Even after YouTube tightened its grip on videos about conspiracy theories linking the COVID-19 pandemic to 5G, attacks on fifth-generation mobile network towers continue in the UK. As the country becomes one of the European regions most affected by the disease, with a death toll of over 12,000 in the country, 53 towers were set on fire last week, according to the local press.
Several 5G towers from three of the largest telecommunications operators in the UK were attacked during Easter weekend. Vodafone CEO Nick Jeffrey indicated in a post on his LinkedIn page that 20 operator infrastructure had been set on fire. The official informed that one of the towers that was vandalized was one of the communication infrastructures of a newly built field hospital in Birmingham.
The situation of countless families that cannot accompany their loved ones when they most need to break their hearts. The issue becomes even worse when the possibility of being connected through a denied call due to the self-actions of a group of people who believe in a conspiracy theory, said the CEO of Vodafone.
The operator EE confirmed to the British newspaper I that 22 infrastructures were set on fire during the Easter season and most were not even in the fifth generation mobile network. The company clarified that although not all attacks were successful, several towers were damaged and one of the most serious cases led to the evacuation of a residential area in the immediate vicinity.
BT CEO Philip Jansen made it known in an editorial in the British daily newspaper Daily Mail that 11 of the operator's towers were set on fire and 39 company engineers were verbally and physically attacked, including receiving death threats.
Conspiracy theories that claim that fifth-generation mobile networks are one of the factors that caused the appearance of the COVID-19 pandemic or that accelerated the spread of the disease began to emerge as early as January this year. In the United Kingdom, they started to gain strength from March, when the country began to be strongly affected by the pandemic.
British FullFact, an independent fact-checking organization, has already unmasked the main conspiracy theories in relation to this theme, in line with what the scientific community says. FullFact indicates that there is no link between the 5G networks in Wuhan, where the pandemic started, and the disease itself. The idea that 5G can affect an individual's immune system has no basis, explains the organization, adding that there is no hard evidence to link both sides of the issue.
