Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumFor UK Climate Liars, It's A Hop, Skip And Jump To Becoming COVID Liars; Bonus: Miracle Cures!
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Commentators with a history of casting doubt on established climate science first turned their attention to COVID in the days just after Chinese authorities ordered the 11 million residents of Wuhan, a city the size of London, into lockdown. On January 24, Ross Clark, a columnist for The Spectator who has lamented hysteria around COVID-19, said there was no need to panic about coronavirus despite warnings from leading epidemiologists about the potential spread of the outbreak.
On January 29, British economist Roger Bate similarly argued on the website of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a climate science denying free-market lobby group, that news reports around COVID-19 were unnecessarily sparking a major political reaction. A contagion will happen at some point, and its important we recognize it and react. Unless the coronavirus mutates into something far more dangerous, this isnt it, he wrote.
The idea that governments and the media were overreacting to the coronavirus threat was echoed by libertarian online magazine Spiked, which has taken funding from notorious backers of climate science denial the Koch family, and has included Bate and other AEI scholars among its contributors. It published an article as early as January 30 saying there was mass hysteria in the newsrooms around COVID.
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Columnist James Delingpole wrote in a March 28 article for the Spectator Australia titled Wu Flu Notes that he had gone about his daily business despite having symptoms that align with coronavirus and that it was possible he had infected lots of graduates. Some days later, Delingpole posted a tweet claiming a high-powered zinc formula had helped him recover from the illness without the need to go into intensive care despite little being known about whether any such formula can be a cure for the virus.
He went on to write, what Id like more than anything is for this stuff to be available on the open market for everyone. But to mass produce it my friend needs ££££. If I crowdfunded it whod be interested? He concluded his request by asking for potential big money backers. Delingpoles zinc promotion was comparable to comments made by US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who, a few weeks prior, had received a cease-and-desist letter from a top New York attorney based on claims he had marketed and sold fraudulent COVID-19 treatments on his conspiracy website. US President Donald Trump was also widely criticised for suggesting that disinfectant taken internally could be a treatment for the virus.
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https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/08/10/how-uk-climate-science-deniers-turned-their-attention-coronavirus-covid-19