Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo and Sen. Tom Cotton keep pushing coronavirus conspiracy theory
Cotton and right-wing media figures cite the same medical journal that already denounced the conspiracy theory alleging that China created a bioweapon
Written by Eric Kleefeld
Published
Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo hosted Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) on yesterday’s edition of Sunday Morning Futures, during which the two continued to spread a debunked conspiracy theory that the COVID-19 virus might have originated in an infectious disease research laboratory in Wuhan, China, and that the government of that country is covering it up.
Bartiromo brought up the subject by playing a video clip of Cotton’s past discussion of the idea on Fox, and then she asked him to elaborate: “Can you tell us more about this super lab, this level 4 biochemical lab that you mentioned in Wuhan? What do they do there?”
“The Lancet published a study of the first 40 cases of coronavirus and 14 of them had no contact with that market, so the virus went into that market which acted as an accelerant before it came out of that market,” Cotton said. “As for what’s happened in that biosafety level 4 laboratory, the super lab in Wuhan, we still don’t know because the Chinese Communist Party refuses to come clean.”
Cotton cited a study by the medical journal The Lancet which suggested that the virus did not actually originate at the seafood market in Wuhan, as has been speculated, but came from another origin point. Cotton and other right-wing media figures, such as Fox host Tucker Carlson and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, have exploited this study to suggest that the disease was man-made.
The Lancet itself published a statement over a month ago denouncing the misuse of its study in this manner: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.” The statement explained that studies of the virus genome by scientists in multiple studies confirm the view that it originated naturally in wildlife, and further said that “conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumours, and prejudice that jeopardise our global collaboration in the fight against this virus.”
In short, the Lancet study suggests that the virus began crossing over to humans at some point before it spread in the Wuhan market, but this argument was not meant in any way to suggest it was man-made — and the journal itself stands by the virus being a natural phenomenon. But that’s not going to stop right-wing media from spreading misinformation about it, and even claiming to cite The Lancet as an authority in favor of this conspiracy theory.
Citation From the March 29, 2020, edition of Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures
MARIA BARTIROMO (ANCHOR): In fact, you had questioned how it originated from the beginning. You joined me one month ago and I asked you how this started, and here is what you said. Listen to this, I’ve got to get your reaction to this.
(VIDEO BEGINS)
SEN. TOM COTTON (R-AR): We don’t know where it originated, but we do know that we have to get to the bottom of that. We also know that just a few miles away from that food market is China’s only biosafety level 4 super laboratory that researches human infectious diseases. Now, we don’t have evidence that this disease originated there, but because of China’s duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says, and China right now is not giving any evidence on that question at all.
(VIDEO ENDS)
BARTIROMO: In fact, senator, they did not allow the CDC in to get to the bottom of it, to investigate how this originated, the severity of it. Can you tell us more about this super lab, this level 4 biochemical lab that you mentioned in Wuhan? What do they do there?
COTTON: Yeah, Maria, it’s not just that they won’t allow the CDC into the country. They also have kicked out reporters from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. That’s the hallmark of a communist government that is trying to cover up the biggest story in the world. What we know now is about the same as what we knew a month ago: very little. We do know that the virus did not originate in that food market or the wet market or whatever you want to call it in Wuhan. Even the Chinese Communist Party has now acknowledged that. All the way back in December, though, we knew that origin story was a myth. The Lancet published a study of the first 40 cases of coronavirus and 14 of them had no contact with that market, so the virus went into that market which acted as an accelerant before it came out of that market. As for what’s happened in that biosafety level 4 laboratory, the super lab in Wuhan, we still don’t know because the Chinese Communist Party refuses to come clean. We do know that they have researched coronaviruses and there are legitimate reasons to research coronaviruses, trying to identify, perhaps, therapeutic drugs or vaccines, but we don’t know the origin of this virus still to this day.