COVID-19 conspiracies soar after latest report on origins

WASHINGTON (AP) — The origins of COVID-19 remain hazy. Three years into the pandemic, it’s still unclear whether the coronavirus that causes the disease leaked from a lab or spread from animals to humans.

This much is known: when it comes to COVID-19 misinformation, each new report on the origin of the virus quickly triggers a relapse and a return of misleading claims about the virus, vaccines and masks that have echoed since the pandemic began.

It happened again this week after the Department of Energy confirmed a secret, low-confidence report found the virus had escaped from a lab. Within hours, online mentions of conspiracy theories related to COVID-19 began to surge, with many commenters saying the classified report was proof they were right all along.

Far from definitive, the Energy Department’s 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 it was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.

The report was not made public, and officials in Washington stressed that various US agencies disagreed over its provenance. On Tuesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray told Fox News that the FBI had “assessed for some time” that the origins of the pandemic were “most likely a potential laboratory incident in Wuhan.”

But others in the US intelligence community disagree, and there is no consensus. Many scientists believe the most likely explanation is that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 jumped from animals to humans, possibly at Wuhan’s Huanan Market, a scenario supported by multiple studies and reports. The World Health Organization has stated that while an animal origin remains highly likely, the possibility of a laboratory leak needs further investigation before it can be ruled out.

According to virologist Angela Rasmussen, people should be open-minded about the evidence used in the Department of Energy’s assessment. However, she said that without evaluating the classified report, she could not judge whether it was convincing enough to challenge the conclusion that the virus spread from an animal.

“The vast majority of evidence continues to support natural origins,” Rasmussen told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “I’m a scientist. I need to see the evidence instead of taking the FBI Director’s word for it.”

However, many of those who cited the report as evidence did not seem interested in the details. They seized on the report, saying it suggests experts were wrong about masks and vaccines, too.

“School closures were a failed and disastrous policy. Masks are ineffective. And harmful,” reads a tweet that has been read nearly 300,000 times since Sunday. “COVID came out of a lab. Everything we skeptics said was true.”

Mentions of COVID-19 overall began to surge after The Wall Street Journal ran a story on Sunday about the Department of Energy’s report. Since then, mentions of various COVID-related conspiracy theories have skyrocketed, according to analysis conducted by Zignal Labs, a San Francisco-based media intelligence agency, and shared with The Associated Press.

While the lab leak theory has been floating around the internet since the pandemic began, references to it surged 100,000% in the 48 hours after the Department of Energy’s report was released, according to Zignal’s analysis, which scoured social media, blogs and other websites.

Many of the conspiracy theories contradict each other and the findings in the Department of Energy report. In a tweet Tuesday, US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, called COVID-19 an “artificial bioweapon from China.” One follower was quick to challenge: “It was made in Ukraine,” he replied.

With so many unanswered questions about a world event that has claimed so many lives and turned even more upside down, it’s not at all surprising that COVID-19 is still able to generate so much anger and misinformation, Bret said Schafer, a senior fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a Washington-based organization that has tracked government propaganda about COVID-19.

“The pandemic has been so incredibly disruptive for everyone. The intensity of the feelings about COVID, I don’t think that’s going to go away,” Schafer said. “And every time something new emerges, it breathes new life into those grievances and frustrations, real or imagined.”

Chinese government officials have used their social media accounts in the past to reinforce anti-US conspiracy theories, including some that have suggested the US created the COVID-19 virus and framed its release in China.

So far, they’ve taken a calmer approach to the Energy Department’s report. In its official response, China’s government dismissed the agency’s assessment as an attempt to politicize the pandemic. Online, Beijing’s sprawling propaganda and disinformation network has been largely silent, with few posts criticizing or deriding the report.

“BREAKING,” wrote a pro-Chinese YouTuber on Twitter. “I can now announce with ‘low confidence’ that the COVID pandemic began as a leak from Hunter Biden’s laptop.”

___

Follow the AP’s coverage of misinformation at https://apnews.com/hub/misinformation.

David Klepper, The Associated Press