COVID-19 is caused by 5G

The argument

This theory begins from a coincidence in timing. The COVID-19 outbreak coincided with the mass installation of 5G towers across China and other parts of the world, and many who hold the theory claim that this can hardly be mere coincidence. Two developments that appear together on the same timeline are read as a single development with a single cause, and the inference from that coincidence to causation is the step on which everything that follows depends. Proponents of this theory, such as social media star Dana Ashley, say that the 5G rollout is the root of the disease, noting that its symptoms are akin to those of radiation poisoning. The observation is offered as corroboration: if the illness resembles what exposure to radiation is held to do, then on this account the newly installed source of transmission is a more plausible explanation for it than a virus of natural origin. The mechanism proposed to connect the two is that 5G signal is believed to activate particles within the virus and cause them to replicate uncontrollably. Framed that way the network is not merely correlated with the outbreak but is the instrument driving it, which allows the theory to account for the disease appearing where coverage has been installed. The political conclusion is where the theory meets the position it is offered in support of. If the signal drives replication, and the signal can be directed, then governments are held to be able to deliberately target 'non-compliant' citizens with it and shut down their organs — a capability that would make the pandemic a mechanism of enforcement rather than a public health emergency. On this account COVID-19 is therefore an advanced form of state control, and the infrastructure built to deliver the signal is the means by which that control is exercised.

Context

(ALERT: Visit the WHO for accurate information about the coronavirus pandemic)

Premises

Counter-arguments

There is absolutely no evidence of a connection between 5G and COVID-19. Scientific studies have shown that 5G cannot penetrate the skin, and therefore can have no impact on a person's internal organs as the virus does. The theory originated in a now debunked paper, which claimed the human brain can experience long term damage from being exposed to phone signal. This was later disproved.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Coincidence in timing is not evidence of a cause, and the timing does not in fact hold: the virus spread rapidly through countries with little or no 5G infrastructure, including in parts of Africa, South America and Iran. The symptom comparison fails as well — acute radiation exposure damages bone marrow and the gastrointestinal tract rather than producing respiratory illness and loss of smell — and the virus has been isolated, sequenced and transmitted under laboratory conditions with no signal present. [Rejecting P2] No physical mechanism is described. 5G uses non-ionising radio frequencies that lack the energy to break chemical bonds and do not pass through the skin, so they cannot reach internal organs; a virus is not a device that a transmission can activate; and selectively targeting named individuals is not something a broadcast network is capable of doing. [Rejecting C] The claim is unfalsifiable as stated — no observation is specified that would count against it — and it traces to a paper on phone signal and brain injury that was withdrawn after review. Its documented consequence has been arson attacks on telecommunications masts, including equipment carrying emergency service traffic.