Controversies related to the 2019&ndash;20 coronavirus outbreak

Controversies related to the 2019–20 coronavirus outbreak

There have been controversies about the 2019-20 coronavirus outbreak.
Wuhan Institute of Virology
Purported accidental leak
During January and February 2020, the Institute was subject to concerns that it was the source of the outbreak through accidental leakage, which it publicly denied. In February 2020, the South China Morning Post reported that one of the Institute's lead researchers, Shi Zhengli, was the particular focus of personal attacks in Chinese social media who alleged her work on bat-based viruses as the source of the virus, leading Shi to post: "I swear with my life, has nothing to do with the lab", and when asked by the SCMP to comment on the attacks, Shi responded: "My time must be spent on more important matters". Caixin reported Shi made further public statements against "perceived tinfoil-hat theories about the new virus's source", quoting her as saying: "The novel 2019 coronavirus is nature punishing the human race for keeping uncivilized living habits. I, Shi Zhengli, swear on my life that it has nothing to do with our laboratory".
Misinformation aside, concerns on accidental leakage by the WIV remain. While Ebright refuted several conspiracy theories regarding the WIV (e.g. bioweapons research, that the virus was engineered), he told BBC China that this did not represent the possibility of the virus being "completely ruled out" from entering the population due to a laboratory accident. Twitter later permanently suspended the blog's account for violating its platform manipulation policy. Zerohedge has since claimed the article did not claim the virus was human-made and that it only publicised publicly available details of the scientist.
Resident Evil logo meme
In January 2020, Buzzfeed News also reported on an internet meme/conspiracy theory of a link between the logo of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and "Umbrella Corporation", the agency that made the virus that starts the zombie apocalypse in the Resident Evil franchise. The theory also saw a link between "Racoon" (the main city in Resident Evil), and an anagram of "Corona" (the name of the virus).
Doubts about official statistics
Case and death counts in China are influenced by changes in clinical case definition.
Reporting in observed that the cumulative death statistics released by China "is described by a simple mathematical formula to a very high accuracy" with much less variance than expected and quoted Melody Goodman, associate professor of biostatistics at New York University's School of Global Public Health as saying "As a statistician, it makes me question the data."
2020 Summer Olympics
2019-20 coronavirus outbreak itself has been a concern for the 2020 Summer Olympics which is scheduled to take place in Tokyo starting end of July, and due to the Olympics the has been taking extra precautions to help minimise the outbreak's worst impact. The Tokyo organising committee and the International Olympic Committee have been monitoring the outbreak's impact in Japan. For example, Japan has no mandatory mumps vaccination and is fourth in the world in mumps cases, after China, Nepal and Burkina Faso, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO).<ref name=":10" />
Following the outbreaks of rubella in Japan, which prompted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to warn pregnant women of travel to Japan in 2018, the country's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has been conducting inoculation of middle-aged men who had been left out of rubella vaccinations in the 1970s and 1980.<ref name=":10" />
Misinformation
Xenophobia and racism

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