A recent remark of a World Health Organization official has rebuked the rumor that the novel coronavirus was man-made, leaking from Wuhan Institute of Virology. "All available evidence suggests the virus has an animal origin and is not a manipulated or constructed virus in a lab or somewhere else," said Fadela Chaib, WHO spokeswoman, to reporters on Tuesday. This statement is based on scientific evidence, clarifying fallacies to help the international community distinguish right from wrong and reinforce concerted efforts in the fight against the virus.

As the pandemic took over the world, the source of the coronavirus has become a global concern. It should be noted that this matter should be based on scientific evidence and experts' evaluation instead of giving the microphone to conspiracy theorists. On February 18, a group of 27 public health scientists who have studied the virus published a statement in The Lancet, noting that the coronavirus "originated in wildlife", just like many other viruses that have recently emerged in humans. 

This conclusion is echoed by researchers and medical experts, including the academe in the United States. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, said in an interview that studies of the virus' genome have strongly indicated that it was transmitted from an animal to a human rather than created or enhanced in a laboratory setting. This is backed up by a study published in Nature Medicine in mid-March by computational biologist Kristian Andersen. "We do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible," according to the analysis of the study. Scientists and researchers have yet to reach a firm conclusion about where the animal-to-human transmission first occurred, but throwing cold water onto the conspiracies hyped by some right-wing media in the US.

Passing the buck to a Wuhan lab is illogical as well. All the allegations had no scientific backing and hard proof, but on the other hand, were driven by politics. Vincent Racaniello, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University, told BuzzFeed News that no human could ever design this virus. "There was no way this could escape a lab. If this escaped a Wuhan lab, [the researchers] would have all gotten sick," he said. The conspiracy is turning increasingly politically convenient for the Trump administration to use the blame China card and shift focus as the US is becoming the new epicenter of the outbreak.

But is the Chinese lab origin conspiracy doing any good for the public? Just like the statement on The Lancet said, "Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumors, and prejudice that jeopardize our global collaboration in the fight against this virus." What the intelligence community around the world truly needs to focus on is to conduct professional verification of the source of the pandemic via scientific methods and offer more academic support to disease prevention and control so that efforts can combine in weathering the epidemic.

Spreading rumors, stigmatizing, and scapegoating China regardless of evidence is inherently anti-science and politicizing the issue of public health, which should be called to an end. Conspiracies and fallacies breed mistrust and hostility, eventually hampering the efforts in the unremitting battle. There is no winner or loser in the outbreak as all countries affected are victims. To choose science over conspiracies, believe in truth over rumors, resort to cooperation over discrimination, this is the right attitude for the entire human race to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.