COVID-19 Fact and Fiction #3

The world is dealing with an unprecedented health crisis caused by a new virus. With new insights in the way COVID19 spreads, in the way the virus behaves and in the way to deal with the pandemic every day, it is now more important than ever to safeguard the information we share is accurate and fact-based. We have to inoculate ourselves against the fake news and misinformation that infect our newsfeeds and timelines at this crucial moment by fact-checking.

For the duration of the pandemic, I will try to give you an overview of the main issues in CoronaCheck, an Australian email newsletter with the latest from around the world concerning the coronavirus.*

---

AUSTRALIA’S TRUMP AND HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE

Australian billionaire businessman and former federal MP Clive Palmer took out back-to-back full-page advertisements in the Murdoch press this week announcing that his foundation had purchased 32,900,000 doses of the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine and that he’s donating them towards Australia’s fight against COVID-19.

In his advertisements, Mr Palmer implied that there is a link between a decision taken by Health Minister Greg Hunt four weeks ago to make hydroxychloroquine available to doctors who are treating COVID-19 patients and Australia’s death rate since then from the virus. Mr Palmer claimed that it was the “lowest in the world” while acknowledging “the [infections] curve has flattened”. The Australian government, however, credited the low infection and death rates to basic hygiene measures.

Hydroxychloroquine received global attention after US President Donald Trump tweeted that it would be a “game-changer” in the fight against the coronavirus, based on small, preliminary trials in China and France, and maintained that the federal government had purchased and stockpiled 29 million pills of the drug. Since then Mr Trump’s attention has shifted first to internal cleansing with antiseptics and now to Remdesivir, an anti-viral drug, something Mr Palmer seems not to have caught up with.

As for hydroxychloroquine, Australian Medical Association federal vice-president Zappala said the published evidence remained “very mixed” and it was unclear whether the drug would be effective beyond its current approved limited use, which includes treatment of lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. In a recent US study, researchers essentially found a higher death rate in patients treated with hydroxychloroquine alone, while the drug also risked serious side effects, especially for people with pre-existing heart conditions.

Some background to Clive Palmer may make his actions a little clearer. Billionaire Palmer has iron ore, nickel and coal holdings;  by 2019 his estimated wealth had increased to A$4.09 billion. Besides mines, Mr Palmer owns real estate and several golf courses.

Mr Palmer created the Palmer United Party in April 2013, winning the Queensland seat of Fairfax in the 2013 Australian federal election and sitting as an MP for one term. During that term, he was the least-attending MP.

In 2009, he bought Queensland Nickel and the Palmer Nickel and Cobalt Refinery when it was about to be closed. In the first year after purchasing the refinery, Palmer gifted staff 50 Mercedes Benz cars and thousands of overseas holidays after the refinery turned a huge profit. On 18 January 2016, Queensland Nickel went bankrupt. Palmer refused to pay the entitlements of workers who lost their jobs, stating that “I have no personal responsibility, I retired from business over three years ago”. He also blamed the administrators for sacking the workforce. This forced the Federal Government to cover the workers’ entitlements.

In 2018 Clive Palmer tried to return to politics as a Senator in the Federal Parliament. He did not succeed but by pumping millions in campaign ads, he made sure the Labor Party lost its foothold in Queensland and the election. At the moment, Labor has a slim majority in Queensland’s State Parliament; in November new elections will be held in Queensland but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is unclear what form they are going to take. But one thing is clear: Clive Palmer has donated 32,900,000 doses of the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine to Australia…

 

WAR ON BILL GATES

Microsoft founder, philanthropist and world’s third-richest man Bill Gates has the subject of a overwhelming volume of misinformation related to COVID-19. It started in January with claims the Gates Foundation had predicted 65 million deaths in a pandemic simulation (it didn’t) and have been followed with claims that a Gates Foundation-funded vaccine paralysed nearly 500,000 children (also false) and that Mr Gates is being sued by India (wrong again).

In another example, a Facebook post claimed Mr Gates was freely able to prescribe drugs. However, given Mr Gates is not a medical doctor, the claim was rated false by fact-checkers at Lead Stories. Mr Gates is also not trying to “microchip” the world’s population through a coronavirus vaccine, nor is he using invisible tattoos and monitoring bracelets to track Americans.

And the Gates Foundation, despite helping the vaccine search with up to $250 million in funding, doesn’t hold a patent for such a jab.

 

FACEBOOK PRACTICES ARE STILL LACKING

In the same week that Mark Zuckerberg boasted that his company had “taken down hundreds of thousands of pieces of misinformation related to COVID-19”, reporters at The Markup were allowed to place ads on both Facebook and Instagram targeting an ad category of 78 million users who were deemed interested in pseudoscience, “advantage of this sort of vulnerability that a person has once they’re going down these rabbit holes, both to pull them further down and to monetise that”, according to Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington.

Facebook has since removed the pseudoscience category from its ad manager.

NewsGuard, an online trust tool, also found Facebook’s misinformation-fighting practices to below par, identifying 31 Facebook pages, with an audience of 21 million people, as “super-spreaders” of coronavirus misinformation spreading “blatant misinformation”, even where there was evidence of coordinated inauthentic behaviour, which violates Facebook’s policies.

 

FROM AMERICA, STILL

Image source: Facebook

Trump supporters have taken to social media to defend his musings that “powerful light” and disinfectant could be used to kill the novel coronavirus inside human bodies.

One such Facebook post claims that Mr Trump was referring to “Ultraviolet Radiation” administered into the body when he talked of internal disinfectant. “Just because it’s called a ‘disinfectant’ doesn’t mean it’s Pine-Sol,” it claimed. “Ultraviolet Radiation” is a method that kills bacteria and has been “used for a while now”, according to the post.

PolitiFact found that while the post may be referring to a treatment called “ultraviolet blood irradiation”, used mainly in the alternative-medicine community, there was no evidence such treatments could kill viruses or bacteria.

 

FROM WASHINGTON, D.C.

According to Politico, a report by the US State Department warned that Russia, China and Iran were using the coronavirus pandemic to launch a “disinformation onslaught” against the US by echoing one another.

Messages spread by the three include that the coronavirus is an American bioweapon, that the Chinese response to the virus was superior to that of the US, and that the US economy wouldn’t be able to handle the crisis, and they were pushed by state-run media outlets, as well as governments themselves. In one example, a website run by the Russian Defence Ministry is said to have promoted a conspiracy theory that Bill Gates had a hand in creating the virus.

The State Department reported the coronavirus pandemic had accelerated the convergence of disinformation narratives.

 

 

Things that don’t cure and/or prevent COVID-19**

#19: : Herbs and spices such as oregano, licorice, elderberries and fennel “Some of these purported [COVID-19] remedies include herbal therapies and teas. There is no scientific evidence that any of these alternative remedies can prevent or cure COVID-19.” The National Institutes of Health (US), as quoted by Reuters

 

*The facts in this article are derived from the Australian RMIT ABC Fact Check newsletters which in turn draw on their own resources and those of their colleagues within the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), of which RMIT ABC Fact Check is a member.