COVID conspiracy shows vast reach of Chinese disinformation

It took just three months for the rumor that COVID-19 was engineered as a bioweapon to spread from the fringes of the Chinese internet and take root in millions of people’s minds.

By March 2020, belief that the virus had been human-made and possibly weaponized was widespread, multiple surveys indicated. The Pew Research Center found, for example, that one in three Americans believed the new coronavirus had been created in a lab; one in four thought it had been engineered intentionally.

This chaos was, at least in part, manufactured.