COVID-19 Fact and Fiction #19

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.*

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Melbourne, Australia, has seen a surge in new cases in the past couple of weeks which have led to lockdowns of public-housing flats, a tightening of restrictions in the rest of the city and for the first time in Australia the advice to people to wear face masks when in public. Time for Australian fact-checkers to have a good look at the use of masks to control the spread of the virus.

DO MASKS WORK?

“Studies have recently shown that, even when factoring in imperfections and human error, wearing face masks can reduce transmission of coronavirus by around 60 per cent,” reads a press release outlining the new and unprecedented advice.

Independent Senator for Tasmania Jacqui Lambie cited a different figure when speaking on the Today Show. “Should we be wearing face masks? They’re supposed to be 70 per cent reliable,” she said.

And speaking on 3AW, Tony Blakely, an epidemiologist and public health medicine specialist at the University of Melbourne, said masks reduced the risk of coronavirus transmission by “about 80 per cent”.

So what’s the correct figure? Well, all three close enough.

A systematic review, commissioned by the World Health Organisation and published in The Lancet last month, looked at a large number of observational studies to study the extent to which physical distancing, face masks and eye protection prevent the spread of COVID-19. The review found masks reduced the risk of spread by 67 per cent, while a close-fitting protective device such as an N95 respiratory mask reduced it by more than 95 per cent.

“The N95 respirators are much better but the surgical masks and even a 12-layered cloth mask does give you good protection as well,” said Raina MacIntyre MacIntrye, infectious diseases expert and head of the biosecurity research program at the Kirby Institute when she spoke to the ABC’s Health Report. She added before adding that masks protected with equal effect people in the community as well as in a healthcare setting.

However, speaking to Fact-check, Professor Blakely said there was a possibility his suggested figure of “about 80 per cent” protection was an overestimate, given the nature of the Lancet’s review. It looked at observational studies rather than randomised trials which would take into account the potential for correlated confounders, such as the fact that people who wore health masks were possibly more health-conscious than those who don’t.

Yet, Professor Blakely noted that an 85 per cent reduction is too large an effect to be purely due to correlated confounders.” According to him, mask-wearing was likely to reduce the risk of coronavirus spread by between 50 per cent and 80 per cent, which he said would have enough of an effect to “make a sizeable difference”.

Some experts, however, have questioned the Lancet review, cautioning against treating masks as a “magic ingredient”.

Paul Glasziou, the director of the Institute for Evidenced-Based Care at Bond University, told The Age he thinks the Lancet study is seriously flawed, again because “It’s all based on observational evidence. And they did not adjust for the confounding.“

Professor Glasziou also warned that masks could create a false sense of security, and were not the “magic ingredient” that was going to stop the pandemic, a notion echoed by Professor MacIntyre. “The bottom line is no intervention gives you 100 per cent protection. You have to use them in combination to reduce the risk and, until the time that we can vaccinate people, you really have to use these interventions in combination.”

 

MASKS FACT & FICTION

There’s a lot of disinformation about masks about that needs to be debunked

To start with, those small strips of metal in some face masks that can be moulded to the shape of the wearer’s nose are not 5G antennas, as reported by Reuters. Too bad, masks won’t stream your Netflix any faster.

Reuters also debunked a claim circulating on social media that two-tone surgical masks should be worn coloured side facing out if you are sick and white side facing out if you are healthy. That’s incorrect. The coloured side, usually blue, should always face out.

If people believe that bunk, then there are a lot of sick people out there who shouldn’t be out there at all but isolating themselves.

Meanwhile, Lead Stories looked into a video purporting to show a test that found wearing a mask causes oxygen levels to drop into a so-called “danger zone”.

As the fact-checkers point out, when the sensor used in the test is put under people’s faces while breathing out, it will naturally detect lower oxygen levels. That’s because the air we breathe in is about 21 per cent oxygen, while the air we breathe out is 16 per cent oxygen. Further, the manufacturer of the gadget seen in the video told Lead Stories that the test was flawed and that the sensor had been used incorrectly.

Finally, claims that New York hospitals were reporting thousands of lung infections caused by the use of face masks are false, according to PolitiFact. “New York hospitals didn’t report this, PolitiFact said. “There’s no evidence wearing a face mask properly causes fungal lung infections.”

 

FROM WASHINGTON, D.C.

Coronavirus cases continue to surge in the US as the country opens back up to get life, and especially the economy, back to some sort of normal. Schools, however, have remained shut and, with the start of the new school year drawing closer, the debate over whether they should open as planned has become heated.

President Donald Trump is on the side of reopening and is threatening to cut federal funding to schools in states where governors choose to keep them closed.

But fact-checkers at CNN found that Mr Trump is unable to cut unilaterally federal funding to schools, though he could restrict recent pandemic relief funding and refuse to sign future legislation for grants and bailouts.

Meanwhile, despite claims to the contrary, Mr Trump’s Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, never said that “only 0.02 per cent of children” were likely to die if schools were reopened, according to USA Today, Snopes and Lead Stories. “Our analysis of DeVos’ public appearances found no evidence to show she made the comment,” fact-checkers at Snopes noted.

Also, the Associated Press’s fact-check team called out the Trump administration for repeatedly assuring the public that schools are safe and that children do not spread the virus, despite there being no certainty behind either statement.

In one example, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany claimed the director of the US Centers for Disease Control had said “children are not spreading” COVID-19. AP clarified that what the director had really said was that there was no evidence that children were “driving” infections, and that experts had not yet ruled out the possibility that children could spread the virus to adults.

PolitiFact also found that a claim made by Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the coronavirus poses “virtually zero threat” to children and most teachers was mostly false. “Carlson’s language paints a black-and-white picture for children and teachers between death and full recovery,” the fact-checkers said. “Other outcomes — including hospitalisation — have occurred and are also harmful.”

 

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.