Throughout the year and a half of the COVID-19 pandemic, social networks and messaging platforms such as Whatsapp and Telegram have been flooded with misleading narratives about the disease and the vaccine, as well as various remedies and cures, which far from helping, drive misinformation, increased cases and hospitalizations.
In a framework of extremely high uncertainty, different discourses have also been triggered that show evident inconsistencies about the origin and the end of the pandemic. These are anchored in false data or cognitive metaphors to give a false framework of interpretation to the global pandemic.
The metaphor of war
The first of these is based on the metaphor of war. This narrative points out that the pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus is part of a plan led by a secret group: the elite, the globalists? or some abstract social actor: the single thought, the New World Order, Judeo-Masonry, Satanist groups, gender ideology, and the promoters of a New Age.
Sometimes, it can involve different public figures or groups such as China, pharmaceuticals, "experts" with conflicts of interest, Bill Gates, said Paola Ricaurte, associate professor in the Department of Media and Digital Culture at the Monterrey Institute of Technology (ITESM) and digital rights activist, and Eduardo Paz, data scientist.
Through a recent analysis, the experts pointed out that this discourse appeals to the historical experience of extermination, population control, political control: crusade, extermination camps, labor camps and Nazism.
In addition, they stressed that these people who circulate such disinformation, consider that the vaccine is a pretext to inoculate a technology, either to place a chip or microchip; although they also invent that it can be a genetic modifier, a lethal treatment, fragments of human immunodeficiency virus - HIV, graphene or a tracker, all this in order to achieve a secret goal of extermination or exploitation of humanity.
In that sense, they express that such acts are also part of a campaign of sterilization; "brainwashing"; crusade against Catholics; reducing the population; extermination of the poor, "disabled" and vaccinated, or eliminating the soul of humanity, among others. So the call is to confront or resist the attack of these dark forces.
A coup called "fraud
The second metaphor is that of fraud, highlighted Eduardo Paz and Paola Ricaurte, since it states that COVID-19 and vaccination are a scam to make money. Therefore, this discourse consists of revealing that everything is a "big scam" by the pharmaceutical companies and the medical community to make money.
Thus, they consider that there is a social actor, called the "pharmaceutical lobby", the pharmaceutical companies, the "pharmaceutical cartel", and the World Health Organization (WHO), who, they say, withhold information about vaccines, register patients as having COVID, have a disinterest in curing the population, or who have invented the vaccination "fraud" for material gain.
Round 3, "The Resistance".
The third narrative works under the metaphor of "The Resistance," the experts explained.
It includes a discourse by anti-mask groups under a pro-rights and libertarian tone, and seeks to show how there is a growing movement against a "sanitary dictatorship" that is accused of seeking to limit the freedom of citizens.
Therefore, they stressed, words like "revolution" are used, in which it is pointed out that all those complicit in the COVID-19 "fraud" will be brought to trial, alluding to the Nuremberg trials.
Meanwhile, measures to prevent and combat the pandemic are seen as measures of social control.
Hidden Warfare
The last narrative operates under the metaphor of the hidden war. In it, reference is made to groups of declared supporters of Donald Trump, who claim that there is a secret global war between "evil groups" and "patriots".
In that sense, they consider that these "patriots", led by the former president, are cleansing different governments and global institutions of infiltrators that make up a global network of pederasty.
One of the central points of this network, they say, is the White House. For them, the vaccine is part of this conspiracy, since it seeks to undermine the "patriotic" American army and ensure the triumph of the external threat, usually China, which is considered the center and origin of the virus.
"This type of rumor is not a new phenomenon. In times of uncertainty it is normal to seek some kind of certainty. That's why these rumors are so popular," said Eduardo Paz, a data scientist.
He added that "a novel element is the capacity for propagation associated with digital technologies. This association has allowed information without any kind of validation - contrary to what happens in journalism or science - to be spread".
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