On Monday, The Washington Times reported that the novel Coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is a U.S. “bioweapon and was brought to China by U.S. Army personnel.”
The Times reports, “Beijing, Moscow and Tehran are using a vast web of social media accounts, fake news outlets and state-controlled global satellite media to promote false claims by academics and, at times, government officials to blame Washington for the crisis now gripping most of humanity.”
According to the State Department’s U.S. Special Envoy Lea Gabrielle, the Chinese “engaged in an all-out aggressive campaign to try to reshape the global narrative around the coronavirus, essentially to the degree of trying to provide an alternate reality of what has actually happened since December.”
The statement comes after the Chinese Foreign Minister Lijian Zhao spread a conspiracy theory alleging that the United States military could have brought the novel coronavirus to China — and it did not originate in the city of Wuhan, as experts believe.
However, experts refute the conspiracy theory, with teams of international scientists, including several from inside China, have agreed for more than a month that the virus came from a “wet market” in Wuhan — where fish, poultry and other animals are slaughtered on the premises — and that any other claims about the virus’ origins are propaganda.
Zhao’s tweet could have been in response to President Trump’s assertion that COVID-19 is caused by a “foreign virus” and “we all know where it came from.”
The State Department’s Global Engagement Center discovered a Russian government-backed effort to “seed the disinformation space with the notion that the virus was created by Americans.” The Kremlin-sponsored lies alleged that virus was created either by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation or in a U.S. government lab. The Iranians have also seized on the Russian conspiracy theory.
The U.S. State Department is responding with a robust effort to tackle the foreign fake news. The Department’s top U.S. diplomat for East Asia, David R. Stillwell said, “We are going to make a concerted and public effort to counter disinformation by any regime on this because there are lasting consequences. The Chinese and Russians and Iranians are putting out these conspiracy theories and false narratives. It is deeply irresponsible, not just for America, but for the world. We’re in the middle of a global pandemic that is unprecedented. The fact that these regimes are taking the time to deflect blame from their own actions is deeply irresponsible.”