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False information and fake news have accompanied the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus since the time it was first encountered in December last year. The recent conspiracy theory about COVID-19 is that it is man-made; created in a lab as a bioweapon in China by the Chinese scientist Deyin Guo. A GNews post said,
Another article in Natural News reads, “Every virology lab in the world that has run a genomic analysis of the coronavirus now knows that the coronavirus was engineered by human scientists. The proof is in the virus itself: The tools for genetic insertion are still present as remnants in the genetic code. Since these unique gene sequences don’t occur by random chance, they’re proof that this virus was engineered by scientists in a lab.”
The claim soon started floating around social media in a series of tweets.
Fact-checking website PolitiFact has debunked this claim on multiple levels by analyzing the research available on the source of the virus.
“On the basis of current data, it seems likely that the 2019-nCoV causing the Wuhan outbreak might also be initially hosted by bats, and might have been transmitted to humans via currently unknown wild animal(s) sold at the Huanan seafood market,” The Lancet said.
Further, the PolitiFact report mentions that there is most definitely a ‘maximum security biolab’ near Wuhan, perhaps the ‘Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory’, that deals with ‘dangerous pathogens’, but there is no proof of relating this to the origins of the coronavirus.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)