Maduro’s attempt to exploit coronavirus outbreak backfires on social media
Tags: Security, Health, Venezuela, Media, Democracy

Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro falsely claimed on February 27 that COVID-19 might be a strain created for biological warfare against China as part of a Western plot to halt the country’s economic growth, but the resulting traffic online focused more heavily on the dismal state of the country’s healthcare system.

By making these claims, Maduro politicized the current outbreak to push unfounded narratives against the United States and support one of his most strategic allies outside the region, China. While China has reiterated its support for Maduro, the United States and Latin American countries condemned a series of irregularities in the January 5 parliamentary vote for the presidency of the National Assembly, after the regime illegitimately installed candidate Luis Parra as leader of the legislative body. Prior to Maduro’s claims, pro-Kremlin actors had similarly blamed the United States for the coronavirus outbreak. The claims around COVID-19 being a biological weapon have been strongly condemned by scientists and experts studying the virus.

Although Maduro did not clarify who he believed to be behind the effort to undermine China, Diosdado Cabello, the regime’s number two, claimed the virus was a weapon of war from “the imperialists” — an expression used by the regime to refer to the United States. Maduro’s theory did not gain much traction on social media, but instead Twitter accounts discussed if Venezuela’s health infrastructure could deal with the COVID-19.

On February 27, 2020, Maduro installed a presidential commission, led by his vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, with the charge of coordinating efforts to combat a possible COVID-19 outbreak in Venezuela. In his announcement of the commission, Maduro also called for an investigation to determine whether the virus was a biological weapon. Calling the outbreak a threat to humanity unlike any plague in more than 7,000 years of civilization, Maduro said, “There are analyses in the world that show that the coronavirus can be a strain created for the biological war against China. There are already many elements that are seen in the global analysis, and you have to raise your voice, ring the bell and alert, in case the coronavirus is a weapon of war that is being used against China and the peoples of the world.”

At the time of publishing, according to public health data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University, more than 116,000 cases of COVID-19 had been confirmed globally, including in many Latin American countries such as Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Mexico. On March 9, Rodriguez reported that Venezuela is still coronavirus-free.

After Maduro claimed that COVID-19 might be a biological weapon, the official website for “Con el Mazo Dando,” the TV show hosted by Cabello, published an article repeating Maduro’s claims. According to a CrowdTangle search, @ConElMazoDando, the show’s associated and verified Twitter account, shared a link to the article 13 times, garnering a combined total of 414 interactions. On Facebook, however, the story had only been posted two times, which received a combined total of three reactions (smiles, hearts, etc.), indicating significantly lower engagement on that platform.