COVID-19 Fact and Fiction #27

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.*

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Most fact-checking issues stem from Australia again, this week, but because the disinformation is spread through social media, it soon is spread to the rest of the world where some start to lead a life of its own.

 

ANOTHER ‘CLAIM’ ABOUT THE ‘TRUE’ COVID-19 DEATH RATE DEBUNKED

An image posted to Facebook misrepresents the findings of a Federal Government report (Supplied)

The world surpassed more than 1 million COVID-19 deaths, yet claims that the “true” death rate of the disease is far lower than officially reported have started to circulate again. The latest example on Facebook asserts that an Australian Federal Government report “proves with its own evidence the 29 August deaths were not 600”.

“The true COVID deaths are only 54!”, states the post, which was shared by a user known as “Political Posting Mumma” who has 20,000 followers.

The image points to a page of the Government’s 22nd COVID-19 Epidemiology Report, which supposedly indicates that just 9 per cent of reported COVID deaths were essentially caused by the disease.

However, the page of the report cited in the post does not refer to COVID-19 deaths but discusses COVID-19 cases admitted to Australian hospitals, either in general wards or intensive care units. For those cases, the report found all but 9 per cent suffered from one or more comorbidities in addition to COVID-19.

Referring to COVID-19 deaths, a table in the report shows that 80 per cent of patients who died in hospital, and for whom data was available, had suffered one or more comorbidities.

When a similar claim about over-reported deaths went viral in the US a few weeks ago, fact-checkers found that although COVID-19 was listed on death certificates as the sole cause of death in just 6 per cent of fatalities attributed to the virus, that didn’t mean the coronavirus didn’t cause or contribute to the remaining 94 per cent of deaths.

As FactCheck.org explained, death certificates list “any causes or conditions” that contribute to a person’s death.

“In the case of COVID-19, the disease often causes other serious conditions, such as pneumonia or acute respiratory distress syndrome,” the fact-checkers said. “The underlying cause of death, however, is the condition that started the chain of events that led to a person’s death.”

A spokesman for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told FactCheck.org that in 92 per cent of all deaths that mention COVID-19, the coronavirus was listed as the underlying cause of death.

“So, it’s misleading to say that 94 per cent of those who died with COVID-19 also had other ailments without explaining that the disease causes other serious illnesses. And it’s wrong to claim that only 6 per cent of the recorded COVID-19 deaths were caused by the disease,” the fact-checkers concluded.

 

VICTORIA’S PREMIER DANIEL ANDREWS IS NOT OUT AND ABOUT WITHOUT A MASK

A Facebook post showing a maskless Daniel Andrews (Supplied)

“Dan not wearing a mask, not social distancing,” reads the post, which was shared by a page titled “Melbourne Detective – Private Investigator”, showing an image taken from a TV report first screened in August, which shows Victoria’s Premier Andrews without a mask and not social distancing with little context, leading some users to assume the image is current and comment:

“They lead by example,”

“Do as I say not as I do, HYPOCRITICAL,”

The image shared to Facebook does appear to have been drawn from a recent news report, but that it is simply stock footage, taken at a 2018 news conference held at Melbourne Polytechnic, long before the COVID-19 pandemic led to mandatory mask-wearing and a call for 1.5-metre buffer zones between people. Images and video of the same event were published by SBS (via AAP), The Australian and the Herald Sun.

 

MELBOURNE’S LOCKDOWN IS NOT THE MOST SEVERE IN THE WORLD OUTSIDE OF WUHAN

Tony Abbott’s claim about Melbourne’s lockdown was wrong (AAP: Bianca De Marchi)

Speaking in London earlier this month, Australia’s former prime minister Tony Abbott claimed coronavirus restrictions in Victoria constituted the “most severe lockdown tried anywhere in the world outside of Wuhan itself”.

Fact-check this week found Mr Abbott’s claim to be wrong.

Many governments adopted individual policies similar to Victoria’s such as curfews and stay-home orders. Some rules were even stricter. Spain and Argentina banned outdoor exercise entirely while Israel limited walks to within 100 metres of home.

Chile allowed only twice-weekly shopping trips, and both South Africa and India banned the sale of alcohol. Whereas New Zealand prohibited takeaway food and drinks, Victorians could at least still visit their local cafe to pick up a coffee.

Melbourne wasn’t alone when it came to quarantining buildings either; the German city of Göttingen and several Indian cities sealed off apartment blocks too.

Additionally, at the time of Mr Abbott’s claim, Victoria had not endured the longest lockdown. Melburnians had by then spent 31 days under the state’s toughest stage 4 restrictions. However, the residents of greater Buenos Aires had been stuck at home for 166 days straight and Santiago’s lockdown lasted 94 days — and was even longer for seniors.

Nine countries had kept strict, countrywide stay-home orders in place for at least 50 days running. That included Honduras, whose lockdown stretched for 159 days.

According to a comparative “stringency index” developed by academics at Oxford University, 14 countries achieved the maximum possible score for the overall severity of their lockdowns. Fact-check has calculated that the state’s coronavirus restrictions would not have fallen within the maximum range.

By Fact-check’s estimate, 37 countries scored the same as – or higher than – Victoria at various times during the pandemic. Of those, 21 had sustained those scores for longer than Victoria’s stage 4 lockdown when Mr Abbott made his claim.

 

FROM WASHINGTON, D.C.

US fact-checkers spent all of Tuesday night checking the myriad claims from the first US presidential debate between incumbent Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger Joe Biden ahead of the November 3 election.

On the topic of the coronavirus, PolitiFact found that a claim made by Mr Biden regarding Mr Trump’s handling of the pandemic lacked context.

While Mr Biden claimed the President had “no plan” for the pandemic, the fact-checkers found that while public health experts have said Mr Trump did not have a plan for national coronavirus testing, his administration had announced a plan for distributing vaccines.

In contrast, the President’s claim that his campaign rallies had not had a “negative effect” in regards to COVID-19 was rated false by the New York Times.

“At least eight campaign staff members who helped plan President Trump’s indoor rally in June in Tulsa, [Oklahoma], including members of the Secret Service, tested positive for the coronavirus, either before the rally or after attending,” the Times said.

The Times also found Mr Trump falsely claimed the Obama administration’s response to swine flu (H1N1) was a “disaster” and that his assertion that “we are weeks away from a vaccine” went against the advice of top health officials, who say a widely-available jab is months away.

BREAKING NEWS

US President Donald Trump and his wife Melania Trump both test positive for COVID-19, but the President will continue carrying out his duties without disruption while quarantining, says his doctor. (ABC news)

Whether this is an extremely embarrassing fact or disinformation coming from a president who needs to regroup after an equally embarrassingly bad debate is something only time will tell. However, we can rest assured President Trump will carry out his duties without disruption, meaning we will be inundated with his tweets from his exile quarantine.

 

*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.