Chinese state media and social media influencers in China have claimed that the monkeypox virus originated in a U.S. laboratory. They’ve also made claims that monkeypox will cause the next pandemic, even as European and U.S. scientists point out that the possibility of a pandemic is extremely small because of the close contact needed to transmit the virus.
Those scientists also said that, at present, patients are infected with a natural monkeypox virus with no links to a laboratory.
