As with any large scale event here on planet earth, there are countless theories floating around as to what’s really going on.
Perhaps it’s because Americans are just naturally curious, (read: Distrustful), and have to feel like they’ve gotten to the bottom of everything they experience. This sort of laser focus, combined with the innate and exploratory character of all Americans, often lends itself to some creative, albeit fictional conspiracy theories.
During this global coronavirus pandemic, one of the bizarre theories that’s floating around has to do with how the death toll is figured. You see, some believe that the COVID-19 closure of the world economy was planned well in advance, in order to bring about some sort of controlled economic collapse. In order to scare us into going along with this, doctors and nurses around the nation are allegedly assigning coronavirus as the cause of death in cases where the patient may not have died of coronavirus.
This is all conspiracy fodder, mind you, and no real evidence exists to back up these claims.
Dr. Anthony Fauci of the White House coronavirus task force was forced to explain this during at Thursday press conference.
Fauci, who has been director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, said he had seen unfounded conjecture attach itself to previous crises and dismissed the emerging idea, largely promoted by high-profile figures in rightwing media, that the US’s Covid-19 death toll is being inflated by unrelated medical conditions.
“There is absolutely no evidence that that’s the case at all,” Fauci told NBC on Thursday. “I think it falls under the category of something that’s very unfortunate – these conspiracy theories that we hear about. Any time we have a crisis of any sort there is always this popping up of conspiracy theories.”
These wild conspiracy theories aren’t harmless either.
Just days ago, a man under the influence of one such theory attempted to crash a freight train into a US Navy hospital ship docked in California, claiming that he was trying to bring attention to the ship as he believed that it played a central role in one of these conspiracies.
