A BOOK PUBLISHED in 1989 is said to show plans for a conspiracy to use Covid-19 and 5G radiation to kill large amounts of people and cause anarchy.

However, a page describing these plans does not accurately describe what happened during the pandemic, does not appear in the book it is said to come from, and terms such as Covid-19 and 5G that appear on the page would not make any sense to a reader in 1989 — particularly as they would not be coined for decades.

“New World Order by A. Ralph Epperson,” reads the top of an image shared widely on social media, including by an Irish Facebook user.

The image shows the cover of the book, and supposedly one of its pages outlining three phases of a plan called Operation Lockstep.

“Inflation of Covid case numbers through changing of death certificates, double-counting, and classifying all deaths including other diseases and natural causes as Covid-19,” part of the description of the first phase reads.

This closely mirrors conspiracy theories that were shared during the Covid pandemic which claimed that Covid numbers were being artificially inflated to drive panic or compliance.

They weren’t true then, and aren’t true now. Deaths attributed to Covid-19 in Ireland, like in many countries, required laboratory confirmation of the virus that causes Covid-19.

“Exposure to 5G radiation will further attack the immune system,” reads the second phase of the plan. “Thus, when people re-emerge into society, more people will fall ill. This will be blamed on Covid-19.”

There are no proven health risks from 5G, nor any connection with the Covid-19.

The third phase of the plan supposedly involves releasing “a weaponised SARS/HIV/MERS virus” after the vaccine was released, killing a huge amount of people and causing “war” between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. “It will be anarchy from all sides” the page reads.

Needless to say, there was neither war nor anarchy over the vaccines. Instead, vaccines meant that the virus that causes Covid-19 became more manageable (though it still spreads and can cause serious illness). Society reopened and largely returned to normal.

Although the page got important details wrong, these would still be remarkable predictions to make in 1989. However, it wasn’t made then, and there are some tell-tale signs that it could not have been.

The term “5G” is not natural or scientific. Instead, it refers to the “fifth generation” of technology used to create networks for devices such as mobile phones.

In 1989, the world was still on the first generation of such technology. This is now sometimes called 1G, though this is a term applied retrospectively — it wasn’t in use at the time, as people in 1989 had no need to differentiate their current and only version of the technology from anything that came before it.

Similarly, Covid-19 refers to a coronavirus disease that was first recorded in 2019. It was originally called by other names, such as the Wuhan coronavirus, after the city where the first known outbreak occurred. The term Covid-19 would be an anachronism in 1989.

Similarly, the page references “a weaponised SARS/HIV/MERS virus”.

The virus that causes the AIDS disease was dubbed HIV in 1986, but the first disease that would be called SARS (Severe acute respiratory syndrome) broke out in 2002.

Similarly, MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) was identified in 2012 and named the year after, decades after the book was published.

So if the page is not from New World Order by A Ralph Epperson, is that book real?

It is, though scans of the book show it was copyrighted in 1990, not 1989.

The book is largely a hodgepodge of conspiracy theories and predictions that have not come true.

The page that appears in the social media posts does not appear in that book, nor do the terms Covid; 5G; MERS; or SARS (or HIV for that matter).

The Covid-19 outbreak saw massive changes in society that could be felt in the lives of almost every individual in Ireland. As the disease was new, and its lethality and how to counter it were both unknown, speculation, and conspiracy theories filled the knowledge vacuum.

In many cases, these conspiracy theories claimed that Covid-19, restrictions and vaccines would be used to take total control of society and create permanent lockdowns, ultimately reducing Irish citizens to slaves.

As we have learned more about the disease, how to manage it, as well as seeing that society was not reduced to servitude, many of the people who once espoused these theories have ceased to take them seriously.

Nevertheless, there remains a sizeable number of accounts online dedicated to repeatedly spreading the same misinformation and conspiracy theories about the Covid pandemic, even as they become increasingly disconnected to anything in the real world.

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