5G and Coronavirus: how disinformation can put critical infrastructures at risk

While citizens across Europe are struggling with a quarantine regime that has lasted for several weeks, while States are trying to optimize the resources available to allow their national health systems to withstand the impact of the Coronavirus emergency, on numerous social networks a dangerous fake news is spreading. Specifically, the news reveals alleged links between the installation of 5G antennas in different cities and the onset of Covid-19 cases. This theory is generally declined in two variants. A first version claims that the electromagnetic waves propagated by the 5G antennas weaken the human immune system, exposing the population residing in the surrounding areas to greater risks of contagion. The other version claims that the virus can spread more easily and extensively by traveling through the same waves.

These theories are often accompanied by references to scientific studies or to opinions of self-styled experts. Among the most recurrent references there is a monograph by dr. Ronald Neil Kostoff on the risks of exposure to electromagnetic waves for human health, or to the words of prof. Luc Montagnier, virologist at the Institute Pasteur in Paris and Nobel Prize winner, who in a recent interview on French TV would have expressed vague doubts about it. However, going to check the validity of these documents or declarations, it turns out that the monograph in question is the result of an individual initiative of dr. Kostoff, devoid of any validation by the scientific community, as well as empirical evidence to support its thesis. In the case instead of prof. Montagnier, from whom the whole scientific community suddenly took the distances, his general perplexities were soon.