WASHINGTON, 1 Mar: COVID-19’s origins remain hazy. Three years after the start of the pandemic, it\u2019s still unclear whether the coronavirus that causes the disease leaked from a lab or spread to humans from an animal.
\nThis much is known: When it comes to COVID-19 misinformation, any new report on the virus\u2019 origin quickly triggers a relapse and a return of misleading claims about the virus, vaccines and masks that have reverberated since the pandemic began.
\nIt happened again this week after the Energy Department confirmed that a classified report determined, with low confidence, that the virus escaped from a lab. Within hours, online mentions of conspiracy theories involving COVID-19 began to rise, with many commenters saying the classified report was proof they were right all along.
\nFar from definitive, the Energy Department\u2019s report is the latest of many attempts by scientists and officials to identify the origin of the virus, which has now killed nearly 7 million people after being first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.
\nThe report has not been made public, and officials in Washington stressed that a variety of U.S. agencies are not in agreement on the origin.
\nMany scientists believe the likeliest explanation is that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 jumped from animals to humans, possibly at Wuhan\u2019s Huanan market, a scenario backed up by multiple studies and reports. The World Health Organization has said that while an animal origin remains most likely, the possibility of a lab leak must be investigated further before it can be ruled out.
\nPeople should be open-minded about the evidence used in the Energy Department\u2019s assessment, according to virologist Angela Rasmussen. But she said that without evaluating the evidence contained in the classified report, there\u2019s no reason to challenge the conclusion that the virus spread naturally.
\n\u201cWe can and do know what the scientific evidence shows,\u201d Rasmussen tweeted Tuesday. \u201cThe available evidence still shows zoonotic emergence at Huanan market.\u201d
\nMany of those citing the report as proof, however, seemed uninterested in the evidence. They seized on the report and said it suggests the experts were wrong when it came to masks and vaccines, too.
\n\u201cSchool closures were a failed & catastrophic policy. Masks are ineffective. And harmful,\u201d said a tweet that\u2019s been read nearly 300,000 times since Sunday. \u201cCOVID came from a lab. Everything we skeptics said was true.\u201d
\nOverall mentions of COVID-19 began to rise after The Wall Street Journal published a story about the Energy Department report on Sunday. Since then, mentions of various COVID-related conspiracy theories have soared, according to an analysis conducted by Zignal Labs, a San Francisco-based media intelligence firm, and shared with The Associated Press.
\nWhile the lab leak theory has bounced around the internet since the pandemic began, references to it soared 100,000% in the 48 hours after the Energy Department report was revealed, according to Zignal\u2019s analysis, which combed through social media, blogs and other sites.
\nMany of the conspiracy theories contradict each other and the findings in the Energy Department report. In a tweet on Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, called COVID-19 a \u201cman made bioweapon from China.\u201d A follower quickly challenged her: \u201cIt was made in Ukraine,\u201d he responded.
\nWith so many questions remaining about a world event that has claimed so many lives and upended even more, it\u2019s not at all surprising that COVID-19 is still capable of generating so much anger and misinformation, according to Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a Washington-based organization that has tracked government propaganda about COVID-19.
\n\u201cThe pandemic was so incredibly disruptive to everyone. The intensity of feelings about COVID, I don\u2019t think that\u2019s going to go away,\u201d Schafer said. \u201cAnd any time something new comes along, it breathes new life into these grievances and frustrations, real or imagined.\u201d
\nChinese government officials have in the past used their social media accounts to amplify anti-U.S. conspiracy theories, including some that suggested the U.S. created the COVID-19 virus and framed its release on China.
\nSo far, they\u2019ve taken a quieter approach to the Energy Department report. In their official response, China\u2019s government dismissed the agency\u2019s assessment as an effort to politicize the pandemic. Online, Beijing\u2019s sprawling propaganda and disinformation network was largely silent, with just a few posts criticizing or mocking the report.
\n\u201cBREAKING,\u201d a pro-China YouTuber wrote on Twitter. \u201cI can now announce, with \u2018low confidence,\u2019 that the COVID pandemic began as a leak from Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop.\u201d (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON, 1 Mar: COVID-19’s origins remain hazy. Three years after the start of the pandemic, it\u2019s still unclear whether the coronavirus that causes the disease leaked from a lab or spread to humans from an animal. This much is known: When it comes to COVID-19 misinformation, any new report on the virus\u2019 origin quickly triggers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-212017","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212017\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}