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exploration of viruses in Farm Animals is much More than the glamorous work, and the Pirbright Institute in Surrey in the. But recently they've been getting some very unwanted attention.

for months they've pulled, unwittingly, into the orbit of the conspiracy theorists, even those who blame Bill Gates for the planning of the Corona-Virus-pandemic. This led to Hate Mail and threatening phone calls.

"We have never seen something quite like that. Some of the comment was pretty vicious. You killers call us that kind of thing," says Teresa Maughan, head of communications.

Teresa remembers a particular call. The person who rang had before, so that a colleague in tears, screaming down The Phone accusing them of creating coronavirus and use it as a bioweapon.

"then He called did me in, as Mrs. Doubtfire, so it was pretty obvious that it was someone putting on a voice. He Said something sexually offensive to me, and I put on obviously the handset. "

in January with misleading Social Media posts about a patent.

Jordan Sather, a YouTuber who promotes in the United States , released a series of tweets, the link between the Pirbright Institute awarded a patent "for the coronavirus", in the year 2018.

coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that are known to cause a number of diseases in animals and humans. The Novel Corona-Virus that causes Covid-19, the proposal was made only emerged at The End of 2019, so that The Institute identified previously had this virus a lot and remained a "patent" for you.

The Institute is holding a patent, but it is connected with research into a vaccine for a previously known coronavirus that affects chickens.

Mr. Sather also wrote that Bill and Melinda Gates are the main sponsors of this Pirbright project were to speculate, later, about this: "the release of this disease planned?"

The Connection to Bill Gates pulled The Institute into a much larger global Conspiracy Theory - the development of the unfounded notion that the dark forces have organized the leadership of Mr Gates, the whole pandemic will eventually make huge profits from a Covid-19 vaccine.

The Gates Foundation is one of The World 's largest supporter of global health projects and the Pirbright is fairly open about his funding from there for research, vaccines. However, that funding has not been in connection with The Work , for which a patent is taken.

at The End of March, Long After the attacks began on Social Media , Pirbright cooperation with the University of Oxford and Public Health England for testing of a potential Covid started-19 vaccine on pigs, a necessary step before a vaccine can be tested in humans.

We have tried to contact Mr. Sather about his comments but were not able to get an answer to. In a later tweet he says he has to claim the Pirbright patent was specifically for the "novel coronavirus" (The Virus that causes Covid-19).

A search of the Pirbright Institute on Crowd, a Social Media monitoring tool, returned from 191.000 results between 16. January 2020 and 16 June. It only 711 were in the previous six months.

All kinds of false accusations were leveled at them: they had a patent for a virus or a vaccine for it that you were actually in Wuhan; in the possession of Bill Gates .

Online, it was the abuse of employees thrown. An E-Mail to Dr. Erica Bickerton, an expert on Molecular Virology , read:

"do you know the composition of The Virus , so that you know How To destroy it. SO PLEASE I DON'T PLEASE LET My Family DIE AND TELL ME The Antidote . "

"Personally, I found the false information spread is quite difficult," says Dr. Bickerton,"to help because The Work , which we try to do, is, cattle and other animals and understand this virus. "

Someone the effort of setting up a " fake "Pirbright" site-sell offer, a Corona-Virus bioweapon even went.

"When Conspiracy Theories start, the people don't even realize that there are people on The End of the Social Media accounts," says Teresa Maughan.

The four-person communications team was simply not used to handling this amount of material on Social Media .

she took contact with The Police about The Most dangerous posts, and phone calls, as well as reporting content on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

In evidence submitted to the parliamentary Committee for digital, media, culture and sport, view in Covid-19 disinformation in April, The Institute expressed frustration over the lack of action, which, according to their complaints.

Facebook told Bbc News that news, the repeated false claims about the Pirbright, either, that it invented had the coronavirus, or that he is a patent for a vaccine that does not meet your bar for the deletion.

Some of these posts were marked as "false" by " fact-checking organizations.

There is More trouble ahead. In may, a video of about A Million people in just One Day , the statements repeatedly seen on the Pirbright and a Covid-19 vaccine patent.

Several versions of this video, since it was down, including two, Bbc News , featured on YouTube This Week .

"YouTube", told us: "We have information and clear policies to the promotion of fail on YouTube and update our policies to ensure that the content is aligned on The Platform , THE guide. "

On Twitter, the transcripts of the Videos were also widely used. A spokesman for Twitter told us, it hits on every tweet, the controversial information about Covid-19, and instead, primarily contributions, with "a call to action that can potentially cause harm".

It was a difficult time for the staff at the Pirbright Institute , but they hope that the worst is now over. The abuse has subsided. There are no angry calls.

After such an ordeal, Dr. Bickerton says, that it will encourage More self-confidence and explain your research, and make sure that accurate information gets Out There .

"It is great to be able to engage in research and see if we can learn More can be confirmed about The Novel Corona-Virus. This is really important, if the development of effective vaccines. "

More on this story you can expect in the.

Source of news: bbc.com