Chinese social media platforms have been ignited by a conspiracy that claims COVID-19 was made by an American lab in Ukraine.
The origin of this fake news can be traced back to an article published on Wednesday by the GlobalTimesa tabloid under the Chinese Communist Party, titled “British Research Reveals COVID Was Manufactured by American Company.”
On Twitter’s Chinese counterpart, Weibo, a thread about the article went viral: it was viewed by more than 1.67 billion users and generated 292,000 comments.
The article of GlobalTimes postulates that the newspaper is “a little closer to the truth” regarding the origins of the coronavirus disease. According to him, the Russian army has “a lot of evidence in Ukraine” that laboratories affiliated with the United States are producing biological weapons.
” Among [les 36 laboratoires en question], the United States has also been found to use bats to study coronaviruses and has produced components for biological weapons. “, Write the GlobalTimes.
Taken up by 45 other Chinese media, the article GlobalTimes does not provide any document or visual evidence to support its revelations.
On Weibo, many users expressed outrage at the United States, calling for an investigation and demanding that its leaders be executed.
If the origin of these rumors peddled by the Chinese tabloid remains unclear, they seem to originate from Infowars. This US conspiracy site claimed earlier this month that Russian leader Vladimir Putin would attack Ukrainian towns where US labs producing biological weapons are located. This false information was picked up by Russian and Chinese media.
The US has 336 labs in 30 countries under its control, including 26 in Ukraine alone. It should give a full account of its biological military activities at home and abroad and subject itself to multilateral verification. pic.twitter.com/vEiytBRKuo
— Spokesperson发言人办公室 (@MFA_China) March 8, 2022
The presence of such laboratories on Ukrainian soil has, however, been denied by two American fact-checking sites, Politifact and FactCheck.org.
Since 2005, the United States has had an agreement with the Ukrainian Ministry of Health: they provide it with technical equipment, aimed at improving the country’s public health laboratory network and its safety. Social media users misrepresented the goals of the US Biological Threat Reduction Program deal, claiming it was used to fund labs that would produce biological weapons.
animal origin
Fake news about the origin of COVID-19 has been circulating on social media since the virus was first detected in Wuhan, a Chinese city, in 2019.
The hypothesis of the animal origin of COVID-19 is now almost in doubt: two studies reveal that it was a zoonosis at the live animal market in Wuhan, China, which triggered the pandemic which infected to date more than 477 million people.
If many thought that the release of COVID-19 resulted from a laboratory leak, the mathematical probability that this market was not the real source of the virus is 1 in 10 million, according to researcher Michael Worobey.