- Coronavirus hoaxes and myths started circulating pretty quickly last month when the outbreak first exploded in a major way here — one of the hoaxes being a rumor that President Trump was about to institute a dramatic lockdown of the US.
- Those rumors circulated across social media and tended to be attributed to someone who knows someone who works at a federal agency.
- However, a new report from The New York Times claims this was the work of Chinese operatives.
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Some of you might recall getting panicked texts from friends last month or seeing social media posts that seemed to herald an imminent national lockdown of the US on orders from President Trump. The source was always kind of a vague “my friend who has a cousin who works for Homeland Security” situation.
“They will announce this as soon as they have troops in place to help prevent looters and rioters,” reads one such message, which you can still find with a Twitter search. “… he said he got the call last night and was told to pack and be prepared for the call today with his dispatch orders. He thinks they will announce before the end of the weekend.” I got one such text myself along these lines from a friend who shall remain nameless, but these rumors — some of which took on an ominous and draconian tone, such as that travel between states was about to be banned — spread so much that federal officials took the extraordinary step of trying to debunk them.
And now a new detail about their provenance has been revealed. It turns out that it was Chinese agents who helped fan the online flames of these coronavirus lockdown hoaxes in the United States.
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Report: Chinese agents helped spread rumors about virus lockdowns in the US originally appeared on BGR.com on Wed, 22 Apr 2020 at 19:14:43 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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