Chinese social media users are speculating the US could be the source of monkeypox infections now reported in at least a dozen countries, including the UK, Spain and Australia.
The viral infection has been highlighted as a trending topic on Weibo for the past three days, with a hashtag on the US reporting two suspected monkeypox cases attracting more than 51-million views by Monday.
While Chinese state media has refrained from accusing the US of intentionally spreading monkeypox, an accusation it made about Covid-19, many social media users haven’t held back.
The post was liked by more than 7,500 users and received more than 660 comments, many of them agreeing with her. One said the US was 'evil beyond the imagination of humankind'. Posts pushing this conspiracy theory have been liked tens of thousands of times on Weibo.
A 2021 report on biosecurity preparedness planning by US non-government organisation Nuclear Threat Initiative, which included a scenario of a monkeypox pandemic, has been taken out of context to suggest the US government knew the outbreak was coming.
Nationalist influencer Shu Chang, who has 6.41-million Weibo followers, deliberately misconstrued the report and posted that it showed “a plan by the US to leak bioengineered monkeypox virus”.
The post was liked by more than 7,500 users and received more than 660 comments, many of them agreeing with her. One said the US was “evil beyond the imagination of humankind”.
Posts pushing this conspiracy theory have been liked tens of thousands of times on Weibo.
The rare and potentially deadly cousin of the smallpox virus is traditionally confined to regions in Africa, but health officials are concerned about its recent wider spread in Europe, North America and elsewhere. No cases have been found in China.
Disinformation about health has been rife in China and the US since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The two countries had engaged in a spat over the origins of the virus. Beijing made unsubstantiated claims the US engineered it at a military base, while some US media outlets questioned whether the virus may have leaked from a research facility in Wuhan, the city where it was first detected.
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