Russia's global disinformation and fake news campaign blaming the United States for creating the Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) and using it to specifically attack China has forced the Trump White House to play damage control.
Over the past few weeks, stories have emerged on social media platforms showing different versions of basically the same fake story -- 2019-nCoV isn't a natural mutation of an existing coronavirus but is a biological warfare weapon engineered by U.S. scientists and unleashed on China to punish China for challenging U.S. economic and military supremacy.
One version spreading on Russian social media allegedly has People's Liberation Army (PLA), China's armed forces, claiming the coronavirus was artificially produced in U.S. laboratories with the goal of destroying China from within. It contends the current outbreak is only a "reconnaissance operation" aimed at testing the capabilities of China's defenses against biological weapons. Those defenses seem to have failed taking into account the vast number of human casualties and economic damage inflicted on China in just five weeks.
As of Saturday morning, the coronavirus has killed 724 people in China (plus two others overseas) and been confirmed in 34,872 cases, said the National Health Commission (NHC). It killed 86 more people in China and was confirmed in a further 3,399 on Friday.
The outbreak's economic impact on the slowing Chinese economy is expected to be significant. On Friday, S&P downgraded its growth forecast for China's economy to 5% this year from 5.75%. It also predicted the coronavirus' economic impact will spread around the world because Chinese tourist numbers and investments will be greatly reduced.
Russia and its intelligence services are eager to blame the U.S. for all these misfortunes, hence its persistent fake news campaign blaming the Americans for creating and unleashing the Wuhan coronavirus on the world. The virus-like speed with which Russian propaganda is spreading worldwide has alarmed the Trump administration enough to pay attention.
Kelvin Droegemeier, director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), has sent a letter to American scientific experts asking they "rapidly" look into the origins of the coronavirus to address both the current spread, and "to inform future outbreak preparation and better understand animal/human and environmental transmission aspects of coronaviruses."
Droegemeier also called for a "meeting of experts, particularly world class geneticists, coronavirus experts, and evolutionary biologists." He sent his letter to the presidents of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), which represents the collective genius in the scientific national academies of the United States.
To the White House's delight, NASEM immediately agreed to investigate the true origins of the Novel coronavirus currently causing disease, death and panic throughout the world.
In response to Droegemeier's letter, the presidents of the three scientific academies comprising NASEM submitted a synopsis of their research into the Wuhan coronavirus, as 2019-nCoV is also known. They called Droegemeier's request "timely given the declaration of a public health emergency and potential for misinformation to confound the response."
