COVID-19 Fact and Fiction #9

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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REMEMBER CLIVE PALMER, THE AUSTRALIAN TRUMP?

Image source:  ABC News – Nick. Haggarty

* Is this a pun on the number of his voters?

The COVID-19 Fact and Fiction #3 article already mentioned that outspoken businessman and Trump wannabee Clive Palmer donated almost 33 million doses of hydroxychloroquine — supposedly more than the equivalent of entire US stocks — to Australia’s national medical stockpile.

In a series of newspaper ads and TV interviews, Mr Palmer claimed this donation was behind Australia’s low mortality rate, which he said had fallen since the drug was made available to treat hospitalised coronavirus patients in early April.

However, Mr Palmer’s claim turns out to be baseless. The drug was already available to hospital patients before Palmer “made it available”, and experts said the death curve had flattened because just a few weeks earlier the case curve had done the same.

The jury is still out on whether the drug works as a treatment for COVID-19 since the evidence isn’t promising. Given the known risks of hydroxychloroquine, Australia’s medicines regulatory body strongly advises against giving it to coronavirus patients in the absence of positive clinical trial results.

Earlier, I noted my suspicion in a comment I made after seeing a video which pointed out that pharmaceutical giant Bayer had offered the millions of doses of chloroquine drugs for free to the US Administration but apparently were refused at that time (perhaps made on the cheap in India and not FDA approved) I deduced that Bayer needed to get rid of this bulk load and offered it to Clive for free too.

The Australian government is feeling the pressure too. Faced with an absence of positive clinical trial results, federal health minister Greg Hunt said about Clive Palmer’s donation yesterday, “he’s made a very generous offer to the national medical stockpile,” and cited two trials underway at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and the University of Queensland. Note that these trials are undertaken with healthy (no cardiac problems) health-care workers on the frontline with coronavirus to see if the drug works to prohibit infection, not to cure COVID-19 patients. The trials are expected to take 8-10 months.

 

TEST DISINFORMATION

A post shared widely on Facebook and attributed to the Department of Health claims that tests for the novel coronavirus, known as SARS-COV-2, are not able to distinguish the virus from other illnesses. As the post states “This means the test cannot [distinguish] covid from a cold or measles or ebola.”

A caption alongside the Facebook post claims the information has been taken “from [the Department of Health’s] own website”.

In a statement, a department spokesman told RMIT ABC Fact-check the post contained “selectively chosen information taken out of context” from a factsheet for clinicians, along with “complete inaccuracies”.

“The factsheet is actually dealing with COVID-19 positive people continuing to test positive after the infectious period has passed,” the spokesman said. “It is true that the PCR may still result in a positive test, because of a remaining non-infectious viral load within the patient.” But the test would not detect any pathogen other than the SARS-COV-2 virus.

 

INFODEMIC EXPOSED

Image source: Twitter/@DeepStateExpose

NewsGuard, a self-described “internet trust tool”, has published a list of Twitter “super spreaders” — accounts that “repeat, share and amplify” coronavirus misinformation and myths to large numbers of followers.

On the list of 10 are accounts of former Nigerian politician Femi Fani-Kayode, conservative radio commentator Bill Mitchell and former British footballer David Icke. All ten together reach a combined 3.3 million followers and have continued to publish misinformation despite Twitter announcing a crackdown on March 18 in a bid to address the so-called “infodemic”.

The accounts have spread myths including that COVID-19 does not exist and that zinc or herbal remedies can prevent or cure the virus, and are propagating unproven claims about the effect of 5G technology on the coronavirus.

 

NOT BILL GATES AGAIN?

Image source: Facebook

It seems, every day more misinformation about Bill Gates and his involvement in global public health is spread, with Mr Gates the alleged ‘villain’ in several convoluted coronavirus conspiracy theories.

This week, fact-checkers at India Today found that a photo of Mr Gates and top US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, apparently flouting social distancing and face mask rules, was taken in December 2018, long before the coronavirus outbreak.

AP Fact-check found another claim linking the men by suggesting that Dr Fauci served on Microsoft’s board of directors, to be false.

Meanwhile, Politifact found that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is not out on making a profit from the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, and Reuters discovered that Mr Gates did not present a plan to immunise religious fanatics to the Pentagon, nor could it find any indication Mr Gates had advocated for the permanent banning of religious gatherings.

 

FROM WASHINGTON, D.C.

US President Donald Trump this week claimed that he had been taking hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 preventative, prompting scorn from political adversaries including House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat.

“He’s our president, and I would rather he not be taking something that has not been approved by the scientists, especially in his age group and, shall we say, his weight group, [which] is morbidly obese, they say,” Ms Pelosi told CNN.

While her comments were met with glee by some, others have accused her of “fat shaming”. But was her comment accurate?

Not quite, according to fact-checkers at PolitiFact, who found that based on figures from Mr Trump’s latest physical examination he would not be considered “morbidly obese” by medical standards. Weighing in at 243 pounds (110 kilograms) and measuring 6 feet 3 inches (191 centimetres), Mr Trump just falls into the obese category; he would need to be shorter than 5 feet 8 inches (173 centimetres) and weigh 260 pounds (118 kilograms) to be classified “morbidly obese”.

Of course, some pundits have questioned the official height (elevated shoes”) and weight figures provided by Mr Trump but even Trump on a good day can’t cheat 7 inches and 17 pounds.

 

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

#25: A vegetarian diet

“No evidence exists to support the claim that a vegetarian lifestyle can protect someone from contracting COVID-19, a claim that has been debunked by media outlets and the Indian government.” – Snopes

 

*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.