Facebook said in an official statement on Wednesday that it will no longer ban posts that refer to Covid-19 as a “man-made” virus in a laboratory. In February, the company had implemented the measure as a way to combat the spread of misleading content.
He backtracked, however, after an article from the Wall Street Journal report that there is evidence, according to the US Intelligence department, that justifies a more in-depth investigation into the “theory” of the virus created vitro. The publication reports that three scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China fell ill and sought medical care with persistent symptoms of Covid-19 before the disease was confirmed by the Chinese government.
“In light of ongoing investigations into the origins of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made,” Facebook said of the new rule in an email. “We will continue to work with health experts to monitor the evolving nature of the pandemic and regularly update our policies as new facts and trends emerge.”
Although the scenario described by the CIA is still based on circumstantial evidence, Facebook decided to indirectly heed the message. Especially after US President Joe Biden asked the country's intelligence agencies to “redouble your efforts” to find an answer to the origin of the coronavirus. Biden gave investigators 90 days to present a comprehensive report that includes the findings of American laboratories on the case, among other additional information.
In the statement, Facebook said it was ensuring that the rule change would not lead to gratuitous misinformation about Covid-19. On the same day that it lifted the ban on posts about the theory of a lab-created virus, the company increased restrictions on users who repeatedly “share misinformation.”
The origin of the coronavirus
Currently, the most consensual theory in the scientific community is that the Covid-19 passes from bats to humans through an intermediate animal host, according to report released by the World Health Organization (WHO) in March. With the information passed on by the CIA, however, the US government has raised suspicions that the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology — known for investigating coronavirus infections in bats — in an accidental leak.
It is important to note that the narrative still has loose ends. There is, to date, no confirmation through medical examinations that the three researchers from the Wuhan laboratory were, in fact, contaminated with the Sars-CoV2 virus and the possibility of a seasonal illness has not been ruled out. One of the sources interviewed by the Wall Street Journal also states that the assessment, although it contains potential information, still needs to be investigated in depth.
Finally, the WHO, in its study released two months ago, sees the hypothesis of a laboratory accident as “extremely unlikely”, although it cannot be ruled out — the organization considers that the Chinese government restricted some of the access for the investigation into the origin of the virus.
Through which channels you reach those people, classic and out of the box. Business Insider
Image: Zubada/iStock
