DISINFO: A new Chinese coronavirus was likely elaborated in NATO biolabs
DISINFORMATION CASE DETAILS
  • Outlet: sputnik.by (archived)*
  • Date of publication: January 22, 2020
  • Outlet language(s): Russian
  • Reported in: Issue 181
  • Countries / regions discussed: China, US
Tags:
coronavirus Virus / bacteria threat European Union Conspiracy theory NATO

DISINFO: A new Chinese coronavirus was likely elaborated in NATO biolabs

SUMMARY

A new coronavirus coincides with a number of significant events in the world, including the WEF’s Davos Forum in Switzerland. It must not be a coincidence, just as it was with H1N1 virus and others. This is all business aimed at the creation of specific political and economic situation. There are many American and NATO biological laboratories around China. They study human saliva, the genome of humans representing specific race. Japanese media write that the new virus infects only Chinese.

Global fights are not ethical, everything can be used. Back into 1950-1960s, China released posters saying: “Everyone to struggle with American bacteriological aggression!”, this is coming back. Soon the new coronavirus will be linked to ecology… They will say that the presence of European specialists at Chinese industrial enterprises is needed in order for the Chinese goods to be exported to the US and Europe.

RESPONSE

This is a conspiracy theory aimed to cast a shadow at the US / NATO as likely purposeful creators of the new virus pursuing political and economic aims. So far nothing suggests that this was the case. Coronaviruses are well known to science. They are a large family of viruses that can cause respiratory illnesses, rarely evolving and spreading from animals to humans.

In a new study in the Journal of Medical Virology, researchers sequenced the genes of 2019-nCoV (as the new coronavirus is now called) and suggested that 2019-nCoV likely originated in snakes. Hence the likeliest version so far is that the virus began to spread from Wuhan's local seafood and animal market.

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Cases in the EUvsDisinfo database focus on messages in the international information space that are identified as providing a partial, distorted, or false depiction of reality and spread key pro-Kremlin messages. This does not necessarily imply, however, that a given outlet is linked to the Kremlin or editorially pro-Kremlin, or that it has intentionally sought to disinform. EUvsDisinfo publications do not represent an official EU position, as the information and opinions expressed are based on media reporting and analysis of the East Stratcom Task Force.

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