Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) again suggested over the weekend the coronavirus could have been created in a laboratory in China, despite pushback from experts and officials.
During an appearance on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” Cotton commented on the rapid spread of the virus, saying: “We don’t know where it originated, and 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,” he continued.
According to The Washington Post, Cotton was referring to the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, a facility that researches disease pathogens. The lab is near a market that was reportedly believed by some to have been where the virus began to spread weeks back.
“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,” Cotton said. “And China right now is not giving any evidence on that question at all.”
A number of experts have taken aim at Cotton’s remarks, casting doubt on conspiracy theories that the virus was engineered, a narrative that has picked up in some right-wing websites in recent weeks.
“There’s absolutely nothing in the genome sequence of this virus that indicates the virus was engineered,” Richard Ebright, who teaches chemical biology at Rutgers University, told The Post. “The possibility this was a deliberately released bioweapon can be firmly excluded.”
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- Discussion
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GOP senator repeats coronavirus origins conspiracy theory despite pushback from experts and officials https://t.co/GR9BQ8Q5G0 pic.twitter.com/FbcwqlfGBG
— The Hill (@thehill) February 17, 2020
A U.S. Senator with the equivalent of the Soviet story that the Army invented AIDS. This is a clever and manipulative Senator riling up the uneducated, while an anchor who has no idea what she's talking about keeps asking him to repeat the same crazy theory.
h/t @davidgura https://t.co/2sNw8j8a1o
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 16, 2020
"I'm not saying that Chinese nanobots are hiding in your coffee grounds, just waiting for the chance to turn your prefrontal cortex into applesauce, but this so-called expert offered no proof that they're not."
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) February 17, 2020
A conspiracy theory based on literally no evidence being aired by a US senator on television (classic: "[w]e don't have evidence… but… we need to at least ask the question"). Dangerous and irresponsible. https://t.co/mENnPZk15S
— Brendan Nyhan (@BrendanNyhan) February 16, 2020
Tom Cotton: We must at least entertain the hypothesis that this mouse was genetically constructed by the Chinese military https://t.co/oK2w7gUjEo
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 17, 2020
Probably imported from the same Chinese bioweapons lab that started all this https://t.co/R5ZdaP7xFj
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 17, 2020
This is why arguing with a conspiracy theorist rarely goes well: It gives the person advancing the theory to keep repeating it as "just a hypothesis," as Cotton does here. Every time you ask him, he'll repeat it, say it's unlikely, and then say he's just asking questions. https://t.co/gvVmTHwsbF
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 17, 2020
Cotton continuing to double down on a totally unsupported claim, trying to stigmatize any criticism as "the Communist Party line" https://t.co/4VQCyzSvrQ
— Brendan Nyhan (@BrendanNyhan) February 17, 2020
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