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Medical staff arrange medicine at Red Cross Hospital in Wuhan in China\u2019s central Hubei province on March 10, 2020. \u2013 Chinese President Xi Jinping said on March 10 that Wuhan has turned the tide against the deadly coronavirus outbreak, as he paid his first visit to the city at the heart of the global epidemic. (Photo by STR \/ AFP) \/ China OUT (Photo by STR\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n
The claim:\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cCoronavirus Hoax: Fake Virus Pandemic Fabricated to Cover-Up Global Outbreak of 5G Syndrome.” \u2014 headline on an article being widely shared on Facebook.<\/p>\n PolitiFact ruling: False.\u00a0<\/strong>World experts say the virus originated in an animal \u2014 perhaps in a bat that transmitted the virus to another animal, and then to humans.<\/p>\n Discussion:\u00a0<\/strong>Tentacles of lightning illuminate a stormy sky. Three people wear medical face masks, worry visible in their eyes. Next to those two images is one more that reads simply “5G” \u2014 a reference to the fifth-generation of wireless networking technology.<\/p>\n The post was flagged as part of Facebook\u2019s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed.<\/p>\n Please strike this claim from your list of things to worry about: This is just one more coronavirus assertion without evidence. As has been widely reported, the best available information is that this virus started with an animal.<\/p>\n The article appears on the Millennium Report, an anti-5G website that includes a section on the rollout of 5G, which “greatly endangers” the health of “every person in the USA.”<\/p>\n The article cites no verifiable evidence of this claim. Instead, it alleges that the\u00a0coronavirus<\/a>\u00a0discovered in Wuhan, China, was “staged to cover-up the public health crisis caused by the intensive 5G roll-out in Wuhan in 2019.” It attributes the information to an unnamed “intelligence analyst and former U.S. Army officer.”<\/p>\n 5G<\/a>\u00a0is<\/a>\u00a0the latest upgrade to wireless systems that deliver data to mobile phones and other devices. As in, faster, faster, faster. It involves the federal government selling wireless spectrum used for the technology and more cell towers being located in\u00a0populated<\/a> rather than rural areas.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Is there reason to worry about possible health effects? Perhaps.<\/p>\n Joel Moskowitz, director of the Center for Family and Community Health in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, supports a moratorium on 5G development. He\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0in Scientific American that there could be health effects and that research needs to be funded.<\/p>\n But other reports say fears are overblown, and there is no evidence that the coronavirus has anything to do with wireless technology.<\/p>\n The current coronavirus \u2014 which causes the respiratory disease known as COVID-19 \u2014 “is a zoonotic virus.” That is, it was spread from animals to humans, according to a\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0from 25 international experts, including some from China and the U.S., convened by the World Health Organization.<\/p>\n Bats “appear to be the reservoir of COVID-19 virus,” but the intermediate host or hosts \u2014 that is, how it went from bats to humans \u2014 has not been identified.<\/p>\n