Bill Gates and 5G

Well-organized, professional disinformation peddlers in the QAnon and anti-vaccination movements have gained new audiences during the coronavirus pandemic by coalescing around two primary boogeymen: Bill Gates and 5G towers.

Halazun heard it all firsthand. He didn't know where it all began or how to stop it.

"These anti-vaccination people were telling me I'm a sheep," Halazun said. "Dr. Fauci this, Bill Gates that. And I don't really care what you think about Bill Gates. It doesn't affect me. But it does affect me when they tell me what we're doing is not real and that the hospitals are really empty. It hurts."

In January, a well-known promoter of QAnon, the baseless conspiracy theory that Trump is secretly dismantling a pedophile-cannibal cabal that runs the U.S. government, pushed a conspiracy theory that Gates "patented" the coronavirus based on a mischaracterized public patent search.

The patent was created by a Gates-aligned research institute to research a vaccine, a common practice among researchers, and it covered a previous coronavirus, not the one that causes COVID-19.

Still, the tweet helped spark a focus on Gates that has permeated the various conspiracy theory networks that have developed on the internet in recent years.

The same QAnon promoter later promoted a diluted form of bleach called "Miracle Mineral Solution" as a possible way to kill the coronavirus.

Similarly, the anti-vaccination movement has pushed a false conspiracy theory that 5G towers are weakening immune systems throughout the world and that COVID-19 is a cover story for the colossal death tolls around the world.

After a prominent anti-vaccination figure posted a video on Instagram of a man alongside a destroyed 5G tower, several arson fires were set on towers across Europe and Canada.

Brian Keeley, a professor of philosophy at Pitzer College in California who studies why people believe in conspiracy theories, said some people in times of crisis look to far-fetched ideas with simple answers for complex problems.

Providing a straightforward, extinguishable enemy — whether it's a well-known celebrity like Gates or a mysterious concept like the illuminati — gives conspiracy theorists hope, agency and power in a time of chaos. In reality, those recognizable, often mortal figures are simply scapegoats for an act of God.

"People are looking for these kinds of explanations to control something in their lives," Keeley said.

Keeley, who's been researching conspiracy theories for over 20 years, said he has abandoned using Facebook because of the "depression that comes from looking at that."

"It's sort of an informational quarantine," he said. "You don't want to be exposing yourself to a different kind of virus."

Quitting Facebook

After researching why people believe in the conspiracy theories, Halazun has come to the same conclusion: Right now, it's not worth it for a doctor to spend any time on Facebook.

"We're limited in our emotional capacity. I'm not going to spend whatever I have left after a long day of work trying to convince a conspiracy theorist," Halazun said. "They're immune to any evidence. You're not going to change their mind."

As Halazun stepped outside after his Facebook experience, he heard the bang of pots and pans and whoops and hollers. It was 7 p.m., and New York City residents were participating in their nightly salute to health care workers on the front lines of fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

"I just started crying," Halazun said. "I thought, 'What do I believe here?' It almost made me question myself. Some people are out there who are sitting in their homes, going on these videos and then telling us it's fake while we're saving lives.