Not 5G

Editorial

The origin of Coronavirus is still shrouded in scientific mystery. Some say it is a biological weapons project gone awry. Some say it emanated from snakes. Others believe it erupted from rats. Another school suspect bats are to blame.

What is not in dispute is that it came from a place few knew before a few months ago in China: Wuhan. Even while the origin continues to puzzle humanity and the top chambers of science and laboratories, different kinds of speculations are in the air as to what can put it behind us.

Some have thrown up the magic wand of Chloroquine, an anti-malaria drug familiar in this part of the world for decades.

The French, who have recorded some of the high numbers of COVID-19 deaths, have tried to push its possibilities. The Americans have been wary about it while President Donald Trump, without any scientific certainty, has tried to wing it. The American medical establishment has ignored him routinely. Recently Brazil gave up on it because of its impact on heart rates.

But what has drawn attention to it for very bad reasons is the superstition peddled even among the so-called enlightened that Coronavirus is not actually a biological disease but an emanation from technology. They say it is from radioactive waves from the deployment of the fifth generation of wireless technology (5G).

This view gained a dubious traction on the internet; and the social media, for some time, began to whip conspiracy theories about a plot by the Chinese government to change the balance of power in the world.

They say that is why the major countries in the western world are suffering from the virus now more than China where it originated.

They claim that even in the major cities of China like Beijing and Shanghai, cases of the virus are capitally low, and that implies that the people of China have controlled the spread for hegemonic reasons. It is, they claim, a hegemonic nightmare for countries like the United States, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and France.

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Here the story rose into a temper when a church leader, Pastor Chris Oyakhilome, claimed the reason the Buhari administration decided to shut down Lagos and the Federal Capital Territory Abuja was not only for the prevention of COVID-19 spread.

Rather, he said with the sacerdotal emphasis of a man of God, that the shutdown was to allow 5G to be planted in our soil. He said it was in the two major cities that the infrastructure would be deployed.  He has since apologized for his holy fib.

No doubt, China is the leading country in the deployment of the technology, and it has beaten the United States to it, even in the area of research and development. Even the United Kingdom had to defy the U.S., its number one ally, to agree to deploy the technology, if in limited measures.

But medical experts have confirmed that those who are falling sick are not victims of technology but biology. They have diagnosed patients and they say it is not radioactive wave. So, for a pastor to jump to such a conclusion, was disappointing.

Another pastor, Matthew Ashimolowo, countered crisply saying that it is a virus, and that the religious leaders in the country should not hoodwink or mislead their flock.

He even went as far as noting that the scriptures recognised in Christ’s prophesy that we shall have pestilences like this in the last days. A Bishop in the US, Gerald Glenn, died of the disease after refusing to shut down his church and observe social distancing.

We have seen over the centuries the resistance of ecclesiastical authorities to science. But as Jesus himself said, “the truth shall set you free.” It makes no sense for anyone to mislead or obfuscate issues when science is clear on a matter.

Such erroneous interventions stand in the way of solutions, especially for a pandemic that has, as at April 16, claimed over 144, 699 lives; and infected 2, 168, 919 people around the world, shut down economies and livelihoods and turned the world into a tailspin.