Shortly after people began dying from the COVID-19 virus in early 2020, virologist Danielle Anderson began attacking media accounts that questioned if the pandemic could have started in a lab in Wuhan, China.

In a fact check for Health Feedback, Anderson repudiated a New York Post article that questioned if the “coronavirus may have leaked from a lab” claiming it was false to label the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) a bioweapons research lab, while adding that the Post article was “appalling.” This censorial fact check helped limit the audience for the Post article on social media—but then, less than a year later, Anderson’s claims fell apart when the State Department declassified information on the WIV’s ties to military research and Facebook ceased censoring statements that COVID-19 was man-made or manufactured.

Unpersuaded by facts, Anderson stuck to her story, making a media splash throughout the summer of 2021 as the “last—and only—foreign scientist in Wuhan” and the victim of an online harassment campaign by “conspiracy theorists.”