Chinese state media and social media influencers in China have claimed that the monkeypox virus originated in a U.S. laboratory. They’ve also made claims that monkeypox will cause the next pandemic, even as European and U.S. scientists point out that the possibility of a pandemic is extremely small because of the close contact needed to transmit the virus.
Those scientists also said that, at present, patients are infected with a natural monkeypox virus with no links to a laboratory.
“Jimu News,” a subsidiary of state-run Hubei Daily Group, published an article on May 23 implying that monkeys that escaped from a truck involved in a traffic accident on Jan. 21 in Pennsylvania have something to do with the recent monkeypox outbreak in the United States and Europe….