新型冠状病毒感染的肺炎疫情在中国发生后,美国共和党反华参议员汤姆·科顿(Tom Cotton)忙得不可开交,发表了一系列“无知言论”,宣称病毒是武汉实验室泄露的生化武器。
The GOP senator has spread misinformation and panic in a weeks-long meltdown over the disease.
Cotton suggested the coronavirus could have come from a Chinese "super laboratory that works with the world's most deadly pathogens," boosting a debunked fringe theory circulating among tabloids and conservative media outlets.
Despite little public evidence, the theory has spread widely on social media, to conspiracy theory websites and in some international news outlets.
哈佛教授出头怒批:“极其荒谬”
"It's a ridiculous assertion," said Dr. Michael Mina, assistant professor of epidemiology and immunology at Harvard University. "All signs point to a pathogen that has been circulating in animals and jumped to humans. It's pretty common for these viruses and there's no good reason for him to be saying something like that."
根据病毒基因组和特性,没有任何迹象表明它是一种工程病毒。 "Based on the virus genome and properties there is no indication whatsoever that it was an engineered virus," said Richard Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University.
“绝大多数新型、重大疾疫情……都不是人为的。 "The vast majority of new, nasty diseases ... come from nature," he said.
跟全球的分析师在私人邮件里讨论过病毒是否可能是武汉实验室泄露的生化武器,没有任何人有让人信服的证据证明这一理论。 Milton Leitenberg, an expert on chemical weapons at the University of Maryland, said he and other analysts around the world had discussed the possibility that weapons development at the Wuhan lab could have led to the coronavirus outbreak in a private email chain but that no one had found convincing evidence to support the theory.
从理论上讲,生物武器将被设计成具有很强的针对性,而自从它爆发以来,冠状病毒已经广泛传播。
Hypothetically, a bioweapon would be designed to be highly targeted in its effects, whereas since its outbreak the coronavirus is already on track to become widespread in China and worldwide,” she said.
生物武器“理论上具有很高的致死率,低传播感染率”,传播这样的阴谋论“极其不负责任”。 ...a good bioweapon "in theory has high lethality but low, not [high], communicability" and that spreading such ideas would be "incredibly irresponsible".
别再为了政治目的宣传/暗示阴谋论了。病毒总是会进行抗原转变,我们都必须要接受这个问题。更可能的是环境变化加剧了转变。
极端不负责任的言论,人们指望你说出的是事实,议员先生。
专家劝美国官员闭上嘴:后果尤为严重
… many infectious disease experts have urged patience while they assess the true dangers of the outbreak and cautioned against the kind of fearmongering that Cotton has embraced.
The outbreak has resulted in massive amounts of disinformation, viral social media falsehoods and online grifters attempting to cash in on the virus. Some conspiracy theorists have even promoted drinking dangerous bleach as a cure.
The virus has also led to anti-Chinese sentiment in numerous countries, prompting local officials and community organizations to denounce surging racism against Chinese communities.
"Misinformation around these outbreaks is definitely a problem," said Dr. Tara Kirk Sell, senior scholar at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. "When we undermine trust and get in the way of a public health response, those things can be really dangerous and really bad for trying to stop an outbreak."
Health professionals and journalists have attempted to push back against the torrent of false information, debunking many of the myths around the virus and its origins.
"Panic is never a useful thing to elicit in a population ..." Mina said.
国际卫生专家:中国已经竭尽一切所能了
卫生专家称,事实上,中国已经相当迅速地采取措施应对新型冠状病毒,并提醒国际组织官员注意该问题,此外,还分享该病毒的信息帮助流行病学专家进行研究和追踪。 But China has actually been fairly quick to address the virus and to alert international officials to the problem, according to health experts, and has as shared information on the virus that has helped epidemiologists study and track it. 国际卫生组织和美国官员在很大程度上赞扬中国对这场危机的迅速反应。 …international health organizations and US officials have largely praised China's reaction to the crisis.
"They have done everything that you could hope for and is current-day standard practice that would be done in any other country," Mina said.
武汉病毒所研究院:
“我用生命担保,与实验室没有关系”
… her longtime collaborator, disease ecologist Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, dismissed Ebright’s conjecture. "Every time there’s an emerging disease, a new virus, the same story comes out: This is a spillover or the release of an agent or a bioengineered virus," Daszak says. "It’s just a shame."