In my last post I focused on what
can result from being poorly informed, having an impoverished vocabulary and
having inadequate critical thinking skills: rumours, buzz words and conspiracy
theories, respectively.
I’d like to look more deeply into conspiracy
theories which we’ve all heard at some point, but seem to proliferate when
people face an insuperable problem. As I’ve said such theories are held and
generated by those who have little or no powers of analysis. It is imperative
that we distinguish between analytical
thinking and cynical thinking,
where the ‘thinker’ is generally adamant that his theory is correct, will not
entertain alternative perceptions on the subject and believes he is cleverly
seeing through some perceived organized and threatening façade.
Rumours are certainly rife in
relation to the current pandemics so much so that a Greek doctor sat down to
succinctly refute three such theories, but ended up with an enormous text on
numerous myths. Below is what I have selected from and translated his original
text which I’m sure you will find of interest.
Myth no.1 Covid-19
is not a pandemic.
Many ‘experts’, appearing on YouTube videoclips which have thousands of followers
and shares, doubt that there is a pandemic. According to them, for a disease to
qualify as a pandemic, you need to go out of your house and see piles of dead
bodies to left and right! According to others, 7% of the population has to die!
The definition of a pandemic as classified by the World Health
Organisation (WHO) is that of a disease which spreads to the greater part of
the world, travelling beyond national borders, happening at the same time and
NOT seasonally, REGARDLESS of
seriousness, causes or immunity.
Covid-19 is, indeed, a pandemic since, within the first two months when it
first made its appearance, it spread to 210 countries and independent areas
throughout the world. The only complaint one can lay against the WHO is that it
was late in declaring Covid-19 a pandemic.
Myth no. 2 : Covid-19 is just
the simple flu.
According to scientific data, the Coronavirus is much more easily
transmitted, more infectious and more fatal than the flu. Even if it were a simple flu, it is a
NEW flu, in a non-immune community, that would kill millions without protective
measures being taken globally.
Was it for a flu that China, USA, UK and Spain
built extra hospitals?
Was it for a flu that Italy took people off
support systems to save the lives of younger patients?
Was it for a flu that cemeteries
filled up, that military vehicles went in convoy, full of the bodies of those
who had died, and that huge plots were dug as mass graves for the dead?
According to the ‘flu’ theory, the number of deaths in the USA would
peak at between 10,000 to 40,000 at most. Today, despite international measures
of isolation and lockdown, that number has passed 72,000, with 61,000 deaths in
the last month only!
In Europe, the annual number of deaths from the flu is around 40,000;
this year the number of deaths from the Coronavirus only in Italy, Spain,
France and GB in two months was more than 110,000!
At the global level,
annual deaths from the flu are generally 110,000, while this year there are
already 260,000 Covid-19 deaths. And that is despite an immediate lockdown of
1/3 of humanity, which is an unprecedented situation. To appreciate the difference between the two,
all one has to do is refer to the graphic representations of the deaths for
every country, the expected and the actual, as a result of the flu and of the
pandemic, the latter which suddenly surges ahead. And bear in mind, for the flu
we have vaccines, we have medication (Tamiflu) and the greater part of the
world population has immunity.
Myth no. 3 : The Coronaovirus is the product of a Chinese laboratory to
wage economic war on the USA and the West.
Data from general research, published in one of the most authoritative
journals in the world, Nature, show that on the basis of the virus
genome-sequencing, it is impossible to have been produced in the Wuhan
laboratory in China. (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9).
From the history of the pandemic, it is clear that the Chinese people
were found unprepared, and that is evident from the strict repressive measures
that were used to control the spread of the viral epidemic in their country.
What they can be judged fore, however, is that though they protected their own
country, they did not inform the global community in good time, providing false
data, even deceiving the WHO, and criminally leaving the rest of the world as
easy prey for the virus. That, certainly, does not excuse Donald Trump and
Boris Johnson from now blaming the Chinese people for everything, while they
themselves neglected to take significant measures, even though they had all the
necessary information. The result of their neglect was the massive spread of
the disease, with a huge number of cases and deaths in their countries.
Well, that’s quite enough to be
going on with for now.
Perhaps the next time you hear someone have a
wee rant about the virus, you can access some of this reasoning to blow both
them and their conspiracy theories out of the water! :)
