COVID-19 conspiracy theorists ‘shamelessly’ using 9/11 anniversary to spread misinformation, experts say – By Bethany Dawson (Business Insider) / Sept 11 2021
- 20 years on from the terror attack of the World Trade Center, conspiracy theorists continue to peddle misinformation.
- Now, some are using the anniversary to spread falsehoods about COVID-19.
- One message in a Telegram channel says the two events show “the elites waging a biological and genetic war.”
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The anniversary of 9/11 is being appropriated by COVID-19 conspiracy theorists in a “shameless” fashion, experts say.
I News report that Telegram channels – a site renowned for hosting far-right and conspiratorial groups – are sharing messages conflating the two events, describing the pandemic and the terrorist attack as “the elites waging a biological and genetic war against the population.”
The paper states that one message reads: “Right now, with the excuse of a false pandemic crisis, we find ourselves in a similar situation, where our freedoms and constitutional rights are being threatened worldwide, in order to impose a toxic gene-therapy vaccine, using bribery.”
The COVID-19 vaccine is safe to get and is not “gene therapy,” with Dr. Adam Taylor, a virologist and research fellow at the Menzies Health Institute, Queensland, Griffith University, told Reuters, “there is zero risk of these vaccines integrating into our own genome or altering our genetic makeup.”
