16 Apr Is Intentionally Spreading the Virus an Act of Terrorism?
The world is in a state of crisis as the COVID-19, Coronavirus, pandemic takes root everywhere. This has led to governments ordering non-essential businesses to temporarily shut down and forcing entire communities to lockdown. People are only allowed to leave their homes for essential trips, and when out need to practice social distancing by staying a minimum of 6 feet away from one another.
While self-isolation isn’t the most exciting thing ever, most people understand its importance. They recognize that if everyone does their part and just stays home, they can slow the spread of the virus and save millions of lives. Then there is the population out there that just can’t seem to comprehend the gravity of the situation.
Sadly, there are people out there that think their spring break is more important than staying healthy, or that it is funny to spread the virus even further. As if that’s not bad enough, con-artists are even taking advantage of people’s panic to make a quick buck.
People Do Incredibly Dumb Things on the Internet
The internet has become pretty infamous with some of the dumb challenges it has come up with over the last few years. While a few of the challenges were great and for a good cause, such as the ice bucket challenge, some were just plain stupid. The Tide Pod challenge springs to mind.
One social media “influencer” recently tried a spearhead a new trending challenge, the coronavirus challenge. The influencer posted a video to her social media account depicting her licking an airplane toilet seat with #coronaviruschallenge. Naturally, the video earned a lot of attention online, though most people seemed to condone the act rather than praise it. That, combined with the fact most videos under the hashtag are about how to stay safe during this pandemic led to very little, if any, copycats.
In an interview, the 22-year-old admitted that she did it to get attention and has gone on record stating that she doesn’t care what kind of attention she gets as long as she is getting attention. Apparently, the toilet was on her “sugar daddy’s” private plane and she had the common sense to bleach the seat before licking it.
Stay Calm and Don’t Get Conned
Another concern that people are now having to face due to the pandemic is scammers. Con-artists all over are feeding off of people’s fears and panic to make some easy money. Scammers have set up automated calls to randomly dial people and attempt to sell them things such as toilet paper, masks or gloves. The goal with these robocalls is to get people to hand over credit card information and make a payment for a service that will never be rendered.
There has also been an increase in coronavirus tracker apps and websites that exist solely to put malware on to people’s devices. People flock to these sites and apps to keep an eye on the scary situation. Unfortunately, these malicious apps and websites only exist to steal information off of people’s devices through the use of malware. If a person wants to keep tabs on the virus, then they should stick to using a trusted and reliable source.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) is doing their very best to crack down on these scams
This Is a Very Serious Time
As far as the DOJ is concerned any acts where people purposefully try to spread coronavirus can be considered acts of terrorism. The same holds for even threatening to spread the disease. This is because the virus technically meets the requirements to be considered a biological agent.
This new take on any intentional spreading of the virus has been delivered to all law enforcement agencies across the country. Officers all over have been instructed not to tolerate such behavior.
As far as the scammers are concerned, the DOJ is doing everything that they can to stop them. Once caught, the scammers will face all sorts of charges that come with a lot of hefty fines and jail time.
When it comes to the so-called “influencer,” luckily most people seemed to be smarter than her and chose not to do something as dumb as licking a toilet seat.
What are your thoughts on how the DOJ is handling this and how they are viewing the intentional spreading of the disease? Should people who intentionally spread the coronavirus be considered terrorists? Let us know what you think in the comments down below.