Conspiracy theories

Although totally tea-totaller on the use of social media, i.e. Instagram or Facebook, which I obstinately refuse to join, I have been, during this crisis harassed by messages from my friends some of which are funny, other vulgar, but some others that are worrying: the conspiracy theories. I receive these from, either people leaning to the right that fortify their right-wing views through them or, more perturbing, from anguished people that believe them. As it was Sunday I though I would amuse myself in reviewing some of these conspiracy theories.

I came across one, which was sent to me by an idealist that does not seem to have any political motive and is a positive, forward-looking person, albeit not a great scientist, but as it had a funny logic, I thought I should reproduce it succinctly here. This came from a local journal in California, the “Salinas Chronicle”, which reported the findings of a scientist from an equally unfamiliar biological institute. According to him, there were 3 different strains of the COVID-19 Virus, which predictably he had named A, B and C. According to him, strain A had originated in a hippy camp near Fresno in South California. This remote group had a passion for bats, which somehow formed part of their religious beliefs. One of their female members one day brought to the camp a pangolin, an adorable little animal full of scales. One day, one of the bats died and its carcass was eaten by ants, the ideal diet for pangolins. The bats are well known for carrying a variety of viruses and one of them mutated in the stomach of the pangolin, which became a carrier of Covid-19. One day while the purveyor of the pangolin was away in town, the rest of the group having learnt that it was a delicacy, decided to kill and then proceeded to eat it. According to the scientist, the virus must have passed to one of the cooks who cut off the meat before preparing it. Probably one of the infected members went to see a parent or a friend in the Los Angeles region from thereon, the virus was able to be passed on through human contact transmission and infected California. This could have occurred as early as late September. Strain A may have been more like a normal influenza and therefore developed in a mild form undetected as a potentially dangerous virus.

Before the US travel ban at the beginning of February, around 10,000 people, from California, travelled daily back and forth from China. The virus may have then travelled to China from California and then mutated into a strain B which was more acute and deadlier. This apparently would be the strain that has hit the East Coast and the middle States. California would have a mix of the two strains but, because the first strain had created the immunity against the virus, there were less infections and a much lower fatality rate than elsewhere. It is theorized that the third strain C, even deadlier than the second, was the one that hit Italy.

How believable are these claims? Who knows? What we know is that a person, that had not travelled to China, died in California as early as February 6^th, having been diagnosed posthumously from COVID-19. This would indicate that she had been infected locally on a person to person contact around the 15^th--20^th January, before the first living identified case in the US (a person that travelled to Wuhan). So, it may very well be that she had contacted the first strain which rarely developed into a critical phase. Anecdotally, Chris Cuomo, one of  the CNN anchor men and a younger brother of governor Cuomo, who having contracted the virus quipped that, according to his memory, friends in California had complained of a strong cold with fairly similar symptoms as early as November These questions will only be answered when accurate antibody tests have been developed and a large section of California’s population has been tested.

Whereas these are interesting speculations, more morbid conspiracies abound, fueled by political motives, and sometimes by the shear pleasure of reappearing in the limelight. Such an instance is the surprising declaration of the controversial Nobel prize winner Pr. Luc Montagnier, one of the scientists that contributed to the identification of the HIV. He tried to imply that the new virus was an engineered modification of a virus with lines from the HIV virus using CRISPR, a method utilized in Gene editing of cells. This was refuted as incorrect by many scientists including a Greek Professor at the University of Geneva, Stylianos Andonaraki, in a letter to Montagnier reproduced in last Sunday’s Kathimerini. What is equally perturbing is that , in the same declaration, Montagnier talked about magnetic waves which later qualified as originating from a concentration of 5G towers around Wuhan and  the famous laboratory, where one of the specialty is virus studies, and  from where  he alleged the modified virus escaped. It is not clear, whether he meant the virus had been modified by gene sequencing or, by the 5G waves, or both! His rambling discourse may be excused because of his advanced age and he may have been used as a stooge for white washing many conspiracy theories at a time. Although never pronouncing straight accusations, the present US administration innuendos about the Wuhan Lab and their attacks on Huawei 5G technology may be fueling some of their more ardent supporters to produce such conspiracy theories. These theories get debunked by scientists but persist in the minds of less informed people. Just this Monday it was circulated in the social media reporting the Japanese price Nobel winner  Tasuku Honjo as stating that the virus is “not natural” and was “manufactured in China”, as well as stating he previously worked at a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan for four years. He denied the alleged statement and clarified he had never worked at Wuhan. A recent poll has established that 90% of US citizens now somehow consider China as a threat. This is a huge shift since the Obama administration. There is therefore every incentive for political purposes to publish negative theories. It is a known fact, that bad news stays much longer in the minds. For this reason, constructive theories such as the one exposed above, which may also very well be a totally fabricated story, never get enough traction to be in the limelight. May be this constructive hypothesis would have much more success as a conspiracy theory in China.

It is no time for conspiracy theories or for politicising the epidemic. Instead, through international projects under the umbrella of WHO or other multinational cooperation schemes, we should concentrate on fighting this subversive common enemy.