CHINA: SARS was introduced by the US, it's a plot hatched by a former leader ; these are only two of the rumours told to Jasper Becker in Beijing, on, of course, very good authority.
As the SARS epidemic ratchets up its daily toll of victims across China, panicky Beijingers are swapping ever wilder rumours about the true story behind the outbreak.
Today's rumours is that every night the People's Liberation Army airforce secretly sprays the capital with disinfectant. This is taking place from such a great height that I am not able to hear the aircraft, or so Mrs Wang, our house help, explained after she come in to work from her home near Tiananmen Square.
Last week, the local baker told me he had it on good authority from a relative who works for the Chinese military's top brass, that the disease originated in Iraq where the US had spread it to undermine resistance to their invasion, and had now brought it to China to forestall a Chinese attack on Taiwan.
Another well-placed source, the lifeguard at the local swimming pool, said he was sure SARS was not a health problem but the result of court intrigues. The recently retired leadership led by Mr Jiang Zemin supposedly opposed the decision to go public on the full extent of the cases in Beijing and is intent on undermining Mr Hu Jintao's authority so that Jiang could continue ruling "behind the curtain".
Mr Jiang, who officially passed on the baton at the Communist Party enclave last November, disappeared from sight along with other veterans until Saturday. He reappeared to greet the visiting Indian Defence Minister Mr George Fernandes in Shanghai.
This seems logical as Mr Jiang is still chairman of the central military commission and is supposed to have built himself a retirement home in Shanghai where he was mayor in the 1980s. Yet it is odd that he should be in Shanghai and that this is also where the authorities claim, albeit with some support from World Health Organisation experts, that there are still only a handful of confirmed cases. The latest figures show the disease has now spread to 26 out of 31 provinces, with 2,914 confirmed cases and 131 deaths, including 56 in Beijing alone.
Whatever kernel of truth lies behind the rumours, the Beijing authorities are being forced to take ever tougher measures. The government has ordered the closure of all theatres, cinemas, libraries and places of public entertainment. Even prisoners are being kept in their cells and all visits to and from labour camps have been cancelled.
Most people are now staying at home and relying on subsistence allowances, and a few seem to have barricaded themselves in. Returning from a restaurant near midnight on Friday evening, I saw a knot of villagers standing guard at the entrance to their village, armed with wooden staves.
China's new leadership is now taking great pains to reassure the public that all is normal and encouraging the belief that the epidemic will peak later in May.
Over the weekend, the new premier Mr Wen Jiabao ate in a university canteen with foreign students and visited a construction site and a supermarket. The new mayor Mr Wang Qishan held meetings with top executives from leading multinational investors to reassure them business would not be overly affected.
Behind the scenes, the World Health Organisation has been holding its own briefings and giving a less optimistic evaluation to diplomats, expressing fears that the authorities could fail to contain the disease and that it may be here to stay.
So far, it is not a serious threat. Even in China, home to the vast majority of SARS cases, there are fewer fatalities than there are from traffic or coal- mining accidents over the same period. Around 10,000 miners die in accidents or from respiratory diseases annually and in 2002, 94,000 Chinese people died on the roads, 240 every day.
However, if the virus is not contained in Beijing which has the country's greatest concentration of medical and policing resources, then the numbers could increase exponentially. That would deal a severe, if not fatal, blow to the reputations of both President Hu Jintao and Mr Wen Jiabao.