and sanitisers. These entities tend to be set up by criminals in West Africa who have set up hundreds of these scam websites in the last month, targeting businesses, hospitals and care homes seeking to buy in bulk.
Meanwhile a story has been doing the rounds about 5G and its introduction being the cause of the Coronavirus. YouTube has banned all conspiracy theory videos falsely linking Coronavirus symptoms to 5G networks. The conspiracy theorist David Icke is in hot water for saying that “if 5G continues and reaches where they want to take it, human life as we know it is over… so people have to make a decision.”
Last week a Russian state-linked website claimed that the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had been put on a ventilator. The story was false. It was eventually removed but not before other networks, including one in Pakistan, had picked up on it.
Fake cures are doing the rounds. We started with cucumbers a while back then we were told that garlic and taking hot baths would make us immune. All nonsense. There has been a boom in fake medicines with unscrupulous sellers touting unproven or useless products which claim to prevent or cure COVID-19. The Consumer magazine Which? has covered plenty of them here.
The Chinese state has been actively pinning the source of the virus outbreak to a wet market in Wuhan but it would seem that even that is fake news – as fake as claiming that the Americans were behind the release of the virus. Admittedly the latter tall tale has not been heard since New York’s Coronavirus cases rocketed and American bodies were piling up in temporary morgues outside hospitals.
Of all the serious documentary work done on the Coronavirus outbreak there are two that stand out: one by Sky News Australia and one by the Epoch Times. They are well worth watching and links to them can be found below. Stay well.