Wireless Radiation & COVID-19

To be fair, there definitely is something to all the 5G talk

EMF as an Illness Intensifier

Some people believe that COVID-19 was caused by wireless radiation alone. This is plainly incorrect. The causative agent of COVID-19 is, almost certainly, an infectious airborne virus. However, does that mean that EMF cannot contribute to this illness in any way? Well, that’s technically not true, either.

People have been raising concerns over 5G wireless networks for a while, now, citing the use of higher frequencies than old GSM standards as a potential source of danger. Some of these concerns seem unfounded, at first glance. Technically, high-frequency EMF over 10 GHz has a very shallow penetration depth in the body. It barely gets through the skin. There is simply too much water in the way. This is one of the things that flummoxes the Internet of Bodies guys trying to get THz radiation to penetrate the skin; its penetration depth is even shallower than the 5G high band, quite literally fractions of a millimeter.

EMF-Portal - Radio frequency (10 MHz–300 GHz)

Does this mean that there is no risk from EMF, especially for COVID-19 sufferers? Well, the true picture here is a bit more complex than that. As it turns out, COVID-19 and EMF injury have an overlapping etiology of disease. They share an initiating event, in the form of excess calcium being drawn into cells through ion channels.

Journal of Clinical and Translational Research - Evidence for a connection between coronavirus disease-19 and exposure to radiofrequency radiation from wireless communications including 5G

In this study, we examined the peer-reviewed scientific literature on the detrimental bioeffects of WCR and identified several mechanisms by which WCR may have contributed to the COVID-19 pandemic as a toxic environmental cofactor. By crossing boundaries between the disciplines of biophysics and pathophysiology, we present evidence that WCR may: (1) cause morphologic changes in erythrocytes including echinocyte and rouleaux formation that can contribute to hypercoagulation; (2) impair microcirculation and reduce erythrocyte and hemoglobin levels exacerbating hypoxia; (3) amplify immune system dysfunction, including immunosuppression, autoimmunity, and hyperinflammation; (4) increase cellular oxidative stress and the production of free radicals resulting in vascular injury and organ damage; (5) increase intracellular Ca²⁺ essential for viral entry, replication, and release, in addition to promoting pro-inflammatory pathways; and (6) worsen heart arrhythmias and cardiac disorders.

Coronaviruses love calcium. They do everything they can to pull calcium from the extracellular space into the cytosol and to liberate it from the endoplasmic reticulum to amp up cellular metabolism, improving the translation rate and replication of virions but also producing a lot of oxidative stress and inflammation in the process.

SARS-CoV-2 envelope structural protein found to form voltage-activated and calcium-activated calcium channels

Functional ion channels are critical in the infectious cycles of several viruses since viruses modify host ionic balance (especially Ca2⁺) to facilitate their uptake, maturation, and export. Viroporins encoded in viral genomes are essential for altering ionic and cellular homeostasis. SARS-CoV-2 E forms ion channels in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-Golgi intermediate compartment (ERGIC) membranes in association with SARS-CoV-2 virulence and progression of infection.

As it just so happens, there’s a professor by the name of Martin L. Pall who has been arguing for years that wireless radiation inflicts oxidative injury to cells by opening voltage-gated calcium channels and setting off an oxidative stress cascade.

Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine - Electromagnetic fields act via activation of voltage-gated calcium channels to produce beneficial or adverse effects

The direct targets of extremely low and microwave frequency range electromagnetic fields (EMFs) in producing non-thermal effects have not been clearly established. However, studies in the literature, reviewed here, provide substantial support for such direct targets. Twenty-three studies have shown that voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCCs) produce these and other EMF effects, such that the L-type or other VGCC blockers block or greatly lower diverse EMF effects. Furthermore, the voltage-gated properties of these channels may provide biophysically plausible mechanisms for EMF biological effects. Downstream responses of such EMF exposures may be mediated through Ca²⁺/calmodulin stimulation of nitric oxide synthesis. Potentially, physiological/therapeutic responses may be largely as a result of nitric oxide-cGMP-protein kinase G pathway stimulation. A well-studied example of such an apparent therapeutic response, EMF stimulation of bone growth, appears to work along this pathway. However, pathophysiological responses to EMFs may be as a result of nitric oxide-peroxynitrite-oxidative stress pathway of action. A single such well-documented example, EMF induction of DNA single-strand breaks in cells, as measured by alkaline comet assays, is reviewed here. Such single-strand breaks are known to be produced through the action of this pathway. Data on the mechanism of EMF induction of such breaks are limited; what data are available support this proposed mechanism. Other Ca²⁺-mediated regulatory changes, independent of nitric oxide, may also have roles. This article reviews, then, a substantially supported set of targets, VGCCs, whose stimulation produces non-thermal EMF responses by humans/higher animals with downstream effects involving Ca²⁺/calmodulin-dependent nitric oxide increases, which may explain therapeutic and pathophysiological effects.

If you happen to have COVID-19, then being hit by microwave radiation could possibly make you sicker, and there is an entirely valid underlying mechanism here.

Now, could EMF cause all of the symptoms of COVID-19, with no virus at all? I find this highly unlikely, for a number of reasons. For one thing, if this were the case, one would think that radar operators and others constantly exposed to strong EMF sources at work would be coming down with endothelial dysfunction, sepsis, and pneumonia on a regular basis. We just don’t see that. For another thing, there are hundreds of thousands of papers that have been published on SARS-CoV-2 itself. It is pretty much a statistical impossibility, at this point, that the entire body of research on COVID-19 describes a hoax. The no-virus theories simply don’t hold up to the most basic of scrutiny.

However, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. Say that a specific wireless frequency was discovered that could efficiently open VGCCs in people’s bodies. It is, perhaps, conceivable that such individuals may suffer all of the symptoms of COVID-19, including endothelial dysfunction, sepsis, oxidative activation of inflammatory transcription factors, and so on. In both cases, the initiating events (calcium signaling, cellular stress responses) would be similar. However, the field strength from cell towers isn’t enough to manifest effects like these.

One of the more disturbing things about 5G base stations is rarely ever discussed. Like an Aegis radar on a missile destroyer, they have phased-array antennas, which means they can put out concentrated, narrow beams of RF.

Multiple base stations working in concert can combine their beams to create intense hot spots of RF at any arbitrary point in 3D space where those beams converge. Could this have negative health effects? Quite possibly, yes. Could this be used to injure or kill a specific target, if the towers were hijacked and controlled by a malicious actor? Perhaps, perhaps not. In any case, it is very unsettling that our telecom companies are installing what are basically high-powered masers every few hundred feet as part of small-cell initiatives. On the other hand, any such deliberate concentration of RF in people’s bodies by beamforming antennas would be well outside their software and hardware design parameters, and it could only happen if they were maliciously modified to do so.

If Switzerland called a halt to 5G rollouts, then people have every reason to be concerned. Zurich has some of the best and brightest people in the life sciences on the whole planet. If they think something’s up, then that should certainly be a cause for alarm for the rest of us.

Switzerland halts rollout of 5G over health concerns

Switzerland already has a notable anti-5G lobby, with recent protests against its rollout in Bern, Zurich and Geneva.

The Swiss Medical Association has advised caution on 5G, arguing that the most stringent legal principles should be applied because of unanswered questions about the technology’s potential to cause damage to the nervous system, or even cancers. 

Five “popular initiatives” — proposals for legally binding referendums on 5G use — are already in motion in Switzerland. Two have already been formalised and are in the process of collecting the 100,000 signatures needed to trigger nationwide votes that if successful will amend Switzerland’s constitution.

Most of these concerns, however, are not specific to 5G. That is to say, if radiation from 5G base stations is a threat to human health, then so is practically every other source of RF. Wi-Fi base stations, Bluetooth headsets, VHF marine radios, anything. It’s an area of study that needs continued investigation, and there are still a lot of unknowns in terms of the actual biological effects of non-ionizing radiation.

The next time someone you know says that there’s no reason to be concerned about EMF, and any worries about cell towers are just tinfoil-hat nuttery, you can feel free to tell them that they’re dead wrong about that, and that there are entirely valid, entirely scientific reasons to be concerned about their health effects.

-Spartacus

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