{"id":9983,"date":"2025-07-30T10:47:22","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T15:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=9983"},"modified":"2025-07-30T10:47:24","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T15:47:24","slug":"how-conspiracy-theories-about-covids-origins-are-hampering-our-ability-to-prevent-the-next-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/07\/30\/how-conspiracy-theories-about-covids-origins-are-hampering-our-ability-to-prevent-the-next-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"How conspiracy theories about COVID\u2019s origins are hampering our ability to prevent the next\u00a0pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/how-conspiracy-theories-about-covids-origins-are-hampering-our-ability-to-prevent-the-next-pandemic-261475\">The Conversation<\/a> In late June, the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), a group of independent experts convened by the World Health Organization (WHO),&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.who.int\/publications\/m\/item\/independent-assessment-of-the-origins-of-sars-cov-2-from-the-scientific-advisory-group-for-the-origins-of-novel-pathogens\">published an assessment<\/a>&nbsp;of the origins of COVID.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The report concluded that although we don\u2019t know conclusively where the virus that caused the pandemic came from:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>a zoonotic origin with spillover from animals to humans is currently considered the best supported hypothesis.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>SAGO did not find scientific evidence to support \u201ca deliberate manipulation of the virus in a laboratory and subsequent biosafety breach\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This follows a series of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.who.int\/publications\/i\/item\/who-convened-global-study-of-origins-of-sars-cov-2-china-part\">reports<\/a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.annualreviews.org\/content\/journals\/10.1146\/annurev-virology-093022-013037\">research papers<\/a>&nbsp;since the early days of the pandemic that have reached similar conclusions: COVID most likely emerged from an infected animal at the Huanan market in Wuhan, and was not the result of a lab leak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But conspiracy theories about COVID\u2019s origins persist. And this is hampering our ability to prevent the next pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Attacks on our research<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>As experts in the emergence of viruses, we published a peer-reviewed paper in&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41591-020-0820-9\">Nature Medicine<\/a>&nbsp;in 2020 on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Conversation In late June, the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO), a group of independent experts convened by the World Health Organization (WHO),&nbsp;published an assessment&nbsp;of the origins of COVID. The report concluded that although we don\u2019t know conclusively where the virus that caused the pandemic came from: a zoonotic origin [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misinformation-disinformation-and-conspiracy-theories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9983"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9984,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9983\/revisions\/9984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}