COVID-19 – Rumors, Conspiracy Theories & Fake News

Zach Zachariah, Ph. D., MBA.

Associate Professor Emeritus, Ohio University

April 2, 2020

These or some of the rumors and fake news regarding the origin of the Coronavirus that is being circulated on social media:

1.       The virus has been created by inserting herpes bits into corona RNA.

2.       The Chinese created the virus and spread it to the world to create chaos.

3.       China spreads the news that the US Army started the Coronavirus

4.       They quickly controlled the epidemic in your country. After all, they already had the antidote.

5.       The coronavirus travelled entire world from Wuhan but it did not reached Beijing and Shanghai.

Here are the facts:

The first report of the outbreak of the current pandemic was confirmed on December 31, 2019 in Wuhan, in the Hubei Province of China and the first death was reported on January 11, 2020.  Bats are the natural reservoir of coronaviruses.  These viruses cannot directly get into humans; there must be an intermediate host (animal or bird). A study by Yang Zhang and colleagues of the University of Michigan, U. S. A. published in the ACS’ Journal of Proteome Research[1], which is quoted in the publication, Science Daily (March 26, 2020) suggested that the host animal is pangolin, which the Chinese eat.  The researchers identified protein sequences in the sick animals' lungs that were 91% identical to the human virus' proteins. Moreover, the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein from the pangolin coronavirus had only five amino acid differences from SARS-CoV-2, compared with 19 differences between the human and bat viral proteins. This evidence points to the pangolin as the most likely intermediate host for the new Coronavirus[2].  Other research laboratories are conducting further studies to understand more about the DNA and protein sequences of the novel-Coronavirus that the W.H.O. has named SARS-CoV-2[3].  We have to remember the fact that it was only in January that the sequence was first identified.

The virus’s genetic makeup reveals that the virus is not a mishmash of known viruses. Anyone hoping to create a virus would need to work with already known viruses and engineer them to have desired properties. SARS-CoV-2 virus has components that differ from those of previously known viruses, so they had to come from an unknown virus or viruses in nature. “Genetic data irrefutably show that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone,” says Kristian Anderson of the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA in a study published in Nature[4]. Other independent researchers have confirmed this finding.  These research findings point to the fact that the new Coronavirus was not created by inserting herpes or HIV bits to Corona RNA. There is no evidence that US Army started the Coronavirus either.

So far, in China, the number of people reported to have been infected is 82,691 and 3,321 persons have died.  Of that total, in Hubei Province of which Wuhan is a part, 67,802 people have been infected and 3193 persons have died.  Chinese government might have underreported the numbers.  The government enforced a complete lockdown of the province for over eight weeks, which spared the other major cities from the devastating epidemic.  Even then, 580 persons were infected in Beijing and 516 were infected in Shanghai.  It is preposterous to say that China made the virus to create chaos in the rest of the world allowing the virus to affect so many of its citizens. The Chinese scientists were the first to identify the RNA sequence and then shared it with W.H.O., which made it possible for W.H.O., C.D.C. and other public health agencies to develop the tests to identify the disease and for researchers to work on developing the vaccine. Following the Chinese example, the Indian government has clamped a lock down of the country to contain the pandemic.  The White House Task Force on Tuesday, March 31, 2020 projects that the pandemic will eventually kill 100,000 to 240,000 people in the U.S. alone[5]. Yet, there is no countrywide stay-at-home order and many states have not implemented the social distancing guidelines recommended by the White House. 

Conspiracy theory mongers are always going to come up with wild and exotic theories.  They will continue to post to Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter and other social media outlets.  Someone from among us will pick it up and post it to a group forum; others will forward it or retweet it, and it will spread just like the Coronavirus.  Take a moment before you forward or retweet and ask a few simple question:  Does it make common sense?  Does it have any factual basis? Am I spreading a fake news?  If the answer is no, please take the mouse or your finger off that post or tweet.

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[1]Protein Structure and Sequence Reanalysis. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jproteome.0c00129#

[2] Missing Link,  in Coronavirus- Science News, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200326144342.htm

 [3] Features, Evaluation and Treatment COVID-19, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK554776/

[4] The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

[5] The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/03/31/coronavirus-latest-news/