COVID-19 Fact and Fiction #18

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, but now appear only once a week.*

---

Again, there seems to be little fact-checking done this week; not because there is less misinformation, disinformation or even malinformation about, I think, but because it loses in strength every time it looks like it repeats itself within a small window of time. Fact-checkers are trying to avoid that their readers get bored or think it an actual repeat and skip it, l expect and not giving up hope that their efforts to debunk are having results.

Most of what was reported this week was Australian based again, but some items are of interest elsewhere and are included in this overview.

 

HAS THE CSIRO’S PANDEMIC PREPAREDNESS BEEN HAMPERED BY FUNDING CUTS?

As efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine continue, Australian Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has used a National Press Club address to call for better pandemic preparedness.

Mr Albanese said the Coalition Government’s first budget had cut $110 million from science funding and “hollowed out” the nation’s lead scientific agency, the CSIRO, one on the frontline in the groups responding to the coronavirus that Australia was “now counting on” to develop a COVID-19 vaccine.

Its recent work includes a collaboration with the University of Queensland to develop a vaccine based on so-called “molecular clamp” technology. The agency is also conducting pre-clinical trials for two separate vaccines.

However, Dr Trevor Drew recently told the ABC’s Four Corners program that cuts in 2014 had “impacted on the research capability” of the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness, the CSIRO’s high-containment facility for studying deadly viruses, of which he was director.

Fact-check took a look at the 2014-15 budget papers, which show the newly-elected Abbott government had earmarked $111.4 million in “reduced funding” for the CSIRO over the four years from 2014-15. The CSIRO’s annual reports confirm the agency lost $60 million in nominal government revenue in the first two budget years alone.

In the year after the 2014-15 budget, the agency shed 11 per cent of its research staff and 12 per cent of its total workforce, not counting contractors. Some jobs have since returned but, five years on, there remained 215 fewer research staff than before the Coalition took office.

But while Mr Albanese linked the funding cuts to the agency’s role in developing a coronavirus vaccine, a CSIRO spokesman implied that the cuts had resulted in a reorganisation in “areas related to vaccine development and pandemic preparedness”, where “[a]s part of the creation of our new strategy in 2015, CSIRO brought together experts from a range of backgrounds to build a ‘one health’ model that could respond to a new disease threat in multiple ways, from vaccine development and medical supply production to data modelling and environmental science.”

“As a result, our overall capability in pandemic preparedness has expanded, including an increase in research staff working on human diseases.” In short, the cuts resulted in a far more efficient organisation.

The current pandemic has also led the Morrison Government to put aside $222 million to upgrade the CSIRO’s ageing containment facility and a further $66 million for future pandemic planning and research in a bid to develop a vaccine and treatments for COVID-19.

 

WHY WE NEED TO BE WARY OF THE DATA

COVID-19 is evidently impacting countries to varying degrees. Differences in preparedness, population density and the quality of national healthcare systems, as well as in the how governments respond to the pandemic, have led to marked differences in outcomes.

So stark is the contrast that, had Australia’s coronavirus path tracked similarly to Belgium’s, the nation would have recorded more than 21,000 deaths – more than 200 times its current toll of 104.

The figures are extrapolations based on data that tracks the number of coronavirus deaths per million of population.

While experts caution that variables in the way countries compile their statistics and in their definitions, as well as variations in demographics and cultural norms, make for inexact comparisons, deaths-per-million gives a clearer snapshot of how severely the coronavirus is impacting different jurisdictions.

For example, the US tops the global death count with around 130,000 fatalities, with Brazil having swiftly climbed to second place (60,000). But, as bleak as those figures are, they translate to 388 and 284 deaths per million of the population respectively, ranking both countries behind Belgium, the UK, Spain, Italy, Sweden and France.

Image source: Our World in Data

Again caution is called for. Belgium’s figures include suspected – as well as confirmed – coronavirus deaths in care homes, which is likely inflating the country’s toll. Also, figures are subject to sudden change as countries reassess definitions and revise their data, as was the case in China, where authorities revised upwards by 50 per cent coronavirus totals for the city of Wuhan when they realised that their case definition was so stringent.

Likewise, New York City; it added more than 3,700 deaths to its COVID-19 toll in one stroke after new guidance from US health authorities recommended taking into account “probable” and “presumed” coronavirus deaths even in the absence of testing.

Figures for some countries are also likely unreliable due to poor accounting or because, with healthcare systems overwhelmed, untold numbers of people have been left to die at home.

While the Swedish Government shared the global objective of flattening the coronavirus curve, the debate continues over the merits of its approach. Its 5,333 deaths to date (523 per million people) far exceed the per capita tolls of neighbouring Denmark (104 deaths per million), Finland (59) and Norway (47).

 

A QUICK PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

A viral Facebook post claims that police have issued a bulletin about door-knocking thieves who say to be part of a government initiative to distribute masks is false, according to fact-checkers at AFP Australia, Full Fact and Reuters in the UK, and PolitiFact in the US. The masks they hand out are supposedly laced with chemicals “which knocks you out cold and once you’re knocked out they proceed to rob you”.

In a statement provided to AFP, a Victoria Police spokesperson said the force was “unaware of any instances of this nature” occurring in Victoria. Other global fact-checkers were unable to find any such police bulletin.

 

FROM WASHINGTON, D.C.

The notion that COVID-19 very rarely leads to serious illness or death, a favourite argument of those wanting coronavirus restrictions eased or lifted, has been shared by US President Donald Trump when speaking on US Independence Day, July 4, and claiming that 99 per cent of coronavirus cases in the United States was “totally harmless“; a fact, he said, that was unique to the US.

But fact-checkers at PolitiFact, the Associated Press and FactCheck.org disputed this statement.

According to FactCheck.org, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that through to May 30, 14 per cent of coronavirus cases led to hospitalisation, and 2 per cent required intensive care. Meanwhile, PolitiFact estimated the case fatality rate for confirmed cases in the US to be at least 4.2 per cent. And while some experts do put the death rate around 1 per cent, that is not the same as the coronavirus being “totally harmless” in 99 per cent of cases.

“To cavalierly say that only 1 per cent of infections result in problems is wildly inaccurate,” Donald Thea, a professor of Global Health at Boston University told PolitiFact. “We are seeing reports of young people who have recovered from mild cases developing diabetes or blood clots and suffering from chronic fatigue, respiratory compromise, persistent fever or coming back with bacterial sepsis weeks later. There’s too many reports of other organ damage that hints that there are possible long term serious implications.”

 

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

#33: Vaccines against pneumonia
“Vaccines against pneumonia, such as pneumococcal vaccine and Haemophilus influenza type B (Hib) vaccine, do not provide protection against the new coronavirus.” ⁠— World Health Organisation

 

*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.