2024-08-21 05:01:17
MPOX treatment center at the Nyiragongo General Reference Hospital in northern Goma (Democratic Republic of the Congo) on 17 August 2024.
Rumors about a “planemic” are back. On Wednesday, August 14, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a public health emergency of international concern, the highest alert level for mpox, a disease formerly known as monkeypox or monkeypox, which includes a The new strain is spreading from the east. For conspiracy theorists, simply doing so would lead to the conclusion that the pandemic was orchestrated for nefarious purposes, and“They are trying to reinvent the coronavirus”, As one internet user summed it up.
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Key players in pandemic conspiracy myths of 2020-2021 quickly modified their speeches at the time to fit the outbreak: Silvano Trotta, the great architect of Francophone disinformation in 2020; Quebec Alexis Cossette, the man who smuggled stories of conspiracy between the United States and France at the height of the QAnon movement, and even some offshoots of the anti-restriction and anti-RNA vaccine group RéinfoCovid…
Illustrated with a photo of Bill Gates His face is covered with dollar-shaped buttonsthe same reasoning appears again: “Follow the Money” (“Follow the money”), meaning the American billionaire (a major private donor to the World Health Organization) will benefit from every health crisis thanks to his vaccine patents. As early as the spring of 2020, the Microsoft founder was already the violent target of conspiracy theories blaming him for the emergence of Covid-19. Just as his participation in a health emergency preparedness exercise in October 2019 was interpreted as a plan for Covid-19, a speech in 2021 in which he evoked the fear of bioterrorists exploiting smallpox is today seen as Evidence for the involvement of smallpox in the spread of a new MPOX strain.
“Ladybug Acne” and the Denial of Zoonotic Diseases
This classic conspiracy reflex involves creating scapegoats for every health crisis while also vehemently denying the natural origins of disease. Viral publications irony about this “Monkeypox” Its name can be misleading: it was discovered in primates in the 1950s, but we now know it is transmitted through rodents. This bodes well for those who resist scientific consensus and do not believe the virus could have come from animals. Ironically, a long list of unlikely diseasesof “Ladybug Acne” exist“Snail ear infection”. Although widely documented, this is a way to put aside the zoonotic nature of the epidemic to better blame men, especially virologists, for engaging in dangerous manipulation.
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From its earliest weeks, the Covid-19 pandemic has been dominated by speculation about a virus that leaked from a laboratory. From studying the traces of accidents to Hollywood scenes of bioweapons, the hypotheses never stop. Four and a half years later, mpox is entitled to the same little music: A 2019 report revealed that lab work on a smallpox strain was used confirm Than this “Completely replicated by Canadian researchers”, “To kill us”, I believe Internet users know.
The return of big pharma
In the sinister riff on conspiracy theories in 2020, many pretended not to realize that there is little comparison to what has happened so far. Unlike Covid-19, mpox is not an airborne disease but is spread through sexual intercourse, physical contact or droplets. Mpox is still contagious and worrisome, but its reproduction rate is not comparable to pathologies associated with respiratory viruses, nor does it justify the same type of health response. “As far as I know, no one has mentioned the idea of using quarantine measures to control MPOX”Epidemiologist Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of Public Health at the University of Geneva, recalls, Questioned by the website Atlantic.
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Other conspiracy theorists have seen warnings from the World Health Organization «Big Pharma»suspected of a conspiracy by a multinational pharmaceutical company. Pour Silvano Trotta, “We have to induce fear so that the first fools start getting vaccinated to lead the rest”. But this interpretation is also wrong, because vaccines for smallpox and its different strains are universal and therefore generate little profit for big pharmaceutical companies.
Further, Alexis Cossette, like many Trumpist activists, is convinced that the 2020 election was stolen from Democrats, see a link between the World Health Organization alert and the November U.S. presidential election. Forget that the World Health Organization has issued a coronavirus alert for the second time in two years and, according to the latest news, has not prevented any elections from taking place.
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Updated 08/21 9:40 AM: Remove tweets with outdated mentions.
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