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In the past weeks theories about the US Army creating and bringing COVID-19 to China during the Military World Games (Wuhan, October 2019) have arisen. This is not the first time claims that the virus originated in the United States surface (Zhao Lijian's tweet on March 12, quoted below).

... It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!

While this new claim regarding the US Army and the MWG 2019 appears outright ridiculous, I couldn't find much sources suggesting against it.

Is this theory currently provable, disprovable or undecidable?

Sources:

About the suggested duplicate: This question focuses on the (so-said) transmission from US to China, while the other one talks more about originating from US.

iBug
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  • strongly related: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/46083/is-sars-cov-2-a-biological-weapon-released-by-the-us-military – Jack Mar 26 '20 at 04:08
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    The MWG had over 100 countries competing, why choose america? (other than China's anti-american sentiment) Chad was there and has hardly any cases or if we're looking at larger countries Russia was there and hasn't been hit too hard either. Unless there is any evidence for why to choose america (besides racism) over all the other possibilities then claims like this shouldn't be taken as notable. – Lio Elbammalf Mar 26 '20 at 08:45
  • @LioElbammalf No offence to Chad, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to argue that it has the capability to bio-engineer a virus like COVID-19. Russia, on the other hand... – F1Krazy Mar 26 '20 at 10:43
  • Supposedly he means it might be someone in the US Army got infected before arriving China and unknowingly spread the virus. He didn't say they deliberately distributed the virus. He probably got the idea from the claims that there were some "e-cigarette pneumonia" cases that are very similar to COVID-19, and some flu cases were said to have unknown pathogen. Such theories are already on some Chinese websites before his tweet. – user23013 Mar 26 '20 at 11:58
  • Are people claiming it was “created” in the USA? I feel this is a strawman. – Rebecca J. Stones Mar 26 '20 at 12:04
  • @F1Krazy This question is only about country of origin, not about if that country actively created the virus; so I think considering if the country of origin could have created it or not is adding more baggage to the claim. I think the point they were making is, with multiple countries competing in the games, what specific reason are they blaming US? I'm sure you could come up with reasons; but right now the claim seems really vague and it's not clear why anyone would just assume the US caused it out of all the countries there. – JMac Mar 26 '20 at 12:19
  • If it was an engineered virus infection, then the perpetrator will have developed a vaccine before releasing it... won't they?? But China is a valuable trading partner with US so it seems unlikely anyway. – Weather Vane Mar 26 '20 at 12:30
  • It is amazing how the tweet goes in 3 short steps from *"It **might** be US"* to *"US owe us an explanation."* Talk about media manipulation! – Weather Vane Mar 26 '20 at 18:06
  • I deleted my answer since it appears that my hypothesis about the origin of COVID-19 is completely wrong. –  Mar 26 '20 at 19:32

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