President Donald Trump and some members of his administration are flirting with an outlier theory that the new coronavirus was set loose on the world by a Chinese lab that let it escape, AP reported.

Without solid evidence, they are trying to blame China for the illness and death of COVID-19 in the United State.

“More and more, we’re hearing the story,” Trump says. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo adds, “The mere fact that we don’t know the answers — that China hasn’t shared the answers — I think is very, very telling.”

However, experts overwhelmingly say that the analysis of the genome of the new coronavirus excludes the possibility that it was created by people, as some conspiracy theories suggest.

According to them, it is unlikely that the virus came from negligence in a laboratory in China. “I would put it on a list of 1,000 different scenarios,” said Nathan Grubaugh of Yale University, who studies the epidemiology of the microbial disease.

Scientists say the virus arose naturally in bats. The main version is that people became infected in the animal market in Wuhan, probably from an animal that got the virus from a bat.

However, Pompeo and others point their finger at the institute, which is run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and has conducted a revolutionary study tracking the probable origin of the SARS virus. “We know that there is the Wuhan Institute of Virology just a handful of miles away from where the wet market was,” Pompeo said Wednesday on Fox News. 

US officials say the US Embassy in Beijing noted concerns about potential security concerns at the Wuhan lab in 2018 but noted that there is no evidence that the virus appeared there almost two years later.

All this suggests that both world powers do not abandon shaky theories and use propaganda to divert attention from the problems linked to their response to the pandemic. China earlier spread the falsehood that the virus started with Americans.

China and the United States have spent crucial time responding to the outbreak. Over 3,000 people were infected before the Chinese government informed the public about the likelihood of an epidemic.

The US has also reacted late to the severity of the threat and lags behind a number of other countries when it comes to retaliation. Trump was unable to fulfill his promise to conduct sufficient testing, the US is still struggling to provide hospitals and patients with the necessary items in an atmosphere of chaos. Over 640,000 people in the US are infected with COVID-19, more than 31,000 have died.

Against that backdrop, the pressure for scapegoats is strong.

After weeks of praise for Chinese President Xi Jinping in the fight against the pandemic, Trump began to blame China and suspended contributions to WHO.

In the US, claims that the virus was created in or released from a Chinese lab emerged just weeks after the outbreak began and quickly spread from fringe internet sites to the wider public, abetted by conspiracy theorists of every stripe.

The reality is more mundane, says Dr. Gregory Poland, head of vaccine research at the Mayo Clinic. “This virus is a typical bat coronavirus that has developed the capacity to infect other mammals and bats are mammals, too,” he said. “What’s becoming evident is that the natural origin of this fits with the transmission dynamics and biology of it all.”

However, Trump officials did not accept the far-reaching theory that China could create or release the virus through genetic engineering or malice.

“I don’t have much faith that they’re even being truthful with us now,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Thursday on NBC’s “Today” show. Yet, “a majority of the views right now is that it is natural, it was organic,” he said.