Planned emergency alert test sparks new COVID conspiracy theories

A planned test this week of the nationwide Emergency Alert System has led to claims that people’s cellphones will be used to activate nanoparticles introduced into people’s bodies.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will conduct the test at approximately 1:20 p.m. on Wednesday. One test signal will be sent to radios and televisions using the same familiar audio tone in use since the 1960s, while a test of the newer Wireless Emergency Alerts system will be directed to consumer cellphones.

“When a tornado is coming, you need to know your warning system works; you don’t have time for troubleshooting,” John Dooley, with the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, said in a test announcement. “This annual test gives us confidence in our technology.”

Some social media users, however, have been imploring followers to shut off their cellphones on the day of the test because they believe it’s part of a broader conspiracy to exert control over the population.

One popular video shows a woman claiming the test will somehow switch on technology that has been introduced into people’s bodies: “It’s not a test,” the woman says. “It’s going to be sending these high frequency signals into cell phones, radios, TVs. The intention of activating nanoparticles, including graphene oxide.”

Stanley Perlman, professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, said the claims appear to be referring to old myths about the contents of COVID vaccines. These theories claim — without evidence — that the vaccines contain various materials, such as graphene oxide or other nanoparticles, that can interact with wireless communications technology and allow governments to control and monitor people.

But graphene oxide — a material made by oxidizing graphite — isn’t an ingredient in COVID vaccines, notes Matthew Laurens, a pediatric infectious disease specialist with the Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

“Graphene oxide was used to study vaccine structure only, and is not part of the vaccine formulation,” he wrote in an email.

Regardless, the notion that graphene oxide can be “activated” in this way is “nonsense,” wrote Julia Greer, a materials science professor at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena who has used graphene oxide in her research, in an email.

“You can’t ‘activate’ graphene oxide,” she wrote. “What does that even mean?”

The actual nanoparticles in the vaccines, meanwhile, are lipids, or fats, that are generally used as a coating material. They’re sometimes described as “programmable” because they can be modified and adjusted, depending on the need, experts have said. It does not mean they can be programmed to interact with wireless networks.

There’s also nothing nefarious about the routine test FEMA and the Federal Communications Commission are conducting next month. Such tests have been happening with regularity for years now without any reports of adverse health effects from the system signals, said Jeremy Edwards, a FEMA spokesperson.

The two nationwide systems — the Emergency Alert System, or EAS, and Wireless Emergency Alerts, or WEA — are “critical tools” that save lives and allow people to protect property when natural disasters, acts of terrorism and other threats to public safety strike, Edwards added.

The test is slated to begin around 1:20 p.m. central time Wednesday, but could be postponed to Oct. 11 if there’s severe weather or other significant events, according to FEMA.

The process involves two parts: a 30-minute signal sent to radios and televisions as part of EAS, and a similar one sent to all consumer cell phones as part of the WEA system.

Federal law requires the systems be tested at least once every three years. The last nationwide test was Aug. 11, 2021.

Edwards said the audio signal used for the tests utilizes the same combination of tones familiar to Americans since 1963, when President John F. Kennedy established the original Emergency Broadcast System through an executive order. It’s also the same tone that more than 1,700 local, state, territorial and tribal authorities use to send similar alerts for more localized emergencies.

Posts mislead on Mayo Clinic’s hydroxychloroquine webpage

Another recent coronavirus claim holds that the Mayo Clinic has “quietly” updated its website to say that hydroxychloroquine can now be used to treat COVID-19.

A now-deleted informational page about hydroxychloroquine on the hospital system’s website included outdated guidance that the malaria drug “may also be used to treat coronavirus (COVID-19) in certain hospitalized patients.”

But archives show the text had been there since at least May 2020, a month before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration revoked its emergency approval for using the drug to treat COVID, and the Mayo Clinic clarified this week that it does not endorse the use of hydroxychloroquine for treating the virus.

Anti-vaccine advocates have long touted the drug as an effective treatment for COVID-19, even though health officials and experts say that’s not the case.

In recent days, many social media users pointed to the Mayo Clinic page to falsely suggest it was recently updated to admit that the drug should be used to treat coronavirus after all.

“JUST IN: Mayo Clinic QUIETLY ADMITS on its website that hydroxychloroquine can be used to treat COVID 19,” read one post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, which had more than 24,000 likes. A screenshot in the post shows that that page read, in part: “Hydroxychloroquine may also be used to treat coronavirus (COVID-19) in certain hospitalized patients.”

However, archived versions of the Mayo Clinic website show there was nothing new about the language and it had been there since at least May 2020. In June 2020, a line was added lower down on the page saying that the drug should only be used in clinical trials.

Hydroxychloroquine had been granted emergency use authorization for COVID-19 in March 2020 for certain hospitalized COVID-19 patients, but the FDA revoked that authorization in June 2020, saying emerging data suggested it was “unlikely to be effective in treating COVID-19 for the authorized uses in the EUA.”

In a statement on Sept. 26, the Mayo Clinic said the organization was aware of the “inaccurate information” on its website, which it said had come from an outside vendor. The clinic clarified that the drug is not part of its prescribed treatment for COVID-19 and that it does not endorse using it to treat COVID patients. It has now removed the hydroxychloroquine page, and the URL redirects to another page stating explicitly that it is not recommended as a treatment for COVID-19.

Medical experts told the AP that the information on the old page was consistent with the FDA’s guidance at the time it was written, but it has been clear since early 2020 that hydroxychloroquine treatments were not likely to help COVID-19 patients.

“That Mayo clinic page looks like standard early-COVID medical advice, from before there were any clinically approved antivirals available. Those were desperate times,” Benjamin Neuman, chief virologist at Texas A&M University’s Global Health Research Complex, wrote in an email. “This is interesting as a historical relic, and would not be considered sound medical advice by current standards.”

Neuman cited multiple studies published in 2020 and 2021, including one from Brazil, that showed the drug had no effect on COVID-19 patients. He said he wasn’t aware of any clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine that were still ongoing in the U.S.

“There is nothing new in the world of COVID and hydroxychloroquine,” said Brian Garibaldi, the director of the Johns Hopkins Special Pathogens Center and Biocontainment Unit.

— Karena Phan