The post Hong Kong scientist claiming China ‘covered up’ coronavirus data speaks out first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The Chinese government intentionally manufactured and released the COVID-19 virus that led to mass shutdowns and deaths across the world, a top virologist and whistleblower told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday.

Carlson specifically asked Dr. Li-Meng Yan whether she believed the Chinese Communist Party released the virus “on purpose.” “Yes, of course, it’s intentionally,” she responded on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

Yan said more evidence would be released but pointed to her own high-ranking position at a World Health Organization reference lab as a reason to trust her allegation.

“I work[ed] in the WHO reference lab, which is the top coronavirus lab in the world, in the University of Hong Kong. And the thing is I get deeply into such investigation in secret from the early beginning of this outbreak. I had my intelligence because I also get my own unit network in China, involved [in] the hospital … also I work with the top corona[virus] virologist in the world,” she said.

EXCLUSIVE: CHINESE VIROLOGIST ACCUSES BEIJING OF CORONAVIRUS COVER-UP, FLEES HONG KONG: I KNOW HOW THEY TREAT WHISTLEBLOWERS’

“So, together with my experience, I can tell you, this is created in the lab … and also, it is spread to the world to make such damage.”

Yan’s comments conflicted with the opinion of Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and White House coronavirus adviser, who previously cast doubt on the idea the virus was artificially created. In May, he told National Geographic: “If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats, and what’s out there now is very, very strongly leaning toward this [virus] could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated — the way the mutations have naturally evolved.”

Other scientists have panned the idea that COVID-19 served as a sort of bioweapon or was released by a lab.

Fox News previously reported on Yan back in July, when she blew the whistle on China’s alleged attempts to suppress information about its handling of the virus. With a vast network of contacts in Chinese medical facilities, Yan attempted to gather more information about the virus as China blocked overseas experts from conducting research in the country.

Her revelations fueled ongoing complaints that the Chinese government failed to tell the world early on about the virus’ threat. Specifically, she believes the Chinese government ignored research that could have saved lives. The State Department did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment.

In response, her former employer, the University of Hong Kong, criticized her account. A press release noted “that the content of the said news report does not accord with the key facts as we understand them.”

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“Specifically, Dr Yan never conducted any research on human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus at [the University of Hong Kong] during December 2019 and January 2020, her central assertion of the said interview.”

Yan, who said she was one of the first scientists in the world to study the novel coronavirus, fled China and currently fears retaliation. She was allegedly asked by her supervisor at the University/WHO reference lab, Dr. Leo Poon, in 2019 to look into the odd cluster of SARS-like cases coming out of mainland China at the end of December 2019.

Fox News’ Barnini Chakraborty and Alex Diaz contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/media/chinese-virologist-government-intentionally-coronavirus

The post Chinese virologist: China’s government ‘intentionally’ released COVID-19 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

A young boy reacts as he and thousands of others line up to purchase face masks from a makeshift stall after waiting for hours in Hong Kong on Feb. 5. ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

The outbreak of the new coronavirus, which originated in Wuhan, China, with all the misinformation and conspiracy that has followed it, has put the major social media companies to the test as they try to combat panic and paranoia.

The big U.S. companies have moved quickly to try to quell criticism that their platforms are turning into cesspools of bad information and fear. So have their Chinese counterparts—which are also under considerable government pressure as Beijing faces its worst legitimacy crisis in years. As the virus has spread, their platforms have played host to theories that the deadly virus is a lab-made bioweapon and that the streets of Wuhan are littered with thousands of dead bodies.

Some are responding better than others.

Twitter has been a significant vector for misinformation around the virus, but the company has taken steps to actually put reliable medical information in the hands of users.

Anyone searching for “coronavirus” or “Wuhan” on Twitter will be met with a message encouraging them to “know the facts,” with a link to a local health authority, and the platform is prioritizing countries’ health authorities in the search results.

Twitter has also moved to ban certain accounts spreading conspiracy theories—most prominently the long-running conspiracist site ZeroHedge. Twitter said in a statement that there was no evidence of coordinated efforts to spread disinformation on the platform but added: “[W]e will remain vigilant and have invested significantly in our proactive abilities to ensure trends, search, and other common areas of the service are protected from malicious behaviors.”

Google has taken a similar approach. Users using the search giant to look up information on the virus receive information from the World Health Organization, including details on how the virus is transmitted, as well as sensible precautions people can take, such as hand-washing tips. Google is generally cagey about how and when it removes or deprioritizes search results from its service, but searches for various coronavirus conspiracy theories turn up news agencies debunking those claims ahead of unreliable sites like Infowars and ZeroHedge.

On Reddit, where several communities dedicated solely to the coronavirus have popped up, there have been mixed results. The two largest virus-related subreddits, with about 50,000 users apiece, both have official rules asking users to use reliable information and to avoid sensationalism. On r/China_Flu, which sprung out of the long-standing r/China subreddit, moderators have been judicious about ensuring those rules are followed. On r/Coronavirus, the community is lousy with moderating posts stoking fears of a government-made biological weapon and making claims of a mass cover-up.

Another subreddit, r/Wuhan_Flu, was quarantined by the platform for trading in misinformation—meaning it isn’t discoverable by searching the platform and comes with warnings about the conspiratorial nature of the community.

What’s more, the company has put a banner ad on its homepage directing users to a megathread on r/AskScience where people can talk to real researchers and public health professionals.

Facebook has deployed its fact-checkers to rate information being shared in its news feed, limiting information deemed to be inaccurate or false. It has also leveraged reliable public health information and provided free advertising credits to health agencies.

But a quick Facebook search shows the limits to that work.

The top two hits for the coronavirus on Facebook are private groups, which require approval to join. The groups are rife with unverified videos, conspiracy theories, and general panic.

On joining one of those groups, you may be welcomed by a post asking: Is it true that the United States invented the coronavirus to destroy China’s economy? The top comment: “True.” (Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.)

Chinese sites are following similar models to their Western counterparts. Searches for “coronavirus” on Baidu, the country’s most frequently used search engine, bring up health information, official statistics, and other tidbits, while the site’s main banner links to a hub page on the topic. (Baidu has gotten into hot water for promoting shady health information in the past.) Many sites are partnering with Dingxiang Yuan, an online physician-orientated information site known for reliable information; its tracker of virus numbers has reached 1.3 billion page views.

For Chinese sites, of course, there’s little choice but to remove supposedly false information—even if it’s just stories the government doesn’t like. With around a third of personnel devoted to self-censoring content even in normal times, removing stories and links is par for the course. Nevertheless, some scandalous stories have broken through, such as the death of a disabled child under quarantine, and some state-backed claims have seen significant and successful pushback. Overseas Chinese groups on uncensored apps such as WhatsApp, however, are full of wild claims about the extent of the virus.

That raises a difficult issue for Western social media apps—coping with misinformation in languages other than English. Googling in languages other than English for the coronavirus, for instance, often doesn’t bring up the extra information. Facebook, in particular, has a record of dealing poorly with the range of countries the site dominates, while WhatsApp has had significant problems with dangerous rumors in India and elsewhere. Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia are all seeing a flood of misinformation about the virus, much of it directing hate at ethnic Chinese citizens or visitors.

One particularly virulent conspiracy theory shows just how difficult stemming the flow of fake news can be—in any language.

On Jan. 31, researchers from the Kusuma School of Biological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi published an article noting an “uncanny similarity” between certain protein chains found within the coronavirus and those found in HIV. The paper clearly explains that the “exchange of genetic material among the viruses is well known” and their preliminary discovery proved “the need to investigate the relations between seemingly unrelated virus families.”

The report was preliminary, meaning it was not peer-reviewed. The scientific archive hosting the paper, bioRxiv, added a disclaimer warning that it “should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or be reported in news media as established information.”

The post An Epidemic of Wuhan Virus Misinformation Is Spreading Online first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.