Contagion, Conspiracy, and COVID

Viruses aren't the only dangerous things out there

In 2011 director Stephen Soderbergh released Contagion, an action thriller about a worldwide viral pandemic. The film was a critical and commercial success. But its $135m gross against a $60m budget put it at #60 on the list of 2011’s highest-grossing movies. Not only was Contagion beaten at the box office by blockbusters like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 and Captain America: The First Avenger. It earned $65m less than Bad Teacher, a Cameron Diaz film summarized thusly by IMDBPro:

A lazy, incompetent middle school teacher who hates her job, her students, and her co-workers is forced to return to teaching to make enough money for breast implants after her wealthy fiancé dumps her.

On January 20, 2020, the CDC reported the first confirmed case of what was then called the 2019 Novel Coronavirus. According to anti-piracy company MUSO, between December 2019 and January 2020 illegal streaming downloads of Contagion increased 5,609%.

On March 6, over a week before the first lockdowns were announced, Contagion was the #7 rental on iTunes. On March 24, in the second week of lockdowns, HBONow announced that its usage had leaped 40% thanks to movies like Contagion and Ebola: A Doctor’s Story.

You could argue that this spike in interest was inevitable, given the similarities between the movie’s subject matter and a real-life worldwide pandemic. But that begs the question: why would people dealing with a pandemic entertain themselves with films about pandemics? Why would they not instead seek distraction in films about Harry Potter, Captain America, or Cameron Diaz’s boob job?

In a March 19, 2020 Slate article, Sam Adams and Rebecca Onion discussed Watching Contagion in the Age of the Coronavirus. The opening paragraph by Adams is particularly enlightening:

SA: Watching Contagion now was uncanny. Of course, it’s a little bit frightening but also weirdly comforting. One of the odd things about fiction is that even if it’s realizing our worst fears, you’re still sitting there not at a movie theater at the moment but at home watching it. You have that literal distance between you and the thing, and that is helpful somehow.

That “literal distance” Adams talks about is very important. Aristotle saw tragedy as a purgative. Watching Contagion in 2020 gave frightened people a safe space to deal with their fears on both an intellectual and emotional level. It also gave them the comfort of seeing the fictitious pandemic brought under control.

Jude Law in Contagion (2011)

Alan Krumwiede: Do you really think this Dr. Hextall, CDC person, is Jesus in a lab coat? The government rushed the trials. The lawyers indemnified the drug companies. Maybe it causes autism or narcolepsy or cancer 10 years from now. Who knows? You - the - the swine flu vaccine killed people back in 1976. Nerve disease. So we're all guinea pigs, starting from today. Just wait, they'll start listing side effects like the credits at the end of a movie.

As played by Jude Law, Alan Krumwiede is a conspiracy blogger claiming that MEV-1 is a bioweapon and that he cured himself of the infection with forsythia. Is Krumwiede a believer, a charlatan, a threat, an attention-seeking proto-influencer? The answer to these questions is “yes,” and the viewer is left to decide in what proportions. In 2011 that kind of subtlety was still something audiences expected from actors like Law, directors like Soderbergh, and scriptwriters like Scott Z. Burns.

Soderbergh and Burns worked with specialists like Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, the director of Columbia University's Center for Infection and Immunity, to create the best possible simulacra of a plague. Quite a few of Contagion’s consultants were involved a decade later in the COVID-19 response. While Contagion envisioned looting over homeopathic forsythia, there were no ivermectin riots during the COVID lockdowns. But there certainly was a crackdown on dangerous misinformation that might lead people into refusing a vaccine.

On April 20, 2020, Mark Lynas of the Alliance for Science listed the Top 10 COVID Conspiracy Theories.

1. Blaming 5G

2. Bill Gates as scapegoat

3. The virus escaped from a Chinese lab

4. COVID was created as a biological weapon

5. The US military imported COVID into China

6. GMOs are somehow to blame

7. COVID-19 doesn’t actually exist

8. The pandemic is being manipulated by the ‘deep state’

9. COVID is a plot by Big Pharma

10. COVID death rates are inflated

Blaming 5G

A quick Google search reveals a 2021 paper that describes Evidence for a connection between coronavirus disease-19 and exposure to radiofrequency radiation from wireless communications including 5G. The article was published online and in print in the Journal of Clinical and Translational Research, a Singapore Open Access journal. Its authors are Beverly Rubik and R.R. Brown.

Dr. Beverly Rubik has a PhD in Biophysics from UC Berkeley (1979). She is the founder of the Institute for Frontier Science, a professor at two online colleges, Energy Medicine University and Saybrook University, and a health educator “offering holistic health assessments, individualized lifestyle recommendations, and health coaching.” Dr. Richard R. Brown is a board-certified Arizona radiologist with medical licenses in multiple states.

It would be easy enough to dismiss Rubik as a hack selling woo-woo, and Brown as a patsy or a shill using his medical license to peddle unproven treatments. But let’s take a look at the actual paper, starting with this excerpt from the abstract:

[W]e present evidence that WCR [wireless communications radiation] may:
(1) cause morphologic changes in erythrocytes including echinocyte
and rouleaux formation that can contribute to hypercoagulation;
(2) impair microcirculation and reduce erythrocyte and
hemoglobin levels exacerbating hypoxia;
(3) amplify immune system dysfunction, including
immunosuppression, autoimmunity, and hyperinflammation;
(4) increase cellular oxidative stress and the production of free radicals
resulting in vascular injury and organ damage;
(5) increase intracellular Ca²⁺ essential for viral entry, replication, and release,
in addition to promoting pro-inflammatory pathways; and
(6) worsen heart arrhythmias and cardiac disorders.

The Rubik/Brown paper lists 141 references to papers on COVID and the effects of electromagnetic radiation, so we can’t say they skimped on their research. And while Rubik’s interest in “energy medicine” may seem like Newage junk, Ayurvedic medicine recognizes Prana and much Chinese medicine involves balancing Qi. It seems culturally insensitive, maybe even White Supremacist, to dismiss healing modalities simply because they weren’t invented by Europeans.

When we turn to Lynas’s dismissal of the 5G Theory, we find this:

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.

What Lynas claims is true, but Rubik and Brown aren’t saying that viruses are being spread by 5G radiation. They are claiming that wireless communications radiation may cause damage that leaves individuals more susceptible to diseases. In the language of debate, Lynas commits a Straw Man Fallacy.

Let’s see what the EPA has to say about cell phones and wireless radiation:

Cell phones and wireless networks also produce RF energy, but not at levels that cause significant heating. Some people are concerned about the potential health effects of RF energy from wireless technology. Most studies haven’t found any health effects from cell phone use. A few studies have connected RF and health effects, but scientists have not been able to repeat the outcomes. This means that they are inconclusive. Scientists continue to study the effects of long-term exposure to low levels of RF energy.

Cell phone towers may broadcast higher levels of RF, so always remember to follow any warnings that limit access to the tower itself or the surrounding area.

Repeating the outcomes of experiments — replicability — is a cornerstone of the scientific method. This brings us to the replication crisis.

According to a 2019 Skeptical Inquirer article, the 2015 Reproducibility Project found that only 36% of psychology experiments could be successfully reproduced. A larger project, Many Labs 2, involved 186 researchers, 60 different laboratories on six continents, and over 7,000 participants of 36 different nationalities. That project found that only half of 28 well-known studies could be replicated with results similar to (though slightly slower than) the original results. 

Things are no better in the field of clinical research. Amgen, a US biotech company, could only replicate results on six of 53 widely-cited cancer research studies. Bayer was only able to replicate results on 24 out of 67 clinical studies. And a Stanford professor found that only 45% of 44 influential clinical studies could be replicated.

Am I offering an unqualified endorsement of the Rubik/Brown paper? Not at all, largely because I’m unqualified to make any kind of meaningful statement on its truth or falsehood. I would expect a board-certified radiologist has a better grasp on the physiological effects of radiation exposure at different frequencies than I ever will. And I will note that the idea of “vital energy” is taken as a given in many Asian healing modalities, so I’m reluctant to dismiss a source out of hand simply because she also takes vital energy seriously.

But I do note that the Alliance for Science dismissal did not address the actual claims made by those who connected COVID to 5G. I am also note that while it appears clear that COVID is not caused by 5G wireless radiation, it is not prima facie illogical to speculate that wireless radiation might have deleterious health effects that would make individuals more susceptible to COVID or other diseases. Or to note that many large and powerful corporations would have a vested interest in denying those health effects, much as tobacco companies stubbornly insisted for decades that there was no proven link between smoking and cancer.

Bill Gates

I must admit that I am skeptical of the idea that Bill Gates was responsible for or had foreknowledge of the COVID pandemic. Since any theories about Bill’s involvement would soon lead to unfalsifiable claims — a problem I covered in an earlier article — I’m going to leave this one alone and move on to the other “conspiracy theories” on the Alliance for Science list.

The Kings Who Rule in Shadow

The virus escaped from a Chinese lab

In February 2023, the U.S. Energy Department declared that a Wuhan lab leak theory was the most likely explanation for the COVID pandemic, though it also noted that other agencies disagreed with its findings.

COVID was created as a biological weapon

In December 2022, a Republican House Committee report found that the COVID-19 virus was most likely created by the Chinese as a biological weapon, while Democrats focused on the Trump administration’s failings in handling the COVID crisis.

The US military imported COVID into China

A September 2021 Intercept article found that the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Wuhan University Center for Animal Experiment, in cooperation with the U.S-based EcoHealth Alliance, have engaged in what the U.S. government defines as “gain-of-function research of concern,” intentionally making viruses more transmissible.

GMOs are somehow to blame

A 2020 study in Environmental Sciences Europe on genetically modified foods found that:

Serious adverse events of GM consumption include mortality, tumour or cancer, significant low fertility, decreased learning and reaction abilities, and some organ abnormalities.

While other studies have found that GMOs are completely harmless and even beneficial, those studies are typically funded by large agricultural corporations like Monsanto who have a vested interest in the test. I also would note that there were far more papers critical of GMOs prior to 2015, and after that date, we see a (manufactured?) consensus that GMOs are harmless and labeling is unnecessary.

So at least four of the Alliance for Science’s 10 “conspiracy theories” appear to have a grain — or a pile — of truth behind them, along with one "dismissal” that fails to address what the other side was actually saying.

Let’s wrap this thing up, shall we?

COVID-19 doesn’t actually exist

Lynas complains that “professional conspiracy theorists” are treating COVID-19 as a globalist elite plot. There were certainly lots of people engaging in that kind of speculation, so I will grant Lynas that one. But he also complains that:

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.

A 2023 study by the Fraser Institute found that lockdowns and social distancing reduced the COVID death toll by a mere 3.2% (27,000 lives) while leading to over 171,000 excess non-COVID deaths due to missed medical appointments, deaths of despair, and other lockdown casualties.

The pandemic is being manipulated by the ‘deep state’

Given that the wave of social media censorship against “COVID Denialism” ultimately led to the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop during the 2020 Trump vs. Biden election, I’d call this one more of an obvious statement of truth than a shadowy conspiracy theory.

COVID is a plot by Big Pharma

Lynas notes that “Many conspiracy theory promoters are in reality clever actors trying to sell quack products.” (Shades of Alan Krumwiede).

But ivermectin, a drug dismissed by journalists and pharmaceutical reps as “horse paste,” was found in a Brazilian study of 88,000 patients to have “up to a 92% Reduction in COVID-19 Mortality Rate in a Dose-Response Manner.” A 2022 Iranian study found that ivermectin alleviated significant COVID symptoms, while a 2022 Indian study noted that Combined therapy with ivermectin and doxycycline can effectively alleviate the cytokine storm of COVID-19 infection amid vaccination drive.

Meanwhile, a February 2023 article in the New England Journal of Medicine criticizes the MRNA booster shots that were recommended to stop the spread of “COVID variants”

Bivalent boosters resulted in levels of neutralizing antibodies against BA.1 that were only 1.5 to 1.75 times as high as those achieved with monovalent boosters. Previous experience with the companies’ vaccines suggested that this difference was unlikely to be clinically significant.

Ivermectin is actually well-tolerated and regularly used as an antiparasitic and antiviral medication in much of the world. Meanwhile, the CDC wrote in March 2023:

Evidence from multiple monitoring systems in the United States and around the globe support a causal association between mRNA COVID-19 vaccines (i.e., Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech) and myocarditis and pericarditis.

COVID death rates are inflated

There is considerable debate concerning whether many COVID-19 patients died “with COVID” or “of COVID.” Dr. Arturo Cassedeval notes:

The number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 does not include other deaths associated with the pandemic, such as those caused by the absence of proper care for other conditions because the healthcare system was focused on COVID-19, and much routine care such as cancer screening was slowed or postponed.

Although Dr. Cassedeval is too polite (or too afraid of losing his medical license) to say it outright, what he descibes are deaths caused by our response to COVID — a reaction that many today are starting to recognize as an overreaction.

After a bit of research, it’s hard to miss the fact that the Alliance for Science, and many other “experts” dismissed many valid concerns about COVID-19 policy as “conspiracy theories” in a heavy-handed way. It’s not surprising that this led to widespread distrust, or that many found those tarred as conspiracy theorists to be less biased and more believable than doctors and government officials.

Organizations have spent enormous amounts of time, manpower, and resources trying to determine why conspiracy theories persist. I could have saved them the effort. Conspiracy theories exist because they provide a more compelling explanation of the situation at hand than the official narrative.

As Jason Bailey noted in a January 30, 2020 Vulture article:

Contagion sprang to life in theaters nearly a decade ago, when the saga of a competent federal government triumphing over a villainous conspiracy theorist didn’t seem all that far-fetched. Nor did its overriding ethos of respect for, and trust in, traditional institutions. Today, it’s hard to know how to feel when the closing credits roll: comforted by the dramatization of a virus contained, or disturbed by the utter fiction of its happy ending?