Monitoring Desk
WASHINGTON: Three years after the start of the pandemic, there are still many theories, and it’s still not clear if the coronavirus that causes the disease leaked from a laboratory or was spread to humans by an animal.
This much is known: any new report on the virus’s origin quickly provokes a relapse and a return of false statements about the vaccines,virus and masks that have reverberated since the pandemic started.
It happened again in this week after the Energy Department confirmed that a categorized report determined that the virus escaped from a lab with low confidence. Within hours, online mentions of COVID-19 conspiracy theories began to rise, with many commenters claiming the classified report proved they were correct all along.
While far from conclusive, the report of Energy Department is the latest of many attempts by scientists and officials to pinpoint the source of the virus, which has now killed round about seven million people since it was discovered in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
The report has not been publicly disclosed, and officials in Washington have stated that several US agencies disagree on its origin. FBI Director Christopher Wray told Fox News on Tuesday that the FBI “has for quite some time now” determined that the origin of pandemic are “most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.”
Different theories
However, others in the US intelligence community disagree, and there is no agreement. Many scientists believe the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 jumped from animals to humans, possibly at Wuhan’s Huanan market, a scenario supported by numerous studies and reports. According to the World Health Organization, while an animal source is most likely, the possibility of a lab leak must be investigated further before it can be ruled out.
According to virologist Angela Rasmussen, people should be skeptical of the evidence used in the Energy Department’s assessment. But she said that without the evaluation of the classified report, she couldn’t assess if it was persuasive enough to challenge the outcome that the virus spread from an animal.
COVID-19 was widely mentioned after The Wall Street Journal released an article about the Energy Department on Sunday. As per an analysis of a San Francisco-based media intelligence firm, conducted by Zignal Labs, and shared with The Associated Press, mentions of various COVID-related conspiracy theories have increased since then. While the lab leak theory has been floating around the Internet since the pandemic began, Zignal’s analysis found that references to it increased 100,000% in the 48 hours following the release of the Energy Department report.
Many conspiracy theories contradict one another, as well as the findings of the Energy Department report. COVID-19 was labeled a “man-made bioweapon from China” by US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, in a tweet on Tuesday. “It was made in Ukraine,” a follower quickly challenged her.
With so many unanswered questions about a global event that has claimed so many lives and upended so many more, it’s not surprising that COVID-19 can still elicit so much rage and misinformation, according to Bret Schafer, a senior researcher at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, an organization based in Washington that has tracked government propaganda about COVID-19.
In the past, officials of Chinese government have used their social media accounts to spread conspiracy theories against US, including some that claimed the US created the COVID-19 virus and blamed its spread on China. So far, they’ve kept a low profile in response to the Energy Department report. Government of China dismissed the agency’s assessment as an attempt to politicize the pandemic in their official response. Beijing’s vast propaganda and disinformation network was mostly silent online, with only a few posts criticizing or mocking the report.
“BREAKING,” a pro-China YouTuber wrote on Twitter. “With ‘low confidence,’ I can now announce that the COVID pandemic began with a leak from Hunter Biden’s laptop.”
