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The coronavirus is here to stay — here’s what that means

 A Nature survey shows many scientists expect the virus that causes COVID-19 to become endemic, but it could pose less danger over time.

For much of the past year, life in Western Australia has been coronavirus-free. Friends gathered in pubs; people kissed and hugged their relatives; children went to school without temperature checks or wearing masks. The state maintained this enviable position only by placing heavy restrictions on travel and imposing lockdowns — some regions entered a snap lockdown at the beginning of the year after a security guard at a hotel where visitors were quarantined tested positive for the virus. But the experience in Western Australia has provided a glimpse into a life free from the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. If other regions, aided by vaccines, aimed for a similar zero-COVID strategy, then could the world hope to rid itself of the virus?

It’s a beautiful dream but most scientists think it’s improbable. In January, Nature asked more than 100 immunologists, infectious-disease researchers and virologists working on the coronavirus whether it could be eradicated. Almost 90% of respondents think that the coronavirus will become endemic — meaning that it will continue to circulate in pockets of the global population for years to come (see 'Endemic future').

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Prepping Goals 2021 How To Plan For Success What To Expect *Still valid headed into 2022'

 

Supreme Court Blocks Biden’s Eviction Moratorium By Matt Stieb

 

On Thursday, the Supreme Court voted in a 6-3 split along partisan lines to throw out President Joe Biden’s eviction moratorium put in place on August 4.

The unsigned majority opinion determined that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exceeded its authority when the public-health agency issued “a new order temporarily halting evictions in counties with heightened levels of community transmission.” (Thanks to the more contagious Delta strain, the two-month moratorium effectively covered counties in which 90 percent of the U.S. population resides.) Thursday’s opinion states that the CDC’s reliance on a statute authorizing the agency to block evictions in circumstances like “fumigation and pest extermination” does not give it the “sweeping authority” to enact this ban amid a pandemic that is worsening once again.

The decision on Thursday night — potentially impacting over 3.5 million households who are at risk of eviction over the next two months — is the latest in a months-long process between the Supreme Court and the White House. In June, a 5-4 majority voted to allow the CDC’s previous eviction ban to stand until its expiration at the end of July; in the majority opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that he considered the moratorium unlawful, but would allow the order to stand in order to ensure an “orderly distribution” of aid to renters. (Kavanaugh also warned not to extend a ban without congressional approval.) Despite having all of July to prepare for the moratorium’s end, the Biden administration and congressional Democrats scrambled at the end of the month to cover Americans at risk of eviction. Only after the order expired and Representative Cori Bush held a successful protest sleeping on the steps of the Capitol did Biden request that the CDC issue a limited moratorium.

With the federal order voided, there are patchwork protections in a handful of states, though many of those, including the New York ban lapsing on August 31, are expiring in the coming weeks. And while there are tens of billions of dollars in rent relief available, only 11 percent of those funds have actually been distributed.

The COVID-19 Eviction Crisis: an Estimated 30-40 Million People in America Are at Risk

 

The United States may be facing the most severe housing crisis in its history. According to the latest analysis of weekly US Census data, as federal, state, and local protections and resources expire and in the absence of robust and swift intervention, an estimated 30–40 million people in America could be at risk of eviction in the next several months. Many property owners, who lack the credit or financial ability to cover rental payment arrears, will struggle to pay their mortgages and property taxes and maintain properties. The COVID-19 housing crisis has sharply increased the risk of foreclosure and bankruptcy, especially among small property owners; long-term harm to renter families and individuals; disruption of the affordable housing market; and destabilization of communities across the United States.  

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers, academics, and advocates have conducted a continuous analysis of the effect of the public health crisis and economic depression on renters and the housing market. Multiple studies have quantified the effect of COVID-19-related job loss and economic hardship on renters’ ability to pay rent during the pandemic. While methodologies differ, these analyses converge on a dire prediction: If conditions do not change, 29-43% of renter households could be at risk of eviction by the end of the year. 

This article aggregates the existing research related to the COVID-19 housing crisis, including estimated potential upcoming eviction filings, unemployment data, and housing insecurity predictions. Additionally, based on this research and new weekly analysis of real-time US Census Bureau Household Pulse data, this article frames the growing potential for widespread displacement and homelessness across the United States.

The COVID-19 pandemic struck amid a severe affordable housing crisis in the United States

COVID-19 struck when 20.8 million renter households (47.5% of all renter households) were already rental cost-burdened, according to 2018 numbers. Rental cost burden is defined as households who pay over 30% of their income towards rent. When the pandemic began, 10.9 million renter households (25% of all renter households) were spending over 50% of their income on rent each month. The majority of renter households below the poverty line spent at least half of their income towards rent in 2018, with one in four spending over 70% of their income toward housing costs. Due to chronic underfunding by the federal government, only one in four eligible renters received federal financial assistance. With the loss of four million affordable housing units over the last decade and a shortage of 7 million affordable apartments available to the lowest-income renters, many renters entered the pandemic already facing housing instability and vulnerable to eviction.

Before the pandemic, eviction occurred frequently across the country. The Eviction Lab at Princeton University estimates that between 2000 and 2016, 61 million eviction cases were filed in the US, an average of 3.6 million evictions annually. In 2016, seven evictions were filed every minute. On average, eviction judgment amounts are often for failure to pay one or two months’ rent and involve less than $600 in rental debt.

An increase in evictions could be detrimental for the 14 million renter households with children: research from Milwaukee indicates that renter households with children are more likely to receive an eviction judgment. Although tenants with legal counsel are much less likely to be evicted, on average, fewer than 10% of renters have access to legal counsel when defending against an eviction, compared to 90% of landlords.

At the same time, a lack of rental income places rental property owners at risk of harm. Individual investors, who often lack access to additional capital, may be particularly vulnerable. Presently, while “mom and pop” landlords own 22.7 million out of 48.5 million rental units in the housing market, more than half (58%) do not have access to any lines of credit that might help them in an emergency. Landlords who evict tenants face court costs, short or long term vacancy, reletting costs, and the loss of 90-95% of rental arrears via sale to a debt collector or other third party. In the short term, lack of rental income may result in unanticipated costs, and an inability to pay mortgages, pay property taxes and maintain the property. In the long term, it places small property owners at greater risk of foreclosure and bankruptcy.

Communities of color are hardest hit by the eviction crisis

Communities of color are disproportionately rent-burdened and at risk of eviction. People of color are twice as likely to be renters and are disproportionately likely to be low-income and rental cost-burdened. Studies from cities throughout the country have shown that people of color, particularly Black and Latinx people, constitute approximately 80% of people facing eviction. After controlling for education, one study determined that Black households are more than twice as likely as white households to be evicted. In a study of Milwaukee, women from Black neighborhoods made up only 9.6% of the city’s population but accounted for 30% of evicted tenants. In Boston, 70% of market-rate evictions filed were in communities of color, although those areas make up approximately half of the city’s rental market. Researchers from UC Berkeley and the University of Washington found the number of evictions for Black households in Baltimore exceeded those for white households by nearly 200%, with the Black renter eviction rate outpacing the white renter eviction rate by 13%. In New York City, a sample of housing court cases indicated that 70% of households in housing court are headed by a female of color, usually Black and/or Hispanic. In Virginia, approximately 60% of majority Black neighborhoods have an annual eviction rate higher than 10% of households, approximately four times the national average, even when controlling for poverty and income rates. In Cleveland, the top ten tracts for eviction filings from 2016-2018 were all majority Black tracts; only six had poverty rates above 10%.

Similarly, people of color are most at risk of being evicted during the COVID-19 pandemic. A report co-authored by City Life/Vida Urbana and Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed that in the first month of the Massachusetts state of emergency, 78% of eviction filings in Boston were in communities of color.

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NEWS, ANALYSIS AND PERSPECTIVE FOR SOLUTION PROVIDERS AND TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATORS

 The 10 Coolest New Networking Products Of 2021 (So Far)

The pandemic prompted a slew of new networking offerings to come to market that embraced emerging trends, such as multi-cloud, AI, edge networking and automation. Here’s 10 new networking products that solution providers should know about.

The networking industry was already starting to chase emerging trends, like multi-cloud, AI, edge networking and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) as digital transformation was taking hold for many businesses. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic happened.

The pandemic accelerated the IT industry’s trajectory by five to 10 years, many solution providers say. As companies grappled with the work-from-home trend and security issues started to emerge, networking vendors turned the attention of their product development teams to focus on the combination of networking and security, the network edge, and embracing new forms of connectivity, such as cellular -- like 5G -- and Wi-Fi 6. Network automation also took precedence as companies looked for software and tools that could take work off their IT teams’ plates. All this while many companies quickly adopted cloud-based anything they could get their hands on.

In fact, cloud is quickly becoming the de facto platform for new digital services and existing traditional workloads, which is why 40 percent or all enterprise workloads will be deployed in cloud infrastructure and platform services by 2023, up from only 20 percent in 2020, according to research firm Gartner.

The leading networking vendors all saw the new obstacles immediately and came to the market with new solutions for the brand-new use cases that were popping up, while startups realized it was their time to shine and emerged from stealth mode with their cloud-first, automation-heavy solutions.

With many options on the market to choose from, here are 10 of the coolest new networking products of 2021, so far.

For more of the biggest startups, products and news stories of 2021 so far, click here  .   

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5 Obscure Formulas That Rule the World

You probably don't think about the Dirac equation on an average day, but it describes just about everything that happens to you.

Prospect Theory

V(x,p) = v(x)w(p)

People hate losing money about twice as much as they love making it: It takes a $20 discount, researchers have found, to make up for the sting of a $10 surcharge on a purchase. That is one reason why even experienced stockbrokers often sell stocks while they are still increasing in value, leaving money on the table rather than risking a loss.

Prospect theory’s central formula lays out how we go with our gut when determining the value (V) of a possible outcome (x) with a given probability (p). It takes into account many of people’s most predictable — and, at times, peculiar — financial irrationalities: shying away from losses, for instance, and overestimating tiny probabilities like the 1-in-10-million chance of winning the lottery.

Exponential Decay

N(t) = N0e-λt

In 1899 Ernest Rutherford noticed that half of the atoms in a sample of radioactive radon gas disappeared with each passing minute. He had discovered 
both radioactive decay, in which certain elements break down by emitting subatomic particles, and half-life, the time it takes for half the atoms in a sample to decay. Each radioactive element decays exponentially, decreasing over time (t) at a rate proportional to the number of atoms there are (N).

By measuring how much of the original element remains, scientists can determine the age of a sample. Elements like uranium 238, which has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, let geologists determine the age of rocks and meteorites; those that decay over thousands of years, like carbon-14, help date archaeological artifacts and human remains.

Dirac Equation

(cα ⋅ p̂ + Βmc2) ψ = iℏ δψ/δt

Physics is dominated by dual theoretical systems: quantum mechanics for the subatomic realm, relativity for cosmic scales. Understanding the behavior of a basic particle like an electron requires reconciling the two. In 1928 English physicist Paul Dirac did that with his equation describing an electron in terms of both its wave function (ψ) — the quantum probability of its being in a particular place — and its mass times the speed of light squared (mc2), a relativistic interpretation of its energy.

The equation specifically shows how particles align in medical scanners, but in a broader sense it explains the very essence of how matter works. “Electrons make up almost all observable things,” says physicist Laurie Brown, “and this is a description of the electron that satisfies all known requirements of nature.”

Doppler Equation

Δ λ/ λ = v/c

Slight shifts in the color of light coming from a distant star can clue astronomers in to an orbiting planet via the Doppler equation, which links changes in the wavelength (λ) of light to the motion (v) of the thing emitting it. As a star approaches, its light is compressed and looks bluer; as it moves away, the light stretches and reddens. An unseen planet that tugs the star back and forth will yield a characteristic pattern of color changes.

Closer to home, the Doppler equation helps enforce speed limits and predict weather by measuring the speed of cars and storm systems; Doppler shifts also alter radio signals from communications satellites in ways that must be canceled out.

Clocking Evolution

K = 2NuP K = u

To find the last common ancestor of any two species, scientists look to the molecular clock, which describes how quickly genetic mutations accrue. According to the clock equation, the rate at which mutations become permanent (K) equals the rate at which those mutations happen (u) times the population size (N) times the probability (P) that a mutation will become permanent, times 2.

When dealing with mutations that confer no selective advantage, says Michael Steiper of Hunter College in New York, “the amount of genetic difference scales to time.” In other words, each gene is equally likely to become fixed, with probability 1/(2N), producing the simplified bottom formula. Molecular clocks allow scientists to trace the ancient tree of life, even when fossil evidence is scarce, and help find the branches that led to modern humans. You are collecting mutations (data for future anthropologists) right now.

 

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The Blame Game

 

 When you blame someone or something, you have successfully locked yourself in a cell and thrown away the key. Your situation can no longer change until the thing or person that you blame changes, I hope that you have a Snickers.

 When you look at a person or thing and see that it blocks or constricts one avenue between you and your goal, you have regained the key to your cell.

 The next step is to imagine all the options that are available to gain what you desire & it will take work. Creating new avenues can be a challenge and in most instances, that's why a lazy-minded person chose to blame in the first place.

 I wanted a can of beans and without a can opener I used a knife, I wanted peace in a hostile situation so I meditated until I disconnected and peace came never physically removing myself from the scenario. 

 And here's the last part: I was living on my sports yacht in Daytona Beach, FL. and I wanted my dogs to have puppies & after serving my country on more than one occasion, I no longer agreed with the United State's values so I walked away from it all = Sacrifice.

 If you're willing to mentally work & sacrifice there is nothing that you can not do, no blame required.

 The owner of this blog, The Metaphysician, NDJ

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Biden’s retreat: The humiliation of a superpower

 The chaos in Afghanistan has ‘shredded’ America’s reputation as a global power.

“America’s back,” President Biden grandly declared in his first global address after taking office. Yet on the evidence of the past week, said The Times, that claim could scarcely be further from the truth. The Taliban’s extraordinary capture of Kabul brought to mind the fall of Saigon in 1975. It marks a humiliating end to a two-decade war which has cost trillions of dollars; it will cause the Afghan people immeasurable suffering; and it will heighten the risk of the very Islamist terrorism that the US-led intervention in 2001 was meant to quell. Perhaps most significantly, it represents a comprehensive repudiation by the US of its commitment to “defend liberty abroad”, a principle which has underpinned Western foreign policy for the better part of a century. It’s too soon to say just how damaging Biden’s Afghan withdrawal will be, said The Economist. But “the stench of great-power humiliation” that has pervaded this past week suggests his many boasts about reasserting US leadership after “four years of buffoonery” under Donald Trump are likely to “haunt his presidency”.

And so will the images from Kabul of the “shuttered American embassy”, said Roger Cohen in The New York Times, and of “gun-toting Taliban forces” taking over government buildings that were meant to enshrine an “American-built democracy”. Yet the blame for this “disaster” cannot be levelled at Biden alone. True, the president – like much of the US public – has long doubted the wisdom of America’s continued presence in Afghanistan. But he’d been boxed in by Trump’s decision last year to strike a direct deal with the Taliban, one that excluded the Afghan government, which committed the US to withdrawing by May. If you ask me, said Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times, “getting the hell out” is the right call. In fact, “we should never have gone in”. We in the West may tell ourselves we’re doing good by “bombing the people we do not approve of”, but the overwhelming evidence suggests that our penchant for nation-building invariably “ends up badly for us and even worse for them”. In Afghanistan, that is clearly evidenced by the deaths of 240,000 Afghans, 70,000 of them civilians, since 2001 – to say nothing of the 2,312 US soldiers and 456 British troops who lost their lives there too. We may enter these places hoping to turn them into “nice liberal democracies”. But we can’t, and it’s time we stopped trying to.

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"I know nothing & understand even less", NDJ Explained

 

Socrates is philosophy’s martyr. Sentenced to death in 399BC Athens for ‘corrupting the minds of the youth,’ Socrates never wrote anything down. We know of his era-defining thinking only through the writings of his contemporaries, particularly his student Plato. ⁣

Plato’s Socratic dialogues — some of the most wonderful works in the history of philosophy — feature Socrates in lively conversation on a wide range of subjects, from justice and virtue to art and politics. The central theme in Socrates's thinking, however, concerned the nature of knowledge — specifically, on how none of us really have any. As a statement often attributed to Socrates puts it:

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.⁣

During Socrates's life, the Oracle of Delphi proclaimed him the wisest of all people. Socrates, regularly declaring absolute ignorance as he did, could not agree. He therefore set out on a quest to find someone wiser to prove the Oracle wrong.

Ruffling influential feathers with the Socratic method

Socrates approached influential Athenians considered wise by the people of the day — statesmen, poets, and teachers. He conversed with these individuals using what is now known as the Socratic method, a form of cooperative dialogue that uses incisive questioning to stimulate critical thinking and draw out presuppositions.

A more straightforward way to think about the Socratic method is to imagine a relentlessly curious child asking ‘why’ after every single explanation an adult offers, seeking a truly foundational response to a question rather than an endless chain of unsatisfactory causal reasoning. Unfortunately for Socrates, being a quite famously ugly adult male, he was not afforded the same good grace a child might have been.

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20 Best Things to Do in Ecuador & Incredible Places to Visit

 

Ecuador may be a relatively small country, but it holds loads of amazing experiences for travelers to enjoy. There are so many awesome things to do in Ecuador to fill weeks or even months of travel! The vast diversity of landscapes lends to so many different places to visit all throughout the country.

Serene beaches line Ecuador’s coastline.

The glacier-capped Andes loom over the country.

A lush jungle environment thrives in both the Amazon basin and Ecuador’s cloud forests.

Then toss in the many charming colonial cities dotting the natural landscapes.

And let’s not forget about the incredible underwater world of the Galapagos!

It’s this vast diversity that supports the long-held tourism slogan “All you need is Ecuador.” Each different environment holds so many intriguing things to do in Ecuador. Yet with this abundance of recreation and culture to explore, it can be difficult to narrow down exactly what to do in Ecuador.

So we’ve now spent a total of six months traveling across the country to seek the very best places to visit in Ecuador. This article was written from that experience to offer travel ideas and suggestions for those who may be considering a trip to Ecuador.

The best things to do in Ecuador will vary to each person, depending on interests. Some may have a penchant for cultural exploration. Whereas others may be more interested in Ecuador’s nature. Some may favor relaxing at Ecuador’s beaches or luxury spas. Others may prefer climbing a volcano or mountain biking down it!

There’s something for everyone! We wrote this roundup of what to do in Ecuador to highlight the best travel experiences Ecuador has to offer across each of those spectrums. It’s our hope that this list of the best places to visit in Ecuador will provide travel inspiration for a trip to this awesome country.

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"Conspiracy Theory" does not men that there's no truth in the thought(s)

As the COVID-19 crisis worsens, the world also faces a global misinformation pandemic. Conspiracy theories that behave like viruses themselves are spreading just as rapidly online as SARS-CoV-2 does offline. Here are the top 10 conspiracy theories making the rounds.

Blaming 5G

This conspiracy theory should be easy to debunk: it is biologically impossible for viruses to spread using the electromagnetic spectrum. The latter are waves/photons, while the former are biological particles composed of proteins and nucleic acids. But that isn’t really the point — conspiracy theories are enticing because they often link two things which at first might appear be correlated; in this case, the rapid rollout of 5G networks was taking place at the same time the pandemic hit. Cue a viral meme linking the two, avidly promoted by anti-vaccine activists who have long been spreading fears about electromagnetic radiation, egged on by the Kremlin.

It’s worth repeating, as the World Health Organization (WHO) points out, that viruses cannot travel on mobile networks, and that COVID-19 is spreading rapidly in many countries that do not have 5G networks. Even so, this conspiracy theory — after being spread by celebrities with big social media followings — has led to cellphone towers being set on fire in the UK and elsewhere.

Bill Gates as scapegoat

Most conspiracy theories, like the viruses they resemble, constantly mutate and have several variants circulating at any one time. Many of these plots and subplots seem to involve Bill Gates, who became a new target of disinformation after gently criticizing the defunding of the World Health Organization. According to the New York Times, anti-vaxxers, members of QAnon and right-wing pundits have seized on a video of a 2015 Ted talk given by Gates — where he discussed the Ebola outbreak and warned of a new pandemic — to bolster their claims he had foreknowledge of the COVID pandemic or even purposely caused it.

A recent variant of this conspiracy theory, particularly beloved by anti-vaccination activists, is the idea that COVID is part of a dastardly Gates-led plot to vaccinate the world’s population. There is some truth in this, of course: vaccinating much of the world’s population may well be the only way to avoid an eventual death toll in the tens of millions. But anti-vaxxers don’t believe vaccines work. Instead some have spread the myth that Gates wants to use a vaccination program to implant digital microchips that will somehow track and control people. The spread of misinformation has meant that ID2020, a small non-profit that focuses on establishing digital IDs for poorer people around the world, has had to call in the FBI. (The Cornell Alliance for Science is partly funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.)

The virus escaped from a Chinese lab

This one at least has the benefit of being plausible. It is true that the original epicenter of the epidemic, the Chinese city of Wuhan, also hosts a virology institute where researchers have been studying bat coronaviruses for a long time. One of these researchers, Shi Zhengli, a prominent virologist who spent years collecting bat dung samples in caves and was a lead expert on the earlier SARS outbreak, was sufficiently concerned about the prospect that she spent days frantically checking lab records to see if anything had gone wrong. She admits breathing a “sigh of relief” when genetic sequencing showed that the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus did not match any of the viruses sampled and studied in the Wuhan Institute of Virology by her team.

However, the sheer coincidence of China’s lead institute studying bat coronaviruses being in the same city as the origin of the COVID outbreak has proven too juicy for conspiracists to resist. The idea was seeded originally via a slick hour-long documentary produced by the Epoch Times, an English-language news outlet based in the United States with links to the Falun Gong religious cult that has long been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Epoch Times insists on calling COVID “the CCP virus” in all its coverage. The theory has now tipped into the mainstream, being reported in the Washington Post, the Times (UK) and many other outlets.

COVID was created as a biological weapon

A spicier variant is that COVID not only escaped from a lab, but it was intentionally created by Chinese scientists as a biowarfare weapon. According to Pew Research, “nearly three-in-10 Americans believe that COVID-19 was made in a lab,” either intentionally or accidentally (the former is more popular: specifically, 23 percent believe it was developed intentionally, with only 6 percent believing it was an accident).

This theory that the Chinese somehow created the virus is particularly popular on the US political right. It gained mainstream coverage thanks to US Sen. Tom Cotton (Republican,  Arkansas) who amplified theories first aired in the Washington Examiner (a highly conservative media outlet) that the Wuhan Institute of Virology “is linked to Beijing’s covert bio-weapons program.”

This theory can be easily debunked now that there is unambiguous scientific evidence — thanks to genetic sequencing — that the SARS-CoV-2 virus has entirely natural origins as a zoonotic virus originating in bats. The Examiner has since added a correction at the top of the original piece admitting the story is probably false.

The US military imported COVID into China

The Chinese government responded to the anti-China theories with a conspiracy theory of its own that seeks to turn blame back around onto the United States. This idea was spread initially by Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, who Tweeted “it’s possible that the US military brought the virus to Wuhan.” These comments, according to Voice of America news, “echoed a rumored conspiracy, widely circulated in China, that US military personnel had brought the virus to China during their participation in the 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan last October.” For China, as the Atlantic reported, this conspiracy theory, and an accompanying attempt to rename COVID the “USA virus,”’ was a transparent “geopolitical ploy” — useful for domestic propaganda but not widely believed internationally.

GMOs are somehow to blame         

Genetically modified crops have been a target of conspiracy theorists for years, so it was hardly a surprise to see GMOs blamed in the early stages of the COVID pandemic. In early March, Italian attorney Francesco Billota penned a bizarre article for Il Manifesto, falsely claiming that GM crops cause genetic pollution that allows viruses to proliferate due to the resulting environmental “imbalance.” Anti-GMO activists have also tried to blame modern agriculture, which is strange, since the known path of the virus into the human population — as with Ebola, HIV and many others — was through the very ancient practice of people capturing and killing wildlife.

Ironically, GMOs will almost certainly be part of any vaccine solution. If any of the ongoing 70 vaccine projects work (which is a big if), that would be pretty much the only guaranteed way the world can get out of the COVID mess. Vaccines could be based on either GM attenuated viruses or use antigens produced in GM insect cell lines or plants. If GMOs do help save the world from the curse of COVID, maybe they’ll stop being a dirty word.

COVID-19 doesn’t actually exist

According to professional conspiracy theorists like David Icke and InfoWars’ Alex Jones, COVID-19 doesn’t actually exist, but is a plot by the globalist elite to take away our freedoms. Early weaker versions of this theory were prevalent on the political right in the notion that the novel coronavirus would be “no worse than flu” and later versions are now influencing anti-lockdown protests across several states in the US. Because believers increasingly refuse to observe social distancing measures, they could directly help to spread the epidemic further in their localities and increase the resulting death rate.

The pandemic is being manipulated by the ‘deep state’

Some believe that a “deep state” of America’s elite is plotting to undermine the president — and that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the US coronavirus pandemic response — is a secret member. Fauci’s expression of disbelief when the deep state was mentioned during a press briefing supposedly gave the game away.

COVID is a plot by Big Pharma

Many conspiracy theory promoters are in reality clever actors trying to sell quack products. Alex Jones, between rants about hoaxes and the New World Order, urges viewers to buy expensive miracle pills that he claims can cure all known diseases. Dr. Mercola, a quack anti-vax and anti-GMO medic who has been banned from Google due to peddling misinformation, claims that vitamins (and numerous other products he sells) can cure or prevent COVID. NaturalNews, another conspiracist site, sells all manner of pills, potions and prepper gear. These conspiracists depend for their market on getting people to believe that evidence-based (i.e. conventional) medicine doesn’t work and is a plot by big pharmaceutical companies to make us ill. Big Pharma conspiracies are a staple of anti-vaccination narratives, so it is hardly surprising that they have transmuted into the age of the coronavirus.

COVID death rates are inflated

Another far-right meme is the idea that COVID death rates are being inflated and therefore there is no reason to observe lockdown regulations or other social distancing measures. Prominent in promoting this myth is Dr. Annie Bukacek, whose speech warning that COVID death certificates are being manipulated has been viewed more than a quarter of a million times on YouTube. Bukacek appears in a white lab coat and with a stethoscope around her neck, making her look like an authoritative medical source. Dig a little deeper, however, as Rolling Stone magazine did, and it turns out she’s actually a far-right anti-vaccination and anti-abortion activist, previously noted for bringing tiny plastic fetuses into the Montana state legislature. Her insistence that COVID death rates are inflated has, of course, no basis in fact. More likely the current death toll is a serious under-count. T0 further clarify the issue, the Centers for Disease Control has published information about excess deaths associated with COVID-19.

How to recognize and debunk conspiracy theories

It is important to speak out and combat online misinformation and conspiracist narratives, whether on COVID or climate change or anything else. This handbook (PDF) by John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky, both of whom have extensive experience in combating climate denialism, is an essential tool.

Note: As in previous coverage, it is our policy to avoid linking directly to websites and social media feeds that promote misinformation and conspiracy theories, so as not to drive traffic to them and give them higher visibility.