AMERICAN actor Tom Hanks has recovered from coronavirus. So a simple message that he sent at the beginning of this month for those refusing to wear masks and adhere to the prescribed measures to fight the pandemic isn't surprising. "I don't get it, I simply do not get it, it is literally the least you can do."

"I mean, when you drive a car, you've got to obey speed limits, you've got to use your turn signals, you've got to avoid hitting pedestrians. If you can't do those three things, you shouldn't be driving a car. If you can't wear a mask and wash your hands and social distance, I've got no respect for you, man. I don't buy your argument," he said.

Those things are so simple, so easy, if anybody cannot find it in themselves to practice those three very basic things -- I just think shame on you. Don't be a pussy, get on with it, do your part," he added without choosing his words. 

Hanks made this comment at a remote press conference for his upcoming film Grayhound a few weeks ago, and media such as Men's Health posted it on Facebook again last weekend.

"I don't take advice from men who prey on little children"

That post caused some quite bizarre comments in which the legendary actor is accused of being nothing less than - a pedophile. 

"I don't take advice from men who prey on little children," one, we assume, reader commented under the Men's Health Facebook post. 

"I'm not anti-mask, but I won't listen to a consecutive passenger in the Lolita Express to Jeffrey Epstein's island," another reader commented.

"I wonder what he said to the waitress of Epstein's plane and island…" the third one wrote. 

"This is the same Tom Hanks who was on the island with Jeffrey Epstein and the young girls. Yes, Tom, tell us what we should do, you hypocrite," the fourth one accused Tom Hanks without any proof.

They were alluding to a private jet of the late billionaire pedophile who, according to the official investigation reports, committed suicide by hanging himself in August last year in his jail cell in Manhattan while he was awaiting trial for sex trafficking of underage girls. In fact, many testimonies and court documents confirm that Epstein, with helpers like Ghislaine Maxwell, had been recruiting underaged girls for years, maybe even decades by falsely luring them with offers to be his "masseuses" only to force them to have sex with him later, and he also pimped the girls out to other rich and powerful men as sex slaves. 

Anti-mask trolls link Hanks with Epstein without any proof

The investigations showed that the financier organized "a large network of human trafficking and sexual abuse of young women and underage girls here, on the Virgin Islands," said the Virgin Islands Attorney General Denise George during the lawsuit against his successors, adding that the youngest victims were 12 years old. 

There is practically no doubt that Epstein was a pedophile and a pimp. But it's completely unclear where the accusations against Hanks come from or on what proof they are based on.

"Super cool he's speaking on the mask but won't defend his pedo accusation, what a hero, right?" one commentator wrote.

"He's a pedophile moron," that's a short, clear, and obviously defamatory comment by another reader who was infuriated by Hank's message about masks, hygiene, and social distance. 

As it's well known, Epstein cultivated good relations with many powerful people, including the British Prince Andrew, former American president Bill Clinton, and current American president Donald Trump.

Moreover, one of the victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, said that she also saw Clinton on the "pedophile island," i.e., Epstein's private island Little Saint James on the Caribbean. According to the flight logs, an investigative journalist, Conchita Sarnoff, stated for Fox News that Clinton flew on Epstein's private jet, the so-called Lolita Express, as many as 27 times. On the other hand, he invited Trump to his private party with a bunch of barely adult girls during the 90s, and last year, NBC posted a video from that party with Trump and Epstein talking and laughing while watching the girls dancing. 

Tom Hanks in the middle of conspiracy theories about Epstein and Gates

However, since conspiracy theories are traditionally within the far-right domain, those who promote the theory that Epstein was killed by his powerful friends so he couldn't expose them, mostly ignored his relation with Trump and focused on the relation with Clinton, and then they linked it with the earlier theories such as Pizzagate, i.e., Qanon - according to which the elite international pedophile-satanist chain is trafficking children by hiding them in pizza joints. 

However, it's unclear how they linked Tom Hanks to this conspiracy theory. Actually, it's not completely unexpected for two reasons. The first one is that Tom Hanks is a distinguished representative in the far-right of the hated Hollywood, i.e., the film industry and the celebrity culture which the American conservatives and Trump supporters often call out for left bias and imposing politically correct propaganda, through films, TV shows or actors' public statements. 

Another reason is that, with his statement about his coronavirus infection and the need for social distancing and wearing masks, Hanks ran afoul of the people who believe that the coronavirus is exaggerated, or that it's a big "scam" in order to introduce mass vaccination or microchipping, where the founder of Microsoft and philanthropist Bill Gates plays the role of the main villain. 

That's how Hanks found himself between two conspiracy theories - the ones about Epstein and the powerful pedophile cabal and the ones about Gates and coronavirus. 

But there is not a single proof for the accusations spread on the social medial lately, which states that Hanks flew in Epstein's Lolita Express and visited his "pedophile island" or "the orgy island" and then participated in the sexual abuse of little girls.

Reuters: Tom Hanks isn't recorded in the flight logs of Epstein's private jet 

Reuters confirmed this in its fact check, which is now monitoring such disinformation on Facebook and Instagram.  

The notorious Epstein's private jet's flight logs that the conspiracy theorists are referring to have actually leaked to the public, and were published, among others, by Factchech.org as a document in a digital library Scribd.

But there is no Tom Hanks name or his initials nowhere in that document, Reuters wrote. 

It's significant that the conspiracy theorists spread the rumor that Bill Gates also flew with Epstein's jet and visited his private island. Reuters searched throughout the flight logs and found Gates's name only once, at a flight made on 1 March 2013 from New Jersey to Palm Beach International Airport in Florida - but not to "the orgy island" Little Saint James. Gates's spokeswomen, Brigid Arnold, commented that Gates didn't even know that the plane was Epstein's.

"The flight logs confirm that Bill Gates went to Epstein's island with sex slaves 17 times. That is a fact, not a theory," it is written in one post, which Reuters fact check also confuted. 

No even accusations against Bill Gates have proof

According to The New York Times last year's article, Bill Gates actually met with Epstein many times, and after Epstein served his scandalously mild sentence after he was arrested for the first time and convicted in 2008. But Gates certainly wasn't the only scientist, politician, or a similar public figure which Epstein managed to lure into his circle of acquaintances and friends, suggesting financial or other help for scientific projects or charity organizations.

Epstein suggested "ideas that would, as he promised, enable hundreds of billions of dollars for the global public health work" to Gates and his foundation, Arnold explained and emphasized that Bill Gates "regrets ever meeting Epstein."

Let's repeat one more time, the fact that Gates spent some time with Epstein isn't proof that he participated in his pedophilic crimes. And Hanks, at least according to what we know, never even hung out with Epstein.

Epstein Flight Logs by Saranac Hale Spencer on Scribd

Business Insider built a database with a search engine that is available for subscribers, where all known flights of Epstein's private jet are listed. 

A model Chrissy Teigen complained that internet trolls are haunting and accusing her of participating in Epstein's pedophile chain and that she flew in his private jet.

Oprah Winfrey also a target of insane accusations

"I can see that people still believe in the flight logs from 4chan. These people are really sick (and actually stupid), but mostly sick," 34-year old model commented on Twitter recently and said that she blocked more than a million people on Twitter and erased more than 50,000 of her old tweets because of the massive abuse, wrote the E Online portal. 

The famous TV host Oprah Winfrey is also a target of conspiracy theorists, who claim that she was put under house arrest "for child sex trafficking." In March, after she found out that her name was very popular on Twitter due to the viral disinformation, Winfrey denied the claim that she was arrested, USA Today wrote.

In the satirical TV show The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Hanks spoke about his experience with coronavirus, with which his wife Rita Wilson was also infected. Both were shortly hospitalized in Australia, where they got infected. 

"She had a much higher fever than me, she was coughing more. She lost her sense of smell and taste, but I didn't," said Hanks.

"I felt as if my bones are made of crackers, like your older brother is beating you, and you cannot do anything to stop it. It was painful," he said then.