COVID-19 conspiracy theories soar after latest report on origins

Republican Senator Joni Ernst talks to reporters in Washington on Feb. 28, 2023, about the US Energy Department's findings that point to a lab in Wuhan, China, as the source of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Getty Images/AFP)
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Updated 02 March 2023
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COVID-19 conspiracy theories soar after latest report on origins

  • The US Energy Department’s report is the latest of many attempts by scientists and officials to identify the origin of the virus
  • Nearly 7 million people have dieed of COVID-19 since the virus was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019

WASHINGTON: COVID-19’s origins remain hazy. Three years after the start of the pandemic, it’s still unclear whether the coronavirus that causes the disease leaked from a lab or spread to humans from an animal.
This much is known: When it comes to COVID-19 misinformation, any new report on the virus’ origin quickly triggers a relapse and a return of misleading claims about the virus, vaccines and masks that have reverberated since the pandemic began.
It happened again this week after the Energy Department confirmed that a classified report determined, with low confidence, that the virus escaped from a lab. Within hours, online mentions of conspiracy theories involving COVID-19 began to rise, with many commenters saying the classified report was proof they were right all along.
Far from definitive, the Energy Department’s report is the latest of many attempts by scientists and officials to identify the origin of the virus, which has now killed nearly 7 million people after being first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.
The report has not been made public, and officials in Washington stressed that a variety of US agencies are not in agreement on the origin. On Tuesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray told Fox News that the FBI “has for quite some time now” assessed that the pandemic’s origins are “most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.”




In this January 24, 2020 photo, a police officer stands guard outside the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where the coronavirus was detected in Wuhan on Jan. 24, 2020. (AFP)

But others in the US intelligence community disagree, and there’s no consensus. Many scientists believe the likeliest explanation is that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 jumped from animals to humans, possibly at Wuhan’s Huanan market, a scenario backed up by multiple studies and reports. The World Health Organization has said that while an animal origin remains most likely, the possibility of a lab leak must be investigated further before it can be ruled out.
People should be open-minded about the evidence used in the Energy Department’s assessment, according to virologist Angela Rasmussen. But she said that without evaluating the classified report, she can’t assess if it’s persuasive enough to challenge the conclusion that the virus spread from an animal.
“The vast majority of the evidence continues to support natural origin,” Rasmussen told The Associated Press Wednesday. “I’m a scientist. I need to see the evidence rather than take the FBI director’s word for it.”
Many of those citing the report as proof, however, seemed uninterested in the details. They seized on the report and said it suggests the experts were wrong when it came to masks and vaccines, too.
“School closures were a failed & catastrophic policy. Masks are ineffective. And harmful,” said a tweet that’s been read nearly 300,000 times since Sunday. “COVID came from a lab. Everything we skeptics said was true.”
Overall mentions of COVID-19 began to rise after The Wall Street Journal published a story about the Energy Department report on Sunday. Since then, mentions of various COVID-related conspiracy theories have soared, according to an analysis conducted by Zignal Labs, a San Francisco-based media intelligence firm, and shared with The Associated Press.
While the lab leak theory has bounced around the Internet since the pandemic began, references to it soared 100,000 percent in the 48 hours after the Energy Department report was revealed, according to Zignal’s analysis, which combed through social media, blogs and other sites.
Many of the conspiracy theories contradict each other and the findings in the Energy Department report. In a tweet on Tuesday, US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, called COVID-19 a “man made bioweapon from China.” A follower quickly challenged her: “It was made in Ukraine,” he responded.
With so many questions remaining about a world event that has claimed so many lives and upended even more, it’s not at all surprising that COVID-19 is still capable of generating so much anger and misinformation, according to Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a Washington-based organization that has tracked government propaganda about COVID-19.
“The pandemic was so incredibly disruptive to everyone. The intensity of feelings about COVID, I don’t think that’s going to go away,” Schafer said. “And any time something new comes along, it breathes new life into these grievances and frustrations, real or imagined.”
Chinese government officials have in the past used their social media accounts to amplify anti-US conspiracy theories, including some that suggested the US created the COVID-19 virus and framed its release on China.
So far, they’ve taken a quieter approach to the Energy Department report. In their official response, China’s government dismissed the agency’s assessment as an effort to politicize the pandemic. Online, Beijing’s sprawling propaganda and disinformation network was largely silent, with just a few posts criticizing or mocking the report.
“BREAKING,” a pro-China YouTuber wrote on Twitter. “I can now announce, with ‘low confidence,’ that the COVID pandemic began as a leak from Hunter Biden’s laptop.”
 


China ‘strongly’ urges India, Pakistan to avoid escalation

Updated 10 May 2025
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China ‘strongly’ urges India, Pakistan to avoid escalation

BEIJING: China on Saturday urged India and Pakistan to avoid an escalation in fighting, Beijing’s foreign ministry said, as the conflict between its two nuclear-armed neighbors spiralled toward full-blown war.
“We strongly call on both India and Pakistan to give priority to peace and stability, remain calm and restrained, return to the track of political settlement through peaceful means and avoid taking actions that further escalate tensions,” a statement by a foreign ministry spokesperson said.


Brazil’s Lula to visit China ahead of regional summit

Updated 10 May 2025
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Brazil’s Lula to visit China ahead of regional summit

  • Beijing is Brazil’s biggest trading partner. Its exports to China reached more than $94 billion last year

BEIJING: Brazil’s president will begin a five-day trip to China on Saturday, Beijing announced, ahead of a gathering of Latin American leaders in the country next week.
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s state visit comes at the invitation of counterpart President Xi Jinping and will last until Wednesday, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said in a statement on Saturday.
Since returning to power in early 2023, Lula has sought to improve ties with both China and the United States.
Beijing is Brazil’s biggest trading partner. Its exports to China reached more than $94 billion last year, according to the United Nations Comtrade Database.
The South American agricultural power sends mainly soybeans and other primary commodities to China, while the Asian giant sells semiconductors, telephones, vehicles and medicines to Brazil.
The two presidents are expected to attend next week’s summit between China and the 33-member Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).
China is seeking to replace the United States as the main political and economic external influence in Latin America, where leaders have urged a united front against President Donald Trump’s global tariff blitz.
Two-thirds of Latin American countries have joined Beijing’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road infrastructure program, and China has surpassed the United States as the biggest trading partner of Brazil, Peru and Chile, among others.


South Korean conservative party moves to switch presidential candidates as election turmoil deepens

Updated 10 May 2025
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South Korean conservative party moves to switch presidential candidates as election turmoil deepens

  • The replacement still requires confirmation through an all-party vote Saturday and approval by the party’s national committee Sunday
  • Han and Kim have lagged well behind Lee in recent opinion polls. Lee, who spearheaded the Democrats’ efforts to oust Yoon

SEOUL, South Korea: South Korea’s embattled conservative party has taken the unprecedented step of nullifying its primary and replacing presidential candidate Kim Moon Soo with former Prime Minister Han Duck-soo just one week after Kim’s selection, deepening internal turmoil ahead of the June 3 presidential by-election.
Saturday’s move by the People Power Party’s leadership, which Kim denounced as an “overnight political coup,” underscores the desperation and disarray within the party following the ouster of former President Yoon Suk Yeol over his ill-fated attempt to impose martial law in December.
Kim, a staunch conservative and former labor minister under Yoon, was named the PPP’s presidential candidate on May 3 after winning 56.3 percent of the primary vote, defeating a reformist rival who had criticized Yoon’s martial law. But the PPP’s leadership, dominated by Yoon loyalists, has spent the past week pressuring Kim to step aside and back Han, whom they believe stands a stronger chance against liberal Democratic Party frontrunner Lee Jae-myung.
Han served as acting president after Yoon was impeached by the legislature in December and officially removed by the Constitutional Court in April. He resigned from office May 2 to pursue a presidential bid, arguing his long public service career qualifies him to lead the country amid growing geopolitical uncertainty and trade challenges intensified by the policies of US President Donald Trump.
After failed talks between Han and Kim to unify their candidacies, the PPP’s emergency committee canceled Kim’s nomination in the early hours of Saturday and officially registered Han as a party member and its new presidential candidate.
The replacement still requires confirmation through an all-party vote Saturday and approval by the party’s national committee Sunday, which is the deadline for candidates to register with the election authorities.
Han in a message issued through the party claimed “if we unite, we can surely win.”
Speaking at a news conference, Kim lamented “democracy in our party died” and vowed to take unspecified legal and political steps, but it remained unclear whether any realistic path existed to restore his candidacy without the party’s cooperation.
Kim had opposed the legislature’s impeachment of Yoon on Dec. 14, though he said he disagreed with Yoon’s decision to declare martial law on Dec. 3. Kim had gained popularity among hard-line PPP supporters after he solely defied a Dec. 11 demand by an opposition lawmaker that all Cabinet members stand and bow in a gesture of apology for Yoon’s martial law enactment at the Assembly.
Han and Kim have lagged well behind Lee in recent opinion polls. Lee, who spearheaded the Democrats’ efforts to oust Yoon, ridiculed the PPP efforts to switch candidacies, telling reporters Thursday, “I have heard of forced marriages but never heard of forced unity.”
Lee has long cultivated an image as an anti-establishment figure capable of tackling South Korea’s entrenched inequality and corruption. However, critics view him as a populist who fuels division and vilifies opponents, warning that his leadership could further polarize the country.
He currently faces five trials for corruption and other criminal charges. If he becomes president, those trials likely will stop because of special presidential immunity from most criminal charges.


Judge pauses much of Trump administration’s massive downsizing of federal agencies

Updated 10 May 2025
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Judge pauses much of Trump administration’s massive downsizing of federal agencies

  • The order, which expires in 14 days, does not require departments to rehire people

SAN FRANCISCO: The Republican administration must halt much of its dramatic downsizing of the federal workforce, a California judge ordered Friday.
Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco issued the emergency order in a lawsuit filed by labor unions and cities last week, one of multiple legal challenges to Republican President Donald Trump’s efforts to shrink the size of a federal government he calls bloated and expensive.
The temporary restraining order directs numerous federal agencies to halt acting on the president’s workforce executive order signed in February and a subsequent memo issued by the Department of Government Efficiency and the Office of Personnel Management.
The order, which expires in 14 days, does not require departments to rehire people. Plaintiffs asked that the effective date of any agency action be postponed and that departments stop implementing or enforcing the executive order, including taking any further action.
They limited their request to departments where dismantlement is already underway or poised to be underway, including at the the US Department of Health and Human Services, which announced in March it will lay off 10,000 workers and centralize divisions.
Illston, who was nominated to the bench by former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, said at a hearing Friday the president has authority to seek changes in the executive branch departments and agencies created by Congress.
“But he must do so in lawful ways,” she said. “He must do so with the cooperation of Congress, the Constitution is structured that way.”
Trump has repeatedly said voters gave him a mandate to remake the federal government, and he tapped billionaire Elon Musk to lead the charge through DOGE.
Tens of thousands of federal workers have been fired, left their jobs via deferred resignation programs or have been placed on leave as a result of Trump’s government-shrinking efforts. There is no official figure for the job cuts, but at least 75,000 federal employees took deferred resignation, and thousands of probationary workers have already been let go.
Lawyers for the government argued Friday that the executive order and memo calling for large-scale personnel reductions and reorganization plans provided only general principles that agencies should follow in exercising their own decision-making process.
“It expressly invites comments and proposals for legislative engagement as part of policies that those agencies wish to implement,” Eric Hamilton, a deputy assistant attorney general, said of the memo. “It is setting out guidance.”
But Danielle Leonard, an attorney for plaintiffs, said it was clear that the president, DOGE and OPM were making decisions outside of their authority and not inviting dialogue from agencies.
“They are not waiting for these planning documents” to go through long processes, she said. “They’re not asking for approval, and they’re not waiting for it.”
The temporary restraining order applies to departments including the departments of Agriculture, Energy, Labor, Interior, State, Treasury and Veteran Affairs.
It also applies to the National Science Foundation, Small Business Association, Social Security Administration and Environmental Protection Agency.
Some of the labor unions and nonprofit groups are also plaintiffs in another lawsuit before a San Francisco judge challenging the mass firings of probationary workers. In that case, Judge William Alsup ordered the government in March to reinstate those workers, but the US Supreme Court later blocked his order.
Plaintiffs include the cities of San Francisco, Chicago and Baltimore; labor group American Federation of Government Employees; and nonprofit groups Alliance for Retired Americans, Center for Taxpayer Rights and Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks.


Columbia suspends over 65 students following pro-Palestinian protest in library

Updated 10 May 2025
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Columbia suspends over 65 students following pro-Palestinian protest in library

  • Roughly 80 people were arrested in connection with the Wednesday evening demonstration at the university’s Butler Library
  • State Department reviewing visa status of library takeover participants for possible deportation, says Secretary Rubio

NEW YORK: Columbia University has suspended dozens of students and barred alums and others who participated in a pro-Palestinian demonstration inside the school’s main library earlier this week, a school spokesperson said Friday.
The Ivy League institution in Manhattan placed more than 65 students on interim suspension and barred 33 others, including those from affiliated institutions such as Barnard College, from setting foot on campus.
Interim suspension generally means that a student cannot come to campus, attend classes or participate in other university activities, according to Columbia’s website. The university declined to say how long the disciplinary measures would be in place, saying only that the decisions are pending further investigation.
An undisclosed number of alums who also participated in the protest are also now prevented from entering school grounds, according to Columbia.
Roughly 80 people were arrested in connection with the Wednesday evening demonstration at the university’s Butler Library. Most face trespassing charges, though some may also face disorderly conduct, police have said.
The mask-clad protesters pushed their way past campus security officers, raced into the building and hung Palestinian flags and other banners on bookshelves. Some protesters also scrawled phrases on library furniture and picture frames, including “Columbia will burn.”
New York City police in helmets and other protection broke up the demonstration at the request of university officials, who denounced the protests as an “outrageous” disruption for students studying and preparing for final exams.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said his office will be reviewing the visa status of those who participated in the library takeover for possible deportation.
The Trump administration has already pulled federal funding and detained international students at Columbia and other prestigious American universities over their handling of student protests against the war in Gaza.