China insists on Conspiracy Theory that Covid is of “American Origin”

As Beijing grapples with a growing outbreak of the delta variant, a bizarre conspiracy theory linking the origin of the coronavirus to the US military has gained renewed traction in China.

The totally baseless theory, which claims that the virus may have leaked from a US Army laboratory, has been repeatedly promoted by Chinese officials and state media since March last year.

But over the past week, Beijing has redoubled its commitment to that conspiracy theory, mobilizing its diplomats and vast propaganda apparatus to call for a World Health Organization (WHO) investigation into the Institute for Medical Research on Diseases. US Army Infectious at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

The campaign comes after Beijing rejected the WHO’s proposal to conduct a second phase of investigation into the origins of COVID-19 last month.

The study would include audits of laboratories and markets in Wuhan, the original epicenter of the pandemic. That has drawn ire from Beijing, with a senior Chinese health official accusing the WHO of “ignoring common sense and defying science”.

The WHO released an initial report of its study on the origins of COVID in China in March, concluding that the laboratory leak theory was “extremely unlikely.”

But a growing number of Western nations and scientists have questioned the thoroughness of the original report, accusing China of “denying access to original and complete data and samples.”

In late May, US President Joe Biden ordered US intelligence agencies to redouble their efforts to investigate how the coronavirus originated, including the possibility that it arose from a laboratory accident.

The intelligence community was required to report to Biden within 90 days. Since then, no hard evidence has emerged to support the laboratory leak theory, and many scientists continue to believe that the virus is more likely to have naturally jumped from animals to humans.

For now, senior intelligence officials say they are genuinely divided between the two theories.

Beijing has emphatically rejected the idea that the coronavirus could have leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, claiming that Washington is trying to politicize its origins. And yet, at the same time, he’s also aggressively pushing a lab-leak conspiracy theory without any scientific evidence.

Last month, the Global Times, run by the state, started a campaign asking people to sign an open letter to the WHO demanding an investigation at the Fort Detrick laboratory. The letter, which only requires an online click to “sign,” has since gathered 25 million “signatures”.

At a press conference last week, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian called on WHO to investigate both the Fort Detrick lab and a University of North Carolina lab, led by the top expert. American in coronavirus Ralph Baric.

Zhao also suggested that US military athletes who attended the World Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019 could have brought the coronavirus to China, reiterating an unfounded claim he made on Twitter in March 2020.

China’s state broadcaster CCTV, meanwhile, issued a detailed half-hour report this week titled “The Dark Inside History of Fort Detrick”. On Weibo, China’s heavily censored version of Twitter, a hashtag related to the report was the top trending topic Tuesday morning. Since then, it has been viewed 420 million times.

On social media, some government and state media promoted another unsubstantiated theory from an obscure Italian tabloid, which alleged that the US military had spread the coronavirus to Italy through a blood donation program.

“Damning Evidence! The coronavirus entered Europe from Fort Detrick through a US Army blood donation program,” read the headline of a widely read story published by the Communist Youth League, the youth branch of the ruling Party. Communist China.

The concerted propaganda push has further stoked nationalist fury against the United States. Some Chinese Internet users have accused the United States of being “shameless”, while a growing number of people have begun to refer to COVID as the “American virus”, a sarcastic phrase against the term “China virus” used repeatedly by former US President Donald Trump, who lashed out in Beijing as his administration struggled to contain the surge in US cases and deaths.

Beijing’s renewed focus on Fort Detrick comes amid the rapid spread of the highly contagious delta variant in China. Since July 20, the spiraling outbreak, the worst in more than a year, has infected more than 500 people in dozens of cities, placing millions of residents under lockdown and prompting massive travel restrictions.

The delta outbreak represents a major challenge to China’s much-heralded “zero tolerance” approach to infections, and some leading Chinese public health experts have suggested that the country will eventually need to switch to a new strategy and learn to coexist with it.

But it is unlikely to be an easy change. In China, public tolerance for infections, even if they are mild, is extremely low and fear of the virus remains high.

That’s partly because China has been so successful in keeping COVID-19 at bay, but it’s also the result of months of relentless state media coverage highlighting the devastation of infections in Western countries.

Since China contained its initial outbreak, Beijing has repeatedly blamed the local outbreaks on the importation of coronavirus from abroad, whether through air passengers, frozen food or other goods. The source of the latest outbreak, for example, has been linked to a flight from Russia.

And with the increased focus on Fort Detrick, the conspiracy theory has just provided another target for those who want to play the blame game.