A viral Facebooktook it further, relaying more details about Lieber's arrest and making use of some conveniently placed scare quotes:
The claims made in this Facebook post are generally true. Lieber was truly arrested in January 2020 for lying to federal agents about funding he had allegedly received from China. However, Lieber's arrest was not connected to the coronavirus and there's no evidence to support claims that this disease was a human-made bioweapon.Why was Charles Lieber arrested?
China’s Thousand Talents Plan is one of the most prominent Chinese Talent recruit plans that are designed to attract, recruit, and cultivate high-level scientific talent in furtherance of China’s scientific development, economic prosperity and national security. These talent programs seek to lure Chinese overseas talent and foreign experts to bring their knowledge and experience to China and reward individuals for stealing proprietary information.
Dr. Charles Lieber, 60, Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, was arrested this morning and charged by criminal complaint with one count of making a materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statement. Lieber will appear this afternoon before Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler in federal court in Boston, Massachusetts.
Zaosong Zheng was arrested at Logan Airport as he was attempting to smuggle 21 vials of biological research that he allegedly stole from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. As news of Zheng's arrest circulated on social media, some made the unfounded claim that these vials of"biological research" were somehow connected to the coronavirus.
Vipin Narang, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said it is “highly unlikely” the general population was exposed to a virus through an accident at a lab.