The year 2020 was a year dominated by the great pandemic, the whole world was shut down for months in a gallant attempt to fight off the Covid-19 virus, even though it was already decided in the beginning of the turmoil that priority must be given to finding and administering a vaccine, we will need to vaccinate the whole world, we were told. And we are!
It was also the year of the long anticipated 5G mobile communication technology. The year before there were only one or two countries that had been able to roll out 5G for their citizens. However, in 2020 this technology was bolted into almost every existing cell-phone tower throughout the entire world, a massive achievement that almost nobody imagined could happen so quickly and almost no-one even noticed, at least not yet.
So, is the arrival of a worldwide pandemic and the installation of a new worldwide telecom network connected in some way, or is it just coincidence? What do the facts tell us. Well, most of the bulk of the installation work was carried out during the year, with very few installations already working early on in the year when the pandemic took us by storm. Also, most importantly, almost all of the 5G installations are working on similar frequencies to the 4G network that has been running throughout the world for the last three years or more (between 0.7 and 1.8 GHz). The feared installation of hundreds of thousands of small-cell antennas on every lamppost, using millimeter-wave frequencies (300 GHz), has not come any further than a few small test locations per country.
If the pandemic is directly related to the low GHz (giga Hertz) frequency and modern antenna technology being used for years, then it should have occurred back in 2018 or earlier. To blame the covid pandemic on the 5G roll out is not really very plausible. However, we really should be finally connecting the dots between the massive increase in the amount of man-made radiation associated with smartphone use in general. So, while the technology itself hasn’t made the jump yet to high GHz frequencies and massive deployment for the Internet of Things, the intensity of use of the mobile communication network has increased exponentially, especially since the lockdowns and greatly increased insecurity within the population.
The speed at which we have gone from low tech and low use, to high tech and high dose has been dizzying to say the least. Together we now own more than 7 billion mobile telephones and almost the entire population of the world is in 24/7 contact with their pocket smartphone minicomputer, using it for far more, and diverse, applications than anyone could ever have originally imagined. This dramatic intensification of EM radiation in such a short period of time (less than 10 years since the adoption of the smartphone by billions of people worldwide), coupled with the complete transformation of our social structures encouraged by the flood of new mobile applications, can hardly, in all truth, be seen as a coincidence in the current worldwide health pandemic.
This must be recognized by the world as our first serious warning that we are in trouble with this new technology and that it is in no way innocent or blameless, as is consistently claimed. The steady increase in the use of man-made EM radiation, and electricity in general, over the last 100 years has left a trail of new illnesses behind it, even if only in a small percentage of the world population, we absolutely need to wake up to this totally new, totally man-made threat to our health. If we are lucky, we will get away with our foolishness this time, with only a few million deaths worldwide, and move on, learning much.
But we must not miss the chance to truly recognize where the problems are coming from and look ourselves in the eye. It is not some unknown virus from nature that is suddenly threatening us unexpectedly, the viruses have always been there, and have always preyed on our own foolishness, this time however it is a virtual virus, a virus traveling the digital ether from cellphone tower to cellphone tower, via our own smartphone, the one that we are all, everyone of us, carrying in our pocket or handbag, and that we have become a complete, and self-declared, slave to. We are suddenly willing to undertake a massive vaccination program against a virus that was already living for centuries under a bat-poo covered rock in a cave somewhere in Asia and will most likely just laugh at us as it mutates into a new form in wild geese in Siberia. The real danger of this type of worldwide vaccination is that it tends to also vaccinate against most forms of common sense and our own natural immunity, which can do much better if we give it a chance.
The real 5G technology, the one we thought we were getting already, will now probably come somewhere around 2023, at the earliest, as there is still no clear plan or structure on how to roll out this much more costly, fragile and technology intensive network, not to mention all of the security issues looming on the horizon. The real 5G will be a key technology in all of the smart cities, smart countries, smart commerce, smart world, Internet of Things where you can relax in your self-driving car, have all of your shopping delivered to the door via a drone network, and won’t have to think about, or own, anything yourself anymore. This real 5G technology will need to use the much higher 250 or 300 GHz frequencies to get this massive coverage to work and will involve networks of tens of thousands of mini-satellites in low earth orbit, and tens of millions of small cell, AI operated, transmitters throughout the terrestrial world.
The telecom companies and the world governments were already trying to work out who was going to pay for this massively intensive technology, and how. But one real downside of the overreaction to the current pandemic appears to be a looming world economic crisis that will cast a long shadow over major new infrastructure investments, especially in the telecom world, where there has already been huge investment over the last 20 years, much of which is only just starting its payback period. If we are to become reliant on this ubiquitous high tech to save the world then we are going to need a healthy economy, and healthy society (including healthy people of course) to install it, get it working reliably, safely and efficiently, and most importantly to pay for it.
We have now had all the warnings any world government should need about the health and environmental aspects of technology versus nature, about its effect on the world economy and on social stability and cultural viability. If we don’t wake up, as a world community, to the real perils of this extensive and intensive irradiation of the earth and every living thing on it, it won’t really matter anymore if the next virus comes to us via snake leg soup from Wrongsok or pigeon milk yoghurt from Okidokidoo.
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