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posted by martyb on Wednesday May 20 2020, @08:36AM   Printer-friendly
from the the-stupidity-it-hurts-it-burns! dept.

Cell-tower attacks by idiots who claim 5G spreads COVID-19 reportedly hit US:

US warns carriers to boost security, citing reports of attacks in several states.

The Department of Homeland Security is reportedly issuing alerts to wireless telecom providers and law enforcement agencies about potential attacks on cell towers and telecommunications workers by 5G/coronavirus conspiracy theorists. The DHS warned that there have already been "arson and physical attacks against cell towers in several US states."

The preposterous claim that 5G can spread the coronavirus, either by suppressing the immune system or by directly transmitting the virus over radio waves, led to dozens of tower burnings in the UK and mainland Europe. Now, the DHS "is preparing to advise the US telecom industry on steps it can take to prevent attacks on 5G cell towers following a rash of incidents in Western Europe fueled by the false claim that the technology spreads the pathogen causing COVID-19," The Washington Post reported last week.

<no-sarcasm>
FACT: 5G mobile networks DO NOT spread COVID-19!
</no-sarcasm>


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @09:14AM (14 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @09:14AM (#996806)

    We don't got no 5G cell towers.

    BTW, the West has been utterly exposed as the emperor with no clothes. Even in Europe, former Soviet-block Eastern Europeans managed this pandemic way better than the "superior" West. Germany being a notable exception. Maybe because of Merkel, an Eastern German.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by zocalo on Wednesday May 20 2020, @10:00AM (3 children)

    by zocalo (302) on Wednesday May 20 2020, @10:00AM (#996818)
    That's a significant flaw in many of the 5G arguments though, and a pretty good indicatation that many of these "idiots" really are, well, idiots incapable of fairly simple reasoning, or maybe (potentially state-sponsored) trolls out to cause some trouble for the the Lulz or political gain. At this point, pretty much every country or region has at least some Covid-19 cases, yet unless the *global* 5G rollout is a LOT further along than we are being led to believe, it's a little hard to believe that 5G is responsible. You don't even need to understand knowledge of how viruses and RF work to realise this is almost certainly just FUD; just a little common sense.

    Another conspiracy theory is that there is a correlation (which is not causation) between 5G and increased cases due to immune system suppression, or there may not. Probably far too early to say for sure in the case of Covid-19, but that also seems likely to be false. RF spectra are incredibly congested, especially in the bands good for things like cellular comms, and the frequencies currently being used for 5G deployments would have been used for something else previously - exactly what depending on local telecoms regulators. If these frequencies were causing immune system issues, then you'd think we'd have some documented proof by now, right? Or is it more likely that this is just the latest version of the "Wi-Fi is causing cancer!" FUD that has been repeatedly tested and disproved in double-blind tests?
    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday May 20 2020, @05:51PM (2 children)

      by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Wednesday May 20 2020, @05:51PM (#997001) Journal

      Which would be worse? For this to truly be idiots which are a challenge to if not a sign of the fall of civilization, or that this is some sort of operation to test methods of Spetsnaz-style infrastructure destruction testing with the COVID stories as the cover? (Or both - professional insurgency testing with that as the cover story and then other idiots who get caught doing it but are idiots? Or some variation thereof, like such agency egging the idiots along and then standing back and watching what they are doing... Still and all, it would probably be less risky for any such groups to do it on their own soil and not need to test such a thing overseas.)

      At any rate, extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. Claiming that low power RF signals (as in not enough energy to cause burn damage) would interfere with bodily processes, when nothing in known science supports that, is an extraordinary claim.

      --
      This sig for rent.
      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by zocalo on Wednesday May 20 2020, @09:41PM (1 child)

        by zocalo (302) on Wednesday May 20 2020, @09:41PM (#997107)
        Personally, I suspect it's a combination of several groups. There are obviously some truly gullible idiots out there or crackpot theories like these would die on the vine almost as soon as they were started. Then there are the trolls who just like to cause others some serious grief - whether that's directly through swatting, destroying store fronts and cars in riots, etc. or encouraging others to do stupid things like torch 5G towers. There are probably a few attention seekers in the mix too; some people will do anything to get themselves media coverage, regardless of what it is, these days - every nutjob that follows you is still another follower, and more followers = more social media prestige, which can be quite lucrative if you have enough of it.

        What's really concerning though are those who are doing it professionally. This group are most definitely NOT idiots - quite the opposite - you've got to be quite intelligent and have an excellent grasp of psychological maniupulative techniques to be able to mix just enough truth and plausible but misleading statements into outright BS to convince people that really ought to know better to believe in the BS. Seriously, you need to check some of this stuff out, it's twisted but quite brilliant in its way; they've basically taken the kind of manipulation used in Nigerian 419 scams, perfected it through more elaborate phishing schemes, then ratchetted it to the next level for stuff like this. You make an excellent point about the Spetsnaz-style techniques too as something this would make a superb training exercise or dry run for a more up-to-date version of their tactics - why use smartbombs if you can use a combination of cyber attacks and your foe's own population to do some of the hard work for you? Get it right, and a war might even be won without the aggressor having to fire any ordnance at all.
        --
        UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
        • (Score: 2) by Pav on Thursday May 21 2020, @11:22PM

          by Pav (114) on Thursday May 21 2020, @11:22PM (#997640)

          Or else a self-own by our own intelligence communities. Huawei won the race to 5G, and telcos are deploying Chinese technology despite diplomacy. The best CPU manufacturer now speaks Mandarin, but at least they're OUR Chinese (TSMC of Taiwan) so at least we can pressure them into not supplying Huawei anymore... so if we can organise the busting of some of that equipment we can get back to managing our own societal decline for the benefit of the 0.001% instead of... I dunno... empowering the bulk of our own societies instead.

          Not saying this is what's happening, but the sad thing is it's plausible.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @01:02PM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @01:02PM (#996858)

    There actually doesn't seem to be a terribly strong correlation between per-capita Covid mortality and the quality of government. If there were, you'd be forced to draw some strange conclusions. In particular, that Africa is governed better than Europe, or that Little Rock, Arkansas is particularly well governed vs. New York City, or that some countries in Europe would be doing just as well or better if Trump were in charge!

    IMHO, the strongest driver of Covid mortality is travel and association. The US has that in spades on the coasts, and so does Europe with its essentially open borders between EU nations. Hard data is hard to come by anyway. The former East Bloc nations might look like they're doing better; but any honest source will tell you that the data are subject to variations in the way they test. Even if they are doing better, it might simply be because people there don't travel as much. That's our whole strategy to combat it without a vaccine: live like peasants who never leave our villages. If your country already has a lot of people living like that, it's going to have less cases, but that doesn't mean it's a superior country.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @02:20PM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @02:20PM (#996892)

      Not just countries, there's interesting counting being done in the backward states, e.g. Georgia [ajc.com].

      In the latest bungling of tracking data for the novel coronavirus, a recently posted bar chart on the Georgia Department of Public Health’s website appeared to show good news: new confirmed cases in the counties with the most infections had dropped every single day for the past two weeks.
      ...
      A spokeswoman for DPH told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the chart was incorrect because of an error in how it sorted dates. An aide to the governor told Holcomb that a software vendor caused the problem, Holcomb said. A tweet from a Kemp spokesman said the data team behind the chart published it because they thought it would be “helpful.”
      ...
      Others worry the data is being portrayed in a way that favors Kemp’s early easing of restrictions. A separate graph on DPH’s page has led readers to think that cases were dropping dramatically, even though lower case numbers were the result of a lag in data collection.
      ...
      “I have a hard time understanding how this happens without it being deliberate,” said State Rep. Jasmine Clark, D-Lilburn, who received her doctorate in microbiology and molecular genetics at Emory University. “Literally nowhere ever in any type of statistics would that be acceptable.”

      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @02:26PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @02:26PM (#996896)

        State Rep. Jasmine Clark, D-Lilburn, who received her doctorate in microbiology and molecular genetics at Emory University.

        She was so respected in her field that she became a democrat state representative.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @02:58PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @02:58PM (#996914)

          Great research well done. Have another one [theguardian.com].

          The scientist in charge of Florida’s Covid-19 database was fired on the same day as the state opened up for business.

          As sunbathers returned to beaches, and restaurants, movie theaters, gyms and hair salons in almost every county were permitted to open their doors on Monday, the Governor Ron DeSantis’s administration fired Dr Rebekah Jones from the Florida department of health.

          Jones, the architect and manager of the online dashboard held up by the White House in April as a model of transparency and integrity, said she was sidelined after protesting orders to censor some of the information it contained. And on Tuesday she claimed she was fired for refusing to “manually change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen”.

      • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday May 21 2020, @02:11AM (1 child)

        by DeathMonkey (1380) on Thursday May 21 2020, @02:11AM (#997196) Journal

        And that's just the latest Republican attempt to ratfuck the data.

        Florida scientist says she was fired for refusing to change Covid-19 data 'to support reopen plan' [theguardian.com]

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2020, @03:15AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2020, @03:15AM (#997228)

          Ratfuck?

          When did their personal standards rise?

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday May 20 2020, @06:43PM (1 child)

      by Thexalon (636) on Wednesday May 20 2020, @06:43PM (#997048)

      I actually wouldn't be surprised if African governments were in fact better prepared than European ones in responding to pandemics. And the reason is that many African governments have had a lot of practice, between HIV, malaria, Ebola, TB, and cholera. And that experience means that African governments and citizens alike are much more likely to take the threat seriously and accept the kinds of restrictions that are needed to reduce its spread, plus it's given them longstanding relationships with the WHO, MSF, and other international health care NGOs.

      And more importantly, what they definitely don't have is the same level of arrogance and denial that characterized the responses in Spain Italy, the USA, and Sweden which most definitely made things much worse than they had to be. For example, South Africa had domestic travel restrictions in place a few days after their patient 0 was detected, and has been in complete lockdown for a couple of months now, whereas much of the USA and Europe dragged their feet on both of those measures.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @10:54PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @10:54PM (#997134)

        Back in the 90s when AIDS was ripping the country apart, South Africa bought a couple dozen fighter jets to protect themselves against, uh, Namibia? I guess?

  • (Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @02:05PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2020, @02:05PM (#996881)

    > BTW, the West has been utterly exposed as the emperor with no clothes.
    > Even in Europe, former Soviet-block Eastern Europeans managed this pandemic way better than the "superior" West.
    > Germany being a notable exception. Maybe because of Merkel, an Eastern German.

    North Korea has not even a single case of Covid - which makes them not just the best Korea but the best country period.

  • (Score: 2) by quietus on Wednesday May 20 2020, @03:24PM

    by quietus (6328) on Wednesday May 20 2020, @03:24PM (#996926) Journal

    Unlike the China eh? Half as many dead as little Belgium, though it has about 100 times the size.