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| “ | COVID is just cold! | „ |
| ~ Masayuki Hiratsuka's election poster |
COVID denialism is an ideology generated by anti-vaxxers or by people who believe that COVID-19 either does not exist, is not as dangerous as experts say it is or was deliberately manmade.
Most believers are victims of the recession caused by COVID-19 or paranoid people who over-believe rumors.
They believe that COVID-19 is a conspiracy theory (for example, "COVID is just cold", "COVID does not exist" and "COVID is a farce by government"), and are hated by various political groups and the majority of people. Also some people, like Unplug, are hostile to health care workers, and they sabotage health care works.
Although COVID denialism has no ideological boundaries, it most frequently crops up on the far-right, who also often utilize anti-Chinese racism as a part of COVID denialism, such as referring to COVID-19 as the "Chinese virus" or the "kung-flu" and spreading conspiracy theories that it was deliberately created by the Chinese government.
Type of COVID denialism
Inflated death count theory
One of the most common forms of COVID denialism is the false claim that COVID-19 is the same as influenza or the common cold, and that the number of deaths resulting from the pandemic is being inflated by the left in order to push a narrative. This claim often takes the form of this basic premise: somebody goes to the hospital with COVID, then dies of unrelated causes and has their death attributed to COVID. Another variant of this claim is that the media deliberately lied about the number of COVID deaths for sensationalism during the first lockdown.
"Plandemic" theory
Another common form of COVID denialism is the idea that COVID is a man-made disease engineered by nefarious forces, ranging from Microsoft founder Bill Gates to American financier George Soros to the Communist Party of China, as a way of reducing the world population. Many of those who favour the Bill Gates theory also believe that the COVID vaccine is engineered to poison people or corrupt their DNA, while the China theory often includes a connection to 5G masts from Chinese corporation Huawei.
Cyber-COVID denialism
Cyber-COVID denialism is COVID denialism in the Internet. Cyber-COVID denialism adopt trolling and Internet propaganda/publicity. And anti-vaccine movements using social networking tools such as Twitter and Instagram also apply to this.
People
- Alex Jones
- Alexander Lukashenko (formerly)
- Andrew Bolt
- Anthime Joseph Gionet
- Ben Garrison
- Chris Sky
- Cristián Contreras Radovic
- Daniel Egtvedt
- Donald Trump
- James Bonet
- Jair Bolsonaro
- John Magufuli
- Kate Shemirani
- Katie Hopkins
- Marjorie Taylor Greene
- Masayuki Hiratsuka
- Miguel Bosé
- Narendra Modi
- Piers Corbyn
- Robert W. Malone
- Sherri Tenpenny
- Simone Gold
- Timothy Wilson
- Vernon Coleman