China and USA: Purging the “political virus” of conspiracy theory is the common responsibility of the international community

Recently, some US politicians have been shifting blame to China and making up rumors to shirk their responsibilities in their sluggish response to the #COVID19 pandemic. One moment they claimed to have “a significant amount of evidence” that the virus came from a Chinese laboratory. The next moment, they said they were not sure about the origin of the virus. Such incoherent conspiracy theories have imprinted a mark of disgrace in this unprecedented global anti-virus fight.

The scientific community has reached a consensus that tracing the origin of the virus is a serious and scientific issue, that the origin of the virus has not be identified, and that China’s first reporting of the virus does not mean it is the origin of these virus. Many scientists have researched the genetic sequence of the virus and confirmed that the virus is natural in origin. Vincent Racaniello, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University in the US, said that politics has been the motivation for conspiracy theories that the novel coronavirus was lab created.

In the face of science and humanism, these conspiracy theories are clumsy to the world and dangerous to themselves. Rumors and conspiracy theories, after spreading, can affect people’s mood and disrupt pandemic prevention and control efforts. This is the reason why the secretary-general of the UN, António Guterres, called for a crackdown on misinformation, which is a poison that is putting even more lives at risk. The WHO also noted that it is battling two kinds of “epidemics,” namely, the coronavirus pandemic and misinformation.

To win the battle against the virus, identifying the target is the top priority. In face of the raging pandemic, China, a large country with a population of nearly 1.4 billion, effectively curbed the spread of the virus within over a month, maintained its domestically daily new infections in the single-digit range within about two months, and made huge anti-virus progress in the hardest-hit Hubei province within about three months. The reasons behind China’s significant results lie in its strong belief that the virus is the common enemy of humankind, that the safety and health of people is always first, and that solidarity and cooperation remain the most powerful weapon for the global anti-virus fight.

The New York Times recently published a co-signed open letter from over 70 Chinese and American public health experts and scholars, which pointed out that there is no room for attempts to deteriorate the bilateral relationship through spreading conspiracy theories and rumors on the virus origin while appealing to avoid politicizing the virus. What the international community needs most now is a science-based attitude and united efforts to fight the virus, instead of the repeated blame shifting and prevarication.

Politicizing the virus is more of a devil than the virus itself. During this critical period of epidemic prevention and control, lies cannot remedy past mistakes, rumors cannot bring back the lost lives, and smears and blame-shifting will only dissolve the united power. Purging the “political virus” of conspiracy theories plays an important role in winning the global anti-virus fight and is the common responsibility for all nations.