COVID-19 Fact and Fiction #11

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.*

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OLD FASHIONED MISINFORMATION

Image source: supplied

In Australia, spreaders of coronavirus misinformation apparently do not want to rely on social media only and have delivered a pamphlet full of misinformation and conspiracy theories to Melbourne homes, which has been debunked by RMIT ABC Fact-check.

The unknown and untraceable authors of the pamphlet made their case for the removal of lockdown restrictions and emergency laws by comparing Australia’s low COVID-19 death toll to the number of deaths caused by the seasonal flu.

However, as Lyn Gilbert, a chief investigator at the Australian Partnership for Preparedness Research on Infectious Disease Emergencies (APPRISE), pointed out, the main reason for the low coronavirus death rate was because “we have been so successful in all the suppression measures put in place early on, before the virus was transmitted widely in the community. [] You only have to look at what happened in Italy, in Brazil, the United Kingdom, the US, or many European countries where their health systems and socio-economic conditions are not dissimilar to Australia’s, to see that if we hadn’t done this early we could easily have been in the same sort of situation.”

The pamphlet further contained the misleading claims that death rates in the US supposedly were being inflated, that a vaccination conspiracy was led by Bill Gates and pharmaceutical companies and that the coronavirus pandemic was contrived.

 

COVID-19 BY ANY OTHER NAME

Image source: RMIT ABC Fact-check

In just a few short weeks, COVID-19 has become a household word. But how was its name, or that of other fatal viruses derived?

Donald Trump has been referring to COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus” and, while there may be a political behind it in this case, giving the virus a geographical label isn’t without precedent as viruses were usually named after the area or locale where they were thought to have originated. Think Ebola, Hendra and MERS.

In 2015, the World Health Organisation called upon scientists, governments and the media to adhere to what it called “best practices” by naming viruses to minimise “unnecessary negative effects on nations, economies and people”. WHO announced on February 11 that the novel coronavirus would be named COVID-19, an abbreviation of “coronavirus disease 2019” — “CO” (corona), “VI” (virus), “D” (disease) and “19” (2019).

POLICE DEATHS

Image source: Facebook

“You know what I find amazing,” a post on Facebook begins. “Police are not following social distances guidance obviously, but we have not heard across the world of one police officer dying due to Covid 19.”

A false claim, according to Reuters’ fact-checkers who found that police officers in the UK, the US, France, Italy and Peru had died after contracting the virus. They also found that the photo accompanying the post was first published in 2018, long before social distancing rules.

BILL GATES REVISITED

Image source: Clover Chronicle

Another week has gone and another tide of misinformation surrounding Microsoft founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates had to be stemmed.

Snopes found that a video did not show Mr Gates briefing the CIA about a “mind-altering vaccine”, nor is Italy calling for his arrest.

PolitiFact found that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was not “spending billions to ensure that all medical and dental injections and procedures include …. [tracking micro]chips”. Mr Gattes had also not said a coronavirus vaccine would “permanently alter your DNA”.

Further, the team at PolitiFact, along with fact-checkers at AFP, found that a claim that Mr Gates had admitted “his COVID-19 vaccine might kill nearly 1 million people” was false.

 

ANTI-VAXXING ON THE RISE IN AUSTRALIA

In one of their final stories before being shut down last week, BuzzFeed News Australia found that some of Australia’s biggest anti-vaccination Facebook pages and Instagram accounts had increased sharply their follower counts, frequency of posting and monthly engagement since February, coinciding with the coronavirus outbreak.

The reporting found that 12 major anti-vax Facebook pages had almost doubled their monthly engagement since February, while on Instagram, 24 accounts had seen five times more engagement, nearly doubling their followers. These accounts had also doubled their content output, despite efforts by Facebook (which owns Instagram) to crack down on misinformation being posted on the platform.

“That content frequently contains misinformation about COVID-19 or vaccines, and sometimes even includes content that has already been banned from social media platforms,” BuzzFeed found.

Meanwhile, their US counterparts (whose newsroom has not closed) have published a list of “fake experts” pushing coronavirus pseudoscience, including Judy Mikovits, the doctor featured in the “Plandemic” viral video, and Rashid Buttar, whose claims regarding the flu vaccine have been widely debunked.

KEEP CORRECTING MISINFORMATION

Fact-checking can sometimes seem like a lost cause: the people who are posting false claims and conspiracies can be so determined that it doesn’t matter how often the record is corrected.

But according to fact-checkers at PolitiFact, a recent survey showed 34 per cent of people recalled seeing someone else get corrected on social media after sharing misinformation about COVID-19. They also found research showing “when people correct misinformation on their social media feeds, misperceptions decrease”.

Helpfully, the team has detailed six ways to fact-check coronavirus misinformation on your timeline.

1. Don’t brush it off.
2. Consider your approach carefully
3. Tailoring your language
4. Stick to the truth
5. Choose your sources wisely
6. Avoid making it political.

FROM WASHINGTON, D.C.

Twitter has added warning labels to two of US President Donald Trump’s tweets after coming under fire for perceived failures in stopping the spread of misinformation on its platform, particularly about COVID-19.

Note: the warning labels were added to two of Trump’s tweets on postal voting, but none were added to his COVID-19 related tweets.

In the tweets, Mr Trump claimed that mail-in voting, a form of postal voting which is being widely rolled out in states such as California amid the coronavirus pandemic, will be “substantially fraudulent”.

“Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed,” Mr Trump said, adding that anyone living in California would receive a ballot and told who to vote for.

“This will be a Rigged Election. No way!”, he concluded.

A label added to the tweets shows an exclamation mark and links to a page containing “the facts about mail-in voting”. That page includes articles from CNN, The Hill and The Washington Post and refutes inaccuracies in Mr Trump’s tweets.

According to the Twitter page, fact-checkers have found no evidence that mail-in voting is linked to voter fraud. It is also incorrect that all Californian residents would be receiving ballots — they are only sent to registered voters.

Mr Trump responded with angry tweets, suggesting Twitter was interfering with the 2020 presidential election and stifling free speech.

“I, as President, will not allow it to happen!”, he said.

Update: President Donald Trump is escalating his war on social media companies, signing an executive order challenging the liability protections that have served as a bedrock for unfettered speech on the internet.

 

SOME HELP RECOGNISING INFORMATION

Produced by First Draft, this graph helps explain the difference between some of the main types of false and misleading information.

 

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

#27: Semen
“The claims are ridiculous,” said Dr Marco Vignuzzi, one of the authors of a study that has been used as the basis for social media posts suggesting semen cures COVID-19. He told AFP: “Our work has nothing to do with semen, nor with COVID.” — AFP Fact-check

 

*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.