To be sick of corona conspiracies.

[bluemoon77]

Is anyone else getting all these conspiracy type things popping up on their newsfeeds. Also messages from friends with “Read this before it’s taken down”. A lot of them are doctors saying they’re paid to call deaths as covid-19, or that the virus isn’t real, don’t have the vaccine, Bill Gates is in on it so we can be chipped to control us, the virus really came from an American lab, New World Order etc etc. Sometimes I start half believing them. What does everyone think?

Here are some pieces of information I've uncovered, partly through my specialist area and partly via simply researching the internet. I'd be very interested to hear people's views.

My specialist area is the UK's furniture flammability regulations. The government proved these do not work in 2014 but they remain in place. What that means is that every home in the country is packed out with flame retardant chemicals, many of them toxic. But flame retardants are big business: around £300m per year in UK furniture alone.

Imperial College's fire science unit receives funding from the flame retardant industry and has played a big role in blocking changes to the furniture regulations which would have massively reduced flame retardants.

The world's big three flame retardant producers are promoted by Burson Marsteller, a huge PR firm.

There is a steady flow of people from Imperial to Burson Marsteller taking up posts one way then the other. There is also a steady flow of government advisors to BM and back again, including the special advisor who worked on the blocked changes to the furniture regulations.

Imperial College of course supplies the modelling that drives the UK's policy (and other countries) of lock-down, social separating, etc.

Burson Marsteller also represents health care companies that make vaccines, ventilators, etc, and who will profit nicely from a pandemic.

Is this all just coincidence?

Not coincidence, but not necessarily conspiracy either.

@MustShowDH

Fair point. But I work with a group of people with diverse but connected specialisms and we've been tracking what is a worrying overall pattern, reflected in the example I gave but not exclusive to it. In short, over the past 30 years or so big business has infiltrated government, standards-making groups, scientific panels, etc, and largely now controls the regulatory process.

Where government/civil service is not in effect corrupt it's weak. So, for example, the Grenfell Inquiry was almost immediately populated by experts working for big business. One example: Sir Ken Knight was appointed Chair of the independent experts panel to the Grenfell Inquiry. He played a major role in blocking changes to the furniture regulations and his links to the flame retardant industry are pretty well-known.

Sir Ken's panel has refused to look at the role that flame retardants played in the Grenfell fire. You probably didn't even know about them yet toxic fumes from burning flame retardants in contents, particularly furniture, almost certainly was the main cause of deaths in the fire. Not cladding - where your attention has been deliberately focussed. Cladding was probably the ignition source for many apartment fires but that's pretty much all.

This is not conspiracy in the sense of wacky theories. But it is conspiracy in the sense that prominent, greedy people without ethics are playing a major role in policy-making and not in a way that is in the public interest.

Another example is Matt Hancock. He and Oliver Letwin put pressure on the junior Minister responsible for the furniture regulations - Jo Swinson. She was conflicted because we'd proved to her that the regulations don't work but industry and their inside people were pushing her to keep profits up. Hancock and Letwin persuaded her to delay the changes, knowing that in effect this would mean they'd be blocked for a long time (which has been the case).

Let's be clear: Matt Hancock was well aware that these regulations are putting the entire country at risk of fire in their own homes while at the same time poisoning us all. But he acted for business profits instead.

The same Hancock and Letwin also met (with Michael Gove) on the day that Grenfell was burning to discuss how they could further weaken building regulations in order to improve business profits. It seems that they scarpered sharpish when informed that this meeting might not be well-timed.

So forgive me if I'm not taking anything Hancock says at face value, including where the virus is concerned.

I don't think the conspiracy theorists could better the absolute mess of conflicting information we've been subjected to today.

@FlameingSofa
I've no doubt there's corruption everywhere, including government. I've heard some horrifying things about Grenfell too. I think you state very interesting info, that people need to be aware of.

It's 'Karen from Facebook' who is convinced MI5 / CIA / some dark underworld has whipped this all up to scare us into vaccines / being controlled / the world is flat that is winding people up.

@MustShowDH

Thanks. I've been getting the info out as best I can but to be honest most mainstream journalists won't go very near it (although George Monbiot did an article in Feb; credit to him).

I think the line between real conspiracies and bonkers ones is actually quite a bit thinner than we might think. You only have to read/listen to Bill Gates' actual words, then check out his track record, to see that he definitely wants the whole world vaccinated, and that an awful lot of money is involved (not to mention a lot of control too).

What blurs the line, in my experience, is that while there are some powerful people pulling as many strings as they can, an awful lot of what happens is down to sheer incompetence too.

Oh god, this thread has been a saviour to me! Have been surrounded by conspiracy theorists on Facebook, mainly work colleagues, spreading “love and light” whilst spouting hatred and fear. Reading this makes me feel sane again! And less frustrated, well until the last message on this thread.

We spend a lot of time worrying about kids and the internet but theres a certain type of middle aged male with no critical thinking skills who like to spread this shit so as to feel 'in the know' and above others.

It's far scarier to acknowledge that what we see might be all there is - that no-one's ultimately in control.

Look at Trump - surely no-one these days believes in the deep state of the American military-industrial complex other than Trump himself. (If it really existed, something would have happened to Trump long ago.) This evening he told an Asian-American reporter that coronavirus was a Chinese conspiracy. So much for the American military-industrial complex. Isn't it a lot scarier to realise that the whole postwar American project has just quietly dribbled away in four short years? America's global influence has disappeared just as quickly and as quietly as the USSR's did after 1990.

I'm sure conspiracy theorists can come up with some narrative to counter this, but it's a far reach to think that rendering the entire American state not just a global irrelevance but a genuine laughing-stock is some kind of top secret false flag operation where the CIA is suddenly going to reveal that Trump was a clever ruse all along

I think the most difficult thing is do the work of finding out the truth for oneself, as far as it's possible to. As stackthecats says, it might be that ultimately no one is in control: that much happens through sheer incompetency. I certainly saw a lot of it in the civil service.

But it's also easier to adopt one of two extreme views: that there is no such thing as conspiracy or that everything's a conspiracy. In my experience, trying to understand what's really going on say with the Grenfell Inquiry is a lot of work, requiring doggedness and not being put off by the myriad blind alleys, some at least semi-consciously deliberately set, e.g. by people who have prominent positions mainly to protect their undeclared business interests.

Similarly, there is documented evidence for example of the British government deliberately falsifying its history in many of its colonies and destroying any record of the actual truth. Is that a conspiracy theory? Well, it's not a theory because it happened.

And for me it raises the question of how much you can then trust the government, possibly taking one issue at a time. A lot of work!

It's far scarier to acknowledge that what we see might be all there is - that no-one's ultimately in control.

Yeah that’s apparently why a lot of people choose to believe that terrorist/shootings are so called ‘false flag’ attacks set up with actors - it’s more comforting to believe that than accept the fact that such shocking, random acts of violence can take place and cause ordinary people like them to lose their lives in an instant.

I think the documented evidence is the point, @FlameIngSofa
The government couldn’t have a conspiracy because they are too incompetent not to leave evidence/leak evidence. I’m including most global governments in that. Do they collude with big business to their own advantage but the public’s detriment? If they are right wing, then yes, of course. Is it a massive conspiracy to chip us all? Nope.

I’d be interested to see what the 35% who have voted YABU have to say.... these people walk among us.

@cardibach

I no longer distinguish much between right and left wing, simply because I've seen those on both sides fail to protect the public from being poisoned in their homes. Yes, Tory ministers have played a more direct role in blocking changes to suit business. But Labour MPs have failed to push at the establishment past a certain point, for whatever reason.

Also, I've noticed that the right wing press have presented far more a challenge to the official narrative over the coronavirus than the left wing media - often using evidence and facts, not just opinion (which is all you really get from the BBC these days).

Again, it's not conspiracy theory but there are some facts that get covered up or not made enough of. For example, Bill Gates clearly has an agenda over coronavirus, yet he has been persistently fawned over by the BBC and not questioned by the Guardian. Well, Gates donated $49m to the BBC and $9m to the Guardian. Which strongly suggests a reason for why he gets a smooth ride from those two. Which in turn raises the question of how much you can take them seriously over anything they have to say about the virus.

I’m confused about this insistence that Gates is up to something. He’s given large sums of money to medical causes for ages as far as I understand it. Of course he’d give loads to this, it’s the biggest medical emergency for a while...
He’s a business man, so donations to the media are par for the course too.
What ‘agenda’ are you hinting at? (Not just you Flameing, all those who say similar).

An agenda over coronavirus? What, because David Icke says so?

Yes, OP I am fed up of conspiracy theories. Unfortunately there are those on mumsnet who are all too happy to spread them.

But it is funny to see who the completely insane are on my fb feed.

I realised yesterday that some of the perfectly normal looking people I walk past every day, meet walking the dog etc are absolutely fruit loops when it comes to this!

I am still quite shocked by some of the suggestions, mostly about covid19 being man made and specifically aimed at certain people... because no germ can tell the colour of your skin, your age, your financial situation etc.

I hid them. I was too tempted to tell them why they were wrong. But I have a business to run, don't need a boycott!

But I am floored by it!

Oh! You see how you undermine yourself?

I was interested in the fire retardant info, I have to check for appropriate labelling in my job.

But then you did the Bill Gates thing, you did it badly too (his intentions are vague?).

And now I doubt everything you have said about fire retardant info. You could be right, but your showing of faulty logic has undermined your credibility.

And yes, I really do appreciate that my saying that just shows how sheepie I am!!

Just wait, she'll start posting anti-Semitic shite soon. Sorry, anti-zionist.

Or to put it another way, what exactly made him suddenly switch from making a fortune over in effect holding the world to ransom over computer software to apparently wanting to heal everyone

Altruism, maybe? I know you probably think there's no such thing. But maybe he wants to help provide vaccinations because they help save lives. Food for thought.

Otto Wels

"Altruism maybe?" But that's the point: you don't know; no one does. Of course altruism exists but the question is why would someone who became the world's richest man through creating a situation where most of us have to keep paying for software updates - a totally non-altruistic activity - suddenly switch to all-out altruism?

If you think I "did the Bill Gates thing badly" then please explain how exactly. I set out facts which raise questions. What is my faulty logic?

I have never suggested that anyone on this thread is "sheepie". I feel that's you ascribing a view to me that allows you to dismiss the serious issues I'm raising.

I didn't say I was right about Bill Gates; I raised questions about his motives. I am however right about the furniture issue, e.g. was proved so by a government select committee and have the documented evidence.

If you want to dismiss my views on Bill Gates, fine; that's your right. But please don't in the process dismiss the facts about furniture and flame retardants. It could be literally fatal for you to do so. Happy to explain why exactly and provide the documented proof. Again, there is a difference between offering an opinion (as I did with Gates) and providing evidence (which I can do regarding flame retardants).