Fake news – 5G and coronavirus
Introduction
With the increasing cases of coronavirus, fake news about the cause has been moving around since the virus was announced to be an international menace. The arrival of the 5G network in the world has come barring its fair share of conspiracy theories about its coronavirus cause. The news first started with a Belgian newspaper that published an article highlighting 5G as life-threatening, and no person knew about it. It then spread to the TikTok application, where celebrities made and shared videos of conspiracies that link the virus with the 5G network. However, a close examination of the news from a research journal realizes that this is just another fake news example circulating on the internet.
Research Results
When you type the words 5G and coronavirus, several websites pop up refuting the claims that 5G causes coronavirus. Some of the sites include wired, ENI, BBC, among others. The information retrieved from the WIRED reveals that the story began with comments from a Van Kerckhoven who claimed that the 5G network could be claim linked with the coronavirus. Only nine people had died from the virus during the time, and a small number of fewer than five hundred people had been infected. However, this is not the first time the network frequency was linked with killer results. In January 2019, before the virus came, a post was published on YouTube, highlighting that the 5G network might kill you (Temperton, 1). The conspiracy causes a huge stir on the media as more claims have been paraded on the social media platforms and websites such as Infowars, which claims that the 5G was launched in Wuhan weeks before the virus outbreak and had shown symptoms that are similar to those of corona. It claimed that the network was an artificially created bioweapon.
However, when we research the 5G network and its side effects on humans, we find that these claims are not true. They have been present since the time 2G was rolled out and baseless. The 5G network uses a low frequency on the lower end of the electromagnetic spectrum. Therefore, the waves are not harmful and do not affect the body’s immune system (“5G And Coronavirus: Debunking The Fake News Stories”). Hence, the scientific journals that talk about electromagnetic waves dispute the claims and urge people not to be worried and dismiss these false claims. Also, the claim by Infowars that the rollout of the 5G network in Wuhan caused the virus can be refuted by looking at the high cases of coronavirus that have been recorded in Iran and Iraq, which do not have 5G network. Therefore, this makes the news fake.
Therefore, social media’s role is to connect people from all around the world. However, social media can be a very harmful tool that can be manipulated by evil people and those with bad intentions to convey their agendas, resulting in harmful events. Many times, fake news has been passed around about biological weapons and scientific research that are not proven and baseless. People have taken excerpts from videos or messages and passed them around to propagate fake reports. Therefore, every person needs to be careful when dealing with social media information. Every person should read and verify the information they read on social media platforms, especially Facebook and Twitter, before deciding to believe the propaganda. Through this, we will protect ourselves from harmful fake news.
Work cited
James Temperton, WIRED UK. “The Rise And Spread Of A 5G Coronavirus Conspiracy Theory”. Wired, 2021, https://www.wired.com/story/the-rise-and-spread-of-a-5g-coronavirus-conspiracy-theory/.
“5G And Coronavirus: Debunking The Fake News Stories”. Bbc.Co.Uk, 2021, https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zbw492p
