Idiots vandalise critical UK infrastructure over baseless 5G COVID-19 claims

[WYP]

Stay indoors, don't harass key workers... I can't believe I need to say that...



Read more about Vandals attacking 5G networks over bogus Coronavirus claims.

 

[trawetSluaP]

Utter morons but can we really expect any better from a population that boasts people who believe the Earth is flat...

 

[AngryGoldfish]

So 5G masts cause cancer AND spread coronavirus? Next they'll be drowning kittens.

 

[Dicehunter]

So 5G masts cause cancer AND spread coronavirus? Next they'll be drowning kittens.

They cause health problems if you have VERY long term VERY close exposure to them, Like 1 foot or less, It's why people who install them have to wear protective clothing, The technician who installed one near my work was wearing a full radiation suit but again he does maintenance on multiple masts per day and exposure over the long term does cause health problems, This is why the masts are usually very high up so they pose no danger to the general public.

 

[WYP]

They cause health problems if you have VERY long term VERY close exposure to them, Like 1 foot or less, It's why people who install them have to wear protective clothing, The technician who installed one near my work was wearing a full radiation suit but again he does maintenance on multiple masts per day and exposure over the long term does cause health problems, This is why the masts are usually very high up so they pose no danger to the general public.

It's the same reason why Doctors wear protective gear during X-Rays and patients don't (normally). Patients get one X-Ray, but Doctors get exposed a lot more regularly, especially specialists.

Constant exposure is bad, but single doses or silly low doses of radiation won't have any notable impact. My home town is at the edge of a mountain range that's filled with Granite. Higher than normal background radiation there because if it. It's not like anyone sees that as a concern.

It is strange the priorities of some people.

 

[grec]

They cause health problems if you have VERY long term VERY close exposure to them, Like 1 foot or less, It's why people who install them have to wear protective clothing, The technician who installed one near my work was wearing a full radiation suit but again he does maintenance on multiple masts per day and exposure over the long term does cause health problems, This is why the masts are usually very high up so they pose no danger to the general public.

There may be some workers out there who choose to wear a full suit, but a hazmat suit cannot offer any form of protection against electromagnetic radiation (Even if there were a risk/the radiation was ionising, there is no hazmat suit capable of blocking ionizing radiation), and in fact this claim that workers *need* to wear suits has been roundly disputed by and disproven.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hazmat-suits-5g-equipment/

Also worth noting, that if there ever was a real risk from non-ionising radiation, it would be roughly at the same level of the risks from vegetable oil and talcum powder, while even then 5G antenna's are significantly less powerful than 4G or earlier masts & antennas as far as their power output (And therefore radiation output).

It's also false that these have to be placed far away from people, with modern technologies of 4G and 5G that have lower power/penetration, often hundreds of antennas could be fitted in the nooks and crannies of a built up city centre. Placing them higher is purely so you get better range/signal. The large tall masts are mostly for covering more rural areas with shorter buildings only, or for offering older technologies, nowadays.

If there were a risk from antenna's, there would be an equal risk from your phone, since the communication is two way and signal strength needed of both your phone's antenna and a network antenna would roughly match at best anyway.

For reference, this is what an urban microcell antenna of modern 3G and onwards tech can look like. These are for upto about a 2KM area, but modern antennas can be fitted for covering areas as small as a few hundred meters per antenna (picocells) in city centres, esp under bridges or between buildings or whatever.

 

[AlienALX]

From what I read non ionising radiation causes heat. So if you sat on one you might burn your arse and that's about it.

 

[DARKSF]

I would step up , and call it domestic terrorism. This is attack on the nation communications that in most countries is considered part of the national security.

Remember most of the modern day terrorists are mostly idiots.

 

[Warchild]

Lol I have a 5G mast/base station 2 metres from my office desk. Our first in Norway and one we test with. If our company even had a slightest fear of damage to health we would not be sitting so close to it.

Im standing right next to it many many times a day running tests. It makes me laugh how media educates the uneducated with such false info it creates paranoia all over the place.

Its also far smaller than the one pictured above. About the size of ITX PC case.

 

[trawetSluaP]

It makes me laugh how media educates the uneducated with such false info it creates paranoia all over the place.

Makes me laugh that idiots are stupid enough to believe what the media says...

 

[Warchild]

Makes me laugh that idiots are stupid enough to believe what the media says...

not to be offensive at all.. but it seems like only certain countries succumb to that level of stupidity. And UK is near top of the list. I only have to look at comments on facebook and just facepalm. I guess its expected when you have newspapers like "The Sun" and such still in operation coupled with social media.



I look at the Nordic countries and see a much different mentality over things. There are all exceptions of course.

 

[trawetSluaP]

not to be offensive at all.. but it seems like only certain countries succumb to that level of stupidity. And UK is near top of the list. I only have to look at comments on facebook and just facepalm. I guess its expected when you have newspapers like "The Sun" and such still in operation coupled with social media.



I look at the Nordic countries and see a much different mentality over things. There are all exceptions of course.

No offense taken, I work in customer services and have to deal with stupidity on a daily basis.

We are in the middle of a global pandemic yet people will still contact us regarding a refund after a few days because they haven't received one, despite there being enormous strain on payment merchants only to realise they were checking the wrong account for the refund.

 

[NeverBackDown]

not to be offensive at all.. but it seems like only certain countries succumb to that level of stupidity. And UK is near top of the list. I only have to look at comments on facebook and just facepalm. I guess its expected when you have newspapers like "The Sun" and such still in operation coupled with social media.



I look at the Nordic countries and see a much different mentality over things. There are all exceptions of course.

Basically, any first world country is like this these days. The more technology becomes integrated the more idiots there are. If a person is less dependant, they are generally speaking less dumb. Just my anecdotal experience.

 

[Warchild]

Basically, any first world country is like this these days. The more technology becomes integrated the more idiots there are. If a person is less dependant, they are generally speaking less dumb. Just my anecdotal experience.

I look at the tabloids here like VG.no and (excluding present day pandemic) you will see Norway mock UK and US quite a lot based on the hot political topics. It is a lot more respectful these days due to the virus, but some times I do wonder if the editor is biased against UK/US.

However culture can also play a part. When I lived in the UK, everyone loved to complain, moan and be generally negative to strike up conversations. That negativity would spark debates which would escalate into paranoia or conspiracies that e.g. Government is taxing product x to put these companies intentionally out of business etc.

 

[WYP]

I'm paraphrasing a comment from Wendell from level1techs, but "every time I think they can't get dumber, they build a better idiot." This comment was about IT admin work and how people always find a way to ruin systems, but the same thought can be applied elsewhere.

 

[grec]

I do think part of the US & UK's problem is deeply routed in the fact that almost all our major media publications are owned by like 5 billionaire oligarchs who in turn are in bed with the politicians. If a politician doesn't support the media oligarchs, then the media demolishes them into oblivion to ensure they never gain power.

I think this is also from the same source of this problem

When I lived in the UK, everyone loved to complain, moan and be generally negative to strike up conversations. That negativity would spark debates which would escalate into paranoia or conspiracies that e.g. Government is taxing product x to put these companies intentionally out of business etc.

People love to find boogeymen, but they do so directed by what they hear in the media. Which means for us in the UK & US, the dodgy politicians always get let off the hook because papers like The Sun and Daily Mail create and fuel these ludicrous conspiracy theories.

 

[AlienALX]

Basically, any first world country is like this these days. The more technology becomes integrated the more idiots there are. If a person is less dependant, they are generally speaking less dumb. Just my anecdotal experience.

It's always been that way dude.

I still remember my nana pushing her microwave buttons at arm's length and then walking away because some idiot told her it would cook her insides FFS.

 

[grec]

It's always been that way dude.

I still remember my nana pushing her microwave buttons at arm's length and then walking away because some idiot told her it would cook her insides FFS.

To be fair, old microwaves didn't used to cut off if the protective shielding in the window was broken, so it is something that used to be a possibility but ofc only if one became damaged.

But still, yeah, I mean if you look back at what even some of the smartest people of the era believed in the 1930's, people often held in high regard now for other reasons, then it's clear we've made a lot of progress on the whole disinformation issue, now that people have ready access to multiple independent sources. Still a long way to go though, and non-establishment channels of intentional misinformation can exploit that too now.

 

[AlienALX]

Funny thing is these people think they are very clever because they refuse to believe what they are told, yet end up believing a load of horse poo instead.

My ex wife had a high IQ. Not as high as mine (god that peed her off) but the problem is that with intelligence becomes the problem that people think they are too clever. I can not even begin to tell you how much that has cost her.

People of high intelligence really need to keep a hold of their humility. Otherwise you end up a narcissist. Not that I am saying these people spreading this garbage are intelligent. It took me about two minutes to discern that it was non ionising radiation that causes heat. So like I said, if you sat on a transmitter you might burn your arse but it's not ionising radiation that causes cancer.

I tried in vain to explain this to some guy that added me as a friend on Facebook, but the thick idiot just doesn't get it.

Now my cousin? yeah it didn't surprise me. He was always a sandwich short of a picnic. Problem is when it's someone with even reasonable intelligence. It's really embarrassing to watch.

 

[grec]

Yeah though none of this is really an issue of intelligence, much more an issue of cultural cognitive biasing, especially dominant the further back in time you go. If you either choose to ignore the empirical data because it doesn't fit your worldview, or the empirical data isn't available yet(As was more often the case historically), then your conclusions will likely end up being built on emotion and gut instinct, and whether that's right or not is just a coin flip.

This is why for example, people who were at the pinnacle of physics in the 1930's, could have pretty dismal views on things like genetics(Like believing in eugenics and so on), because Biology as an empirically studied field was in its infancy, and so conclusions about things like evolution were steeped in guesswork and consequentially also subconscious cultural biasing.

It seems quite obvious now, particularly with issues like this, that even just ensuring everyone has say a GCSE level understanding in Science would go a long way to stopping this kind of misinformation from finding a root, but the key skill long term is to ensure people understand how scientific theory and conclusions are built up, and why empirical data is so infallible as a basis for conclusions that we have discovered more about the universe in the last 100 years than the millennia previous combined.