Roger Ver and John McAfee Recklessly Decry “Unnecessary” Coronavirus Pandemic Outrage

Roger Ver, a leading supporter of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and former CEO of Bitcoin.com, believes that the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic is excessive. British-American computer programmer and businessman, John McAfee, shares the same view. In a March 26 tweet, McAfee used a rundown of fatality statistics to support his argument that the government is using the pandemic to push an agenda, and that people need to stop being so thoroughly manipulated. 

Ver, in his own March 29 tweet, backed his conspiracy claims with a screenshot of figures that apparently compared the global death toll of COVID-19 with that of other diseases — including seasonal flu, malaria, and traffic fatalities — between January 1 and March 25, 2020. 

The screenshot was followed by Ver’s comment that “if YOU are worried about the coronavirus, YOU should self isolate. Leave the rest of us alone.” 

Unauthenticated Rebellion

In Ver’s tweet, he showed that there had been 313,903 traffic accidents, 228,095 fatalities from malaria, 113,034 seasonal influenza cases, and 249,904 suicides in the time span in question. These obviously eclipse the 21,297 who had died from the COVID-19 pandemic at the time. However, he didn’t provide any credible source for his claim. Funnily, neither did McAfee. 

Ver did not justify his opposition to self-isolation initiatives, not even picking sides with arguments that the lockdown is limiting civil liberties or is harmful to the economy. 

However, it is important to state that the validity of all the data currently used to monitor the pandemic remains a vexed issue, with critics constantly stressing their incompleteness due to insufficient monitoring and the non-admission of initially mild cases to public health facilities.

Several studies worldwide have concluded that many casualties are unlikely to have been diagnosed at the time of death, or that several governments have chosen to under-represent the mortality rate for political reasons and to avoid criticism. The disparity between the methods of various countries to assess direct causality on death certificates further veils the truth.

COVID-19 Realities

Conspiracy theories or not, the world continues to fight the coronavirus pandemic, and the official guidelines of the World Health Organization on the control of the disease include extensive monitoring, the quarantine of reported cases, touch tracking, and social distancing.

About a third of the world’s population had been locked up by governments as of Wednesday last week, as the struggle to eradicate the transmission of the virus has led to a significant burden on countries’ public health systems. However, countries such as South Korea were able to avert lockdown by introducing mass monitoring, touch tracking, and early quarantine targeting.

At press time, the estimated global death toll of COVID-19 is officially reported as almost 34,000.