The last thing America needed on top of a president still in denial over the state current pandemic is the rest of the population believing conspiracies about it, but here we are.
While scientists agree that the virus emerged from nature, the uncertainty over how people were first infected by Covid-19 has left space for misinformation to grow. In Britain, that has meant the propagation of a random conspiracy theory about a link between coronavirus and 5G wireless technology – which almost a third of people say they can’t rule out.
In the US, according to a new report by the Pew Research Center, about a third of Americans surveyed believe that Covid-19 was created by humans in a laboratory.
Pew surveyed 8,914 American adults, asking them whether they believed that 1) the current strain of the coronavirus “came about naturally”; 2) “was developed intentionally in a lab”; 3) “was made accidentally in a lab”; or 4) “doesn’t really exist”.
Most Americans surveyed in the report (43%) believed that Covid-19 most likely came about naturally, but nearly three in 10 (29%) said it most likely was created in a lab. What’s more, most of those who believed the virus was created in a lab believed it was done so intentionally (23%). A quarter said they weren’t sure where the virus originated, while 1% believed that the virus does not exist.
Those most likely to believe in the conspiracy were Republicans or Republican-leaning independents (37% v 21% of Democrat or Democratic-leaning voters). About four in 10 conservative Republicans who replied believed in the conspiracy theory (39%), the largest share of any ideological group.
The research showed that the conspiracy was more prevalent among younger people than adults: about a third of adults aged 18 to 29 said the virus was developed in a lab (35%), compared with 21% of adults 65 and older. A fifth (19%) of people with a bachelor’s degree or higher believed that the coronavirus was created in a lab.
