The rising fear and panic around the coronavirus has led to a flood of misinformation and conspiracy theories online.
One such theory that found its way to almost all social media platforms was that the virus was developed by the Chinese government as a bioweapon and that the leak has lead to the mass spread of the disease. The Quint has earlier debunked the claim and reported that there is no evidence to prove this theory.
Now a blogpost has surfaced on UFO Spotlight, which is purportedly a real account of a senior Chinese military intelligence officer. The officer, without revealing his identity, goes on to write about the novel virus and blames the Chinese government for the outbreak.
The Quint received multiple queries from its readers to verify the content of the post.
An excerpt from the post reads:
“You may have heard that although the disease is highly infectious, it is dangerous only to the elderly or to those who have a compromised immune system. The official lethality rate is approximately 2 percent or so. All of that is a bunch of lies concocted by the Chinese state with the tacit support of the US deep state and its friends in the European Union, Russia and Australia, and spread by the docile media in all of those countries.”
It further goes on to claim that the virus is indeed a bioweapon developed in a lab. However, none of the claims made in the post are true.
WHAT’S THE TRUTH?
We searched on Google with the keywords ‘I am a senior Chinese military intelligence officer and I know the truth about the “corona virus” outbreak’ and came across a post on Reddit which had the exact same article.
Now, in reality, this story was first published on r/nosleep, a section on Reddit where people post scary fiction stories. This story was posted on the forum about a month ago.
The section page also has publishing guidelines which state, ‘Stories must be believable within reason’. Another guideline reads, ‘Everything is true here, even if it's not’.
Evidently, a fictional piece is being misconstrued as a real account of a Chinese military intelligence officer.
The story had earlier been debunked by Snopes.
(You can read all our fact-check stories on coronavirus here.)
(Not convinced of a post or information you came across online and want it verified? Send us the details on Whatsapp at 9643651818, or e-mail it to us at webqoof@thequint.com and we'll fact-check it for you. You can also read all our fact-checked stories here.)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)