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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| COVID-19 misinformation | 4/18 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:18:13.113344+00:00 | kb-cron |
According to The Economist, conspiracy theories exist on China's internet about COVID-19 being created by the CIA in order to "keep China down". According to an investigation by ProPublica, such conspiracy theories and disinformation have been propagated under the direction of China News Service, the country's second largest government-owned media outlet controlled by the United Front Work Department. Global Times and Xinhua News Agency have similarly been implicated in propagating disinformation related to COVID-19's origins. NBC News however has noted that there have also been debunking efforts of US-related conspiracy theories posted online, with a WeChat search of "Coronavirus [disease 2019] is from the U.S." reported to mostly yield articles explaining why such claims are unreasonable. In March 2020, two spokesmen for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zhao Lijian and Geng Shuang, alleged at a press conference that Western powers may have "bio-engineered" COVID-19. They were alluding that the US Army created and spread COVID-19, allegedly during the 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan, where numerous cases of influenza-like illness were reported. A member of the U.S. military athletics delegation based at Fort Belvoir, who competed in the 50mi Road Race at the Wuhan games, became the subject of online targeting by netizens accusing her of being "patient zero" of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, and was later interviewed by CNN, to clear her name from the "false accusations in starting the pandemic". In January 2021, Hua Chunying renewed the conspiracy theory from Zhao Lijian and Geng Shuang that the SARS-CoV-2 virus originating in the United States at the U.S. biological weapons lab Fort Detrick. This conspiracy theory quickly went trending on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, and Hua Chunying continued to cite evidence on Twitter, while asking the government of the United States to open up Fort Detrick for further investigation to determine if it is the source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. In August 2021, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman repeatedly used an official podium to elevate the Fort Detrick's origin unproven idea. According to a report from Foreign Policy, Chinese diplomats and government officials in concert with China's propaganda apparatus and covert networks of online agitators and influencers have responded, focused on repeating Zhao Lijian's allegation relating to Fort Detrick in Maryland, and the "over 200 U.S. biolabs" around the world. In April 2025, the Chinese government "restated its case that COVID-19 may have originated in the United States" according to Reuters.
=== Accusations by Russia ===
In February 2020, US officials alleged that Russia is behind an ongoing disinformation campaign, using thousands of social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to deliberately promote unfounded conspiracy theories, claiming the virus is a biological weapon manufactured by the CIA and the US is waging economic war on China using the virus. In March 2022, amid the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Defense Ministry stated that US President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, as well as billionaire George Soros, were closely tied to Ukrainian biolabs. American right-wing media personalities, such as Tucker Carlson, highlighted the story, while Chinese Communist Party-owned tabloid Global Times further stated that the labs had been studying bat coronaviruses, which spread widely on the Chinese internet for insinuating that the United States had created SARS-CoV-19 in Ukrainian laboratories.
=== Accusations by other countries === According to Washington, DC-based nonprofit Middle East Media Research Institute, numerous writers in the Arabic press have promoted the conspiracy theory that COVID-19, as well as SARS and the swine flu virus, were deliberately created and spread to sell vaccines against these diseases, and it is "part of an economic and psychological war waged by the U.S. against China with the aim of weakening it and presenting it as a backward country and a source of diseases". Accusations in Turkey of Americans creating the virus as a weapon have been reported, and a YouGov poll from August 2020 found that 37% of Turkish respondents believed the US government was responsible for creating and spreading the virus.
An Iranian cleric in Qom said Donald Trump targeted the city with coronavirus "to damage its culture and honor". Several figures associated with the ruling government also claimed that COVID-19 was a "biological attack" by the U.S. against China and Iran. Reza Malekzadeh, Iran's deputy health minister and former Minister of Health, said it was "highly unlikely" that the virus was a biological weapon, noting that the US would be suffering heavily from it. He said Iran was hard-hit because its close ties to China and reluctance to cut air ties introduced the virus, and because early cases had been mistaken for influenza. In Iraq, pro-Iranian social media users waged a Twitter campaign during Trump's Presidency to end U.S. presence in the country by blaming it for the virus. The campaign centered around hashtags such as #Bases_of_the_American_pandemic and #Coronavirus_is_Trump's_weapon. A March 2020 survey by USCENTCOM found that 67% of Iraqi respondents believed a foreign force was behind COVID-19, with 72% of them naming the USA as that force. Theories blaming the USA have also circulated in the Philippines, Venezuela and Pakistan. An October 2020 Globsec poll of Eastern European countries found that 38% of respondents in Montenegro and Serbia, 37% of those in North Macedonia, and 33% in Bulgaria believed the USA deliberately created COVID-19.
=== Jewish origin ===