Beware the super-spreaders of coronavirus conspiracy theories

When a new virus is discovered, conspiracy theories often spread faster than the disease. I’ve been following the debate in China and the latest theory doing the rounds on social media is: what if the coronavirus didn’t come from China, but originated in the US instead? It would be classic CIA, wouldn’t it?

The outbreak of this particular rumour can be traced to a medical pundit on Taiwanese TV two days ago. He referenced an academic paper which shows five different ‘families’ of coronavirus: A to E. But all 80,000 Chinese coronavirus cases belonged to one group: C. In the US, there are only 70 cases but a far greater variety with all five ‘families’ present. Now comes the conspiracy theory; surely this proves that America is the home of coronavirus, with one strain – C – being (deliberately or otherwise) released in China?

The pundit speculated that while there have been 14,000 deaths of the flu in America over the last winter already – do we really know all of these cases are down to the flu, and not the coronavirus? Might Americans be downplaying the extent of this? Charitably, one can put this theory down to a misreading of the paper in question and a lack of proper scientific understanding.