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Speculation about the origin of the virus has been widespread online
From the earliest stages of the coronavirus outbreak, conspiracy theories about the origin and scale of the disease spread to online platforms.
These included the false claim that the virus was part of a Chinese “covert biological weapons program” and an unfounded claim that a Chinese Canadian spy team had sent coronavirus to Wuhan.
The claim that the virus was man-made has been fueled by numerous conspiracy groups on Facebook, shadowy Twitter accounts, and even made it to primetime Russian state television.
And months after the outbreak, not only have these theories not faded, but government officials, top politicians, and the media in China and the United States have promoted new, unverified claims.
‘Doubts’
Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, has repeatedly promoted the idea, without evidence, that Covid-19 may have originated in the United States.
On March 12, he said in a tweet that It could have been the US Army. USA the one who brought the virus to Wuhan.
A day later, he tweeted an article from the Global Research website titled “More evidence that the virus originated in the United States”and urged users to read and share it. The article has since been removed.
The Chinese newspaper The Global Times echoed Zhao’s sentiment. Although he stressed that the diplomat had made the claim to “personal capacity,” his comments resonated “with similar doubts raised by the Chinese public,” the newspaper said.
Zhao’s claims have also been amplified by various Chinese embassies and social media users in different parts of the world.
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BBC Monitoring’s China specialist Kerry Allen said that while Zhao is known for being an outspoken figure, particularly on social media, he has a different personality within mainland China and does not always necessarily represent the opinion of the leadership.
Founded in 2001 in Canada, Global Research is the website of the Globalization Research Center. According to PolitiFact, an independent US-based fact-checking website, Global Research “has advanced misleading conspiracy theories on issues like September 11, vaccines, and global warming.”
The article that Mr. Zhao tweeted was written by regular contributor Larry Romanoff, who reiterates the conclusion of his previous article, now deleted, that the virus did not originate in China.
But the Chinese research and articles in the journal Science he cites do not doubt that China is the place where the outbreak began. Instead, they only suggest that the animal market in Wuhan specifically may not have been the origin of the new coronavirus.
Romanoff also claims that Japanese and Taiwanese scientists “have determined that the new coronavirus may have originated in the United States.”
But the conclusion appears to be based on a now-denied Japanese TV report in February and claims made on Taiwanese television by a pharmacology professor-turned-pro-Beijing party politician that Romanoff mistakenly describes as “the best virologist” in the first mention. .
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Romanoff also claims, without evidence, that the U.S. Army’s germ lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland, may have been the original source of the virus. He adds that “this would not be a surprise” since the facility was “fully closed” last year due to “the absence of safeguards to prevent pathogen leakage.”
In fact, as reported by the New York Times at the time, the facility was not closed, but only suspended its investigation, and a spokeswoman said “there was no leakage of hazardous material outside the laboratory.”
‘Chinese specific’
Mr. Romanoff identifies himself as a “retired management consultant and entrepreneur” and “visiting professor at Shanghai Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to the upper classes of EMBA.”
According to The Wall Street Journal, officials at the university’s two MBA programs were not familiar with Romanoff.
BBC News asked Fudan University to confirm if Romanoff had any affiliation as a visiting professor but received no response.
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As a frequent contributor to Global Research, most of his writing appears to be critical of the United States and support for China, including an article in which he described the 1989 Tiananmen Square student protests as a “color revolution instigated by the Americans.” .
Among several other questionable claims, he said in a podcast this month that during its early stages, Covid-19 was “China specific” and did not infect people of other racial and origins.
BBC News reached out to Romanoff for comment, but received no response.
‘Accidentally escaped’
Claims by elements in the Chinese government and media that the US USA It is a possible origin of the virus provoked a response from US President Donald Trump, who referred to Covid-19 as a “Chinese virus”. And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo demanded that China stop spreading “disinformation.”
President Trump recently announced that he was going to stop funding for the World Health Organization (WHO), accusing him of being “very focused on China.” In response, Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that “it was not the time” to cut funds to the UN agency.
But several American politicians and commentators have also made unfounded claims about the origin of the virus.
Fox News prime-time presenter Tucker Carlson cited a study raising the possibility that the coronavirus “accidentally escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan.”
And Republican Senators Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz have raised the same perspective.
Two Chinese researchers, Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao, from Guangzhou South China University of Technology, published the study in early February as a “prepress” or preliminary draft, and it was not peer-reviewed. He concluded that “the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.”
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But Mr. Xiao told the Wall Street Journal that he subsequently withdrew the study. “Speculation about the possible origins of the publication was based on published documents and media and was not supported by direct evidence,” the Wall Street Journal said.
The Washington Post reported in mid-April that two scientific diplomats from the US embassy. USA They made several visits to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2018 and warned Washington about “inadequate safety in the laboratory, which was conducting risky studies on bat coronavirus.”
Jeremy Konyndyk, who led the response from the US government. USA At the Ebola outbreak, he tweeted in response to reports of an accidental laboratory leak: “Science does not exclude the origin of a laboratory, but it does indicate that it is quite unlikely.”
BBC monitoring reports and analyzes news from TV, radio, web and print media from around the world. You can follow BBC Monitoring at Twitter and Facebook.
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