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A false theory about the origin of COVID-19 links Maine lobsters to China

2021-10-21T12:47:08.298Z


The Chinese consul general in India spread via Twitter that the coronavirus could have been imported to the Wuhan seafood market through a batch of lobsters shipped in November 2019.


By Olivia Solon, Keir Simmons and Amy Perrette -

NBC News

In mid-September, Marcel Schliebs, a disinformation researcher at the University of Oxford who had been tracking the messages that Chinese diplomats and state media spread on Twitter for 18 months, detected the emergence of a surprising theory about the origin of the coronavirus. .  

Zha Liyou, the Chinese consul general in Kolkata, India, tweeted an unsubstantiated claim that COVID-19 may have been imported into China from the United States via a batch of Maine lobsters shipped to a seafood market in Wuhan in November. 2019. It is the latest in a series of theories that have been pushed by pro-China accounts since the start of the pandemic.

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Digging deeper, Schliebs discovered a network of more than 550 Twitter accounts, which he shared with Noticias Telemundo's sister network NBC News, broadcasting an almost identical message, translated into multiple languages ​​- including English, Spanish, and Spanish. French, Polish, Korean and even Latin - at similar times every day between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. local time in China.

Some of the accounts were "unsophisticated sock puppets" with "very few or no followers," Schliebs noted, while others appeared to be accounts that were once authentic but had been hijacked and repurposed to spread misinformation. 

"Attribution is really difficult," explained Schliebs, a computational propaganda postdoctoral researcher at Oxford's Democracy and Technology Program.

"But we can see that there is a coordinated effort, and that it is a pro-China narrative," he added.


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Chinese media articles, shared on social media, have repeatedly suggested that the coronavirus may have originated from frozen food imports.

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The same diplomat Schliebs observed pushing the Maine lobster theory last month had already tweeted in December the theory that COVID-19 could have reached Wuhan from elsewhere via the cold chain and called for it to be further investigate the unsubstantiated claim that the US military was involved in the spread of the virus.

"This is the third or fourth different redirect Chinese officials are making to try to somehow blame the United States for the coronavirus outbreak," said Bret Schafer, head of the information manipulation team at the Alliance for the Security of Democracy. , which is part of the non-profit organization German Marshall Fund of the United States, on diplomats spreading that message through unverified accounts.

“It looks crude and unsophisticated when you look at the individual accounts.

But these types of networks are designed to try to make the topics trending on social networks, "he said.


"Regardless of whether someone swallows the lobster hoax or whether Fort Detrick is the source of the coronavirus, it is at least having the effect of muddying the truth and confusing people," he recalled.

Schliebs shared a spreadsheet of accounts that appeared to be inauthentic to Twitter.

The social media platform reviewed the accounts and suspended them under its platform tampering and

spam policy

[messages with unsolicited, unwanted content or with unknown sender].

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"Our top priority is keeping people safe, and we continue to monitor coordinated activity on our service," said Twitter spokesman Marco Bilello.

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"Using both technology and human review, we proactively and routinely address platform tampering attempts and mitigate them at scale by targeting millions of accounts each week for violating our policies in this area," he explained.

Twitter investigates networks of unverified accounts to see if it can reliably attribute them to state-related activity, the company said, but that process can take several months.

It has not yet linked this network to Chinese state actors.

Because of the speed with which Schliebs' team identified the network, the "real-world impact was probably small," he said.

"We alerted Twitter to the network, and they quickly suspended it just as it was starting to gain traction, when the network was in its growth phase."

The locust war

The Maine lobster industry has been in the crossfire of U.S.-China trade relations for several years.

According to data from the US Census Bureau, US live lobster exports to China, a major buyer of seafood, plummeted by more than 40% in 2019 after China imposed heavy tariffs on lobsters. Americans during former President Donald Trump's trade war with China.

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US lobster exports to China rebounded in 2020 as China eased restrictions on the industry.

But some experts are concerned about the possibility of future sanctions on seafood by China.

A large lobster at Three Sons Lobster and Fish in Portland, Maine, on July 21, 2012. Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

In November, China restricted the importation of Australian lobsters amid a month-long diplomatic and trade dispute.

It also informally restricted the importation of Norwegian salmon following the award of the Nobel Prize to a Chinese activist.

Some articles pointing to Maine lobsters refer to a World Health Organization report published in March stating that SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2) can survive in products. and cold chain packaging for a long time, providing a "scientific basis for the possibility" that cold chain imports may transmit the virus.

"Public health organizations around the world have made a strong claim that imported food is not the cause of COVID-19," recalled Tom Adams, owner of the Maine Coast, a Maine lobster wholesale supplier referenced. in some of the articles in the Chinese media.

"Maine Coast does not have any information to support this claim," he added.

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Adams added that the unfounded rumors have not affected his business.

Some articles falsely suggest that lung disease cases identified by the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention as caused by e-cigarettes may have been the first group of coronavirus cases.

The Maine CDC clarified that the claims have no scientific basis.

“These claims appear to establish an unfounded connection between people who required treatment for e-cigarette-related lung problems at a Maine hospital and the fact that lobsters live in the waters near that hospital.

It's a complete hoax, "said Robert Long, a spokesman for the Maine CDC.

China's opinion

Kai Yan, spokesman for the Chinese embassy in the UK, said China "opposes the manufacture and dissemination of disinformation."

"China is the biggest victim of disinformation, and the perpetrators are some politicians and the media eager to attack China in the United States and in some other Western countries," Yan said.

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Yan added that China urges "all members of the international community to work together to oppose and resist such misinformation, which will inevitably disrupt global cooperation in the fight against the pandemic."

Despite the swift identification and suspension of the accounts, the same theory continues to spread on Twitter, according to Schliebs.

"We've slowed it down significantly, but we still see some coordinated effort to get the message out," Schliebs said.

"It appears that accounts are now being created to replace the ones that were withdrawn in response to our investigation," he said.

Source: telemundo

All news articles on 2021-10-21

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