FALSE: DO NOT SHARE
Claim:
COVID-19 was created in a US military laboratory and it spread to China.
Answer:
False. COVID-19 is thought to be a natural virus that was not engineered in a lab.
FURTHER INFORMATION
There are many claims and theories in this video but the main one is that the Covid-19 virus was created in the US Military facility Fort Detrick in Frederik, Maryland in the summer of 2019. It then spread (either accidentally or deliberately) to China. Covid-19 is a coronavirus, therefore genetically related to SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) which caused previous outbreaks in 2003 and 2012. It would therefore not be surprising if one of the many viruses that were listed for study at Fort Detrick was a coronavirus.
The video states that the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conspired to cover the outbreak of one of these lab-made viruses by attributing it to a ‘mystery vaping illness’. Whilst there is a mystery vaping illness that is puzzling researchers, more research needs to be done as vaping has only recently been widely adopted so the full health effects are still being studied.
As we have previously written, whilst the origin of COVID-19 has not been confirmed, it is thought to be a naturally occurring virus and not synthetically engineered in a lab. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the most likely ecological reservoirs for SARS-CoV-2 is bats, and ‘all available evidence suggests that SARS-CoV-2 has a natural animal origin and is not a constructed virus’.
SOURCE
World Health Organisation (WHO): Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) Situation Report – 32
World Health Organization (WHO): Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) Situation Report – 94
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
nature.com: Scientists chase cause of mysterious vaping illness as death toll rises
Origins of Claim
FULL TEXT OF CLAIM
“What sort of theory could we look to put together from this. Well, you could say that it’s possible that the US military was doing experiments on animals using coronaviruses, and because they failed to follow protocols for containment, there was an outbreak nearby. The CDC found out about this, investigated what was happening, told the public it was the common cold and then shut down the lab… And then, either intentionally or accidentally, somebody who went to Wuhan was infected and spread the virus to Wuhan. There’s another side to this…The CDC is covering up so much information…there is evidence that this started in America.”
