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WASHINGTON (AP) — The origins of COVID-19 remain unclear. Three years after the pandemic, it’s still unclear whether the coronavirus that causes the disease leaked from a lab or spread to humans through an animal.
Everything is known: when it comes to incorrect information about COVID-19, any new report on the origin of the virus temporarily triggers a relapse and rollback of misleading claims about the virus, vaccines and mask that have reverberated since the start of the pandemic.
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This happened this week after the Department of Energy showed that a classified report had determined, with little confidence, that the virus had escaped from a lab. Within hours, online mentions of conspiracy theories related to COVID-19 began to increase, with many commenters. claiming that the classified report proves that they were right all along.
Far from definitive, the Energy Department’s report is the latest attempt in many attempts by scientists and officials to identify the origin of the virus, which has now killed nearly 7 million people after it was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in the past. 2019.
The report has not been made public and officials in Washington have said U. S. agencies disagree on the origin. On Tuesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray told Fox News that the FBI “for some time” assessed that the origins of the pandemic are “most likely a possible laboratory incident in Wuhan. “
But other members of the U. S. intelligence network have been in the U. S. military. UU. no agree, and there is no consensus. Many scientists the maximum probable explanation is that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 has passed from animals to humans, most likely in Wuhan’s Huanan market, a situation supported through multiple studies and reports. The World Health Organization has stated that while an animal origin remains the most likely, the possibility of a laboratory leak will need to be further investigated before it can be ruled out.
People should be open-minded about the evidence used in the energy department’s assessment, according to virologist Angela Rasmussen. But he said that without comparing the evidence in the classified report, there is no explanation to question the conclusion that the virus spread naturally.
“We can and know what the clinical evidence shows,” Rasmussen tweeted Tuesday. “The available evidence still shows the emergence of zoonoses in the Huanan market. “
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Many who mentioned the report as evidence, however, did not seem interested in the evidence. They seized on the report and said it told experts they were too, when it came to masks and vaccines.
“School closures were a failed and catastrophic policy. Masks are ineffective and harmful,” read one tweet that has been read some 300,000 times since Sunday. “COVID came from a lab. Everything we skeptics said was true.
General mentions of COVID-19 began to rise after the Wall Street Journal published an article about the Energy Department report on Sunday. Since then, mentions of COVID-related conspiracy theories have skyrocketed, according to research conducted through Zignal Labs, a San Francisco company. based at the media intelligence firm, and shared with The Associated Press.
While the lab leak theory has recovered on the web since the pandemic began, references to it skyrocketed 100,000% in the 48 hours after the release of the Energy Department report, according to Zignal’s analysis, which analyzed social media, blogs and other sites.
Many conspiracy theories contradict each other, as well as the conclusions of the Department of Energy report. In a tweet Tuesday, U. S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. , called COVID-19 a “man-made biological weapon from China. “. ” One follower challenged her temporarily: “It was made in Ukraine,” she replied.
With so many questions pending about a global event that has claimed so many lives and upset even more, it’s not entirely unexpected that COVID-19 is still capable of generating so much anger and misinformation, according to Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the Alliance to Secure Democracy, a Washington-based organization that has tracked government propaganda about COVID-19.
“The pandemic has been so incredibly disruptive for each and every one. The intensity of the emotions about COVID, I don’t think it’s going away,” Schafer said. “And every time something new happens, it breathes new life into complaints and frustrations, genuine or imagined. “
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In the past, Chinese government officials have used their social media accounts to magnify anti-American rhetoric and conspiracy theories, some of which say the U. S. is going to be able to do so. The U. S. government created the COVID-19 virus and framed its spread in China.
So far, they have adopted a more discreet technique for the Energy Department report. In its official response, the Chinese government dismissed the agency’s assessment as an effort to politicize the pandemic. Online, Beijing’s vast network of propaganda and disinformation is largely silent, with only a few publications criticizing or mocking the report.
“BREAKING,” one pro-China YouTuber wrote on Twitter. I can now announce, with ‘low confidence,’ that the COVID pandemic began with a leak of Hunter Biden’s laptop. “
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