Jun 012020
 

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.*


MORE MISINFORMATION ON FLU VACCINES

Image source: Facebook

Inaccurate claims about the flu vaccine and its relationship to the novel coronavirus continue to circulate, despite the best efforts of fact-checkers.

This week PolitiFact, factcheck.org and Reuters have checked inaccurate claims suggesting that the seasonal jab for the flue leads to false positives in coronavirus tests or even that the jab contains the virus itself. Both suggestions are incorrect.

According to PolitiFact, a Facebook post stating “If you have had a flu shot in the last 3-5 years, you will probably test positive” for COVID-19 was labelled “nonsense” by Davidson Hamer, a global health and medicine professor at Boston University.

A claim that the flu vaccine “has been biologically weaponised to cause coronavirus” was debunked by Reuters, whose fact-checkers noted: “There is no evidence to suggest that the influenza vaccine contains the novel coronavirus or causes COVID-19.”

 

HYDROCHLOROQUINE AND 5GL

Image source: Facebook

Again a claim linking 5G mobile technology to the coronavirus outbreak is being spread on Facebook, this time concerning another controversial item in the disinformation folly, hydroxychloroquine.

“Hydroxychloroquine cures this ‘virus’,” a Facebook post states. “It just so happens this is the treatment used for radiation sickness!! Let that sink in!”

Opponents of 5G have called out radiation sickness as one of the adverse health effects associated with the technology.

Fact-checkers at Full Fact and PolitiFact found there was no clear evidence that hydroxychloroquine was an effective treatment for COVID-19 and it is not used to treat radiation sickness either.

 

INFODEMIC

Fact-checkers and misinformation researchers around the globe not only try to correct the record on false and inaccurate claims around COVID-19 but also attempt to understand and track the spread of the “infodemic”.

On the one hand, researchers found that a quarter of the most viewed COVID-19 videos on YouTube, viewed by millions of users worldwide, contained misleading information and “may play a significant role in successfully managing the COVID-19 pandemic,” the researchers said.

On the other hand, social media investigators found that nearly half of all Twitter accounts posting about the virus were likely to be bots, twice as much bot activity as predicted based on previous natural disasters, crises and elections, according to Kathleen M Carley, a researcher with Carnegie Mellon University.

In Australia, the misinformation campaigns seem to be rather successful, with one in five surveyed young people (18-34) reporting that they think 5G mobile technology is spreading the coronavirus.

And a brand-new Australian report suggests that theory has been amplified on Twitter through the “coordinated” efforts of clusters of Pro-Trump, QAnon and Republican partisan accounts (emphasis mine).

 “The whole idea of bots is really quite contentious at the moment, but there’s really no other conclusion that we can draw from this, other than some of these accounts are using some sort of automation,” Dr Timothy Graham said, one of the authors of The Australian Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology report released today (June first 2020).

 “They might be semi-controlled by humans but how they’re behaving in these networks, at least in some clusters, is text-book bot-like behaviour. We can’t know for sure but there’s overwhelming evidence based on this approach, where groups of accounts repeatedly retweet the same content within one second of each other.”

 

INTERPRETING STATISTICS IN ITALY

Image source: Facebook

A claim made by an Italian politician that 96.3 per cent of more than 32,000 COVID-19 deaths in his country were actually from other causes is false, according to Full Fact.

The source of the claim turned out to be a report from the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Higher Institute of Health) on April 20 which had found that of 21,551 Italians who had died with COVID-19, just 3.7 per cent had no co-morbidities.

“This means that 96.3% of the people who had died in Italy after testing positive for the new coronavirus had also suffered from at least one condition,” Full Fact noted. “It does not mean that the virus did not cause their death.”

 

HISTORY REWRITTENImage source: Facebook

A quote shared widely on Facebook reads “The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions,” and is said to have come from Hitler’s Mein Kampf. “In this way, the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed.”

A caption accompanying the post (dated May 12) states: “This is what’s happening to us now … little by little.”

But fact-checkers at PolitiFact and Reuters note that comparing current coronavirus restrictions to Hitler’s ideology is based on misattribution. The Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History, which studies 20th-century German history, told Reuters the words were misattributed and had “never been written in Mein Kampf”. PolitiFact noted that the quote also misrepresents Hitler’s beliefs and actions. “Instead of small changes that slowly eroded the rights of the German people, Hitler made large changes over a short period.”

 

FROM WASHINGTON, D.C.

This week, an official fact-check warning label by Twitter appears to have been a tipping point for Mr Trump who responded to having his tweets about postal voting labelled by the social media platform by signing an executive order intended to challenge protections provided by US law that prevent social media companies being sued over what gets posted to their sites.

“In a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to hand pick the speech that Americans may access and convey on the internet,” Mr Trump defended his order.

Mr Trump then went on to claim the warning label placed on his tweets were done in a matter “that clearly reflects political bias”.

“As has been reported, Twitter seems never to have placed such a label on another politician’s tweet,” he said, “As recently as last week, [Democratic] Representative Adam Schiff was continuing to mislead his followers by peddling the long-disproved Russian Collusion Hoax, and Twitter did not flag those tweets.”

But as factcheck.org has covered the assertions that it is a “hoax” to suggest his presidential campaign had ties to Russia are not quite correct, with the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller establishing “multiple links between Trump Campaign officials and individuals tied to the Russian government”. Ultimately, however, “the investigation did not establish that the Campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities.”

Meanwhile, Mr Trump has doubled down on his claims that led to the Twitter warning and a slew of fact checks, tweeting in all caps:

“MAIL-IN VOTING WILL LEAD TO MASSIVE FRAUD AND ABUSE. IT WILL ALSO LEAD TO THE END OF OUR GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY. WE CAN NEVER LET THIS TRAGEDY BEFALL OUR NATION.”

 

PLANDEMIC INFODEMIC

The New York Times has tracked how the coronavirus misinformation spouted in the movie “Plandemic” spread online, comparing the viral video to other conspiracies as well as moments in pop culture.

This graph shows how the video garnered nearly 2.5 million reactions, including likes, shares and comments, in less than two weeks, while a Taylor Swift concert and reunion of actors from “The Office” captured a fraction of that attention.

 

SOME HELP WITH RECOGNISING FAKE NEWS

 

*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.

Share
May 292020
 

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.*


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

The monthly number of engagements of 12 Australian anti-vaccine Facebook accounts in the last six months. (Graph shows the complete total for each month up to May, which shows data so far for the month.) CrowdTangle

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.

Share
May 252020
 

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.*


COVID LINK to 5G CELL TOWERS DEBUNKED

Image source: Instagram

The stream of misinformation surrounding 5G technology and the coronavirus seems to be exponentially increasing, so much so that it has prompted Australia’s chief medical officer, Brendan Murphy, to address the issue at a recent press briefing where he noted there was “absolutely no evidence about 5G doing anything in the coronavirus space”. Dr Murphy added, “I have unfortunately received a lot of communication from these conspiracy theorists myself it is complete nonsense.”

It prompted the UK government to seek partnership with Twitter; users searching for 5G conspiracy tweets will see a pop-up with the text “the UK government has said there is no evidence of a link between 5G and coronavirus (COVID-19)” and directing them to further information.

Recent 5G misinformation consists of a video, viewed thousands of times, which shows a supposed telecoms engineer who is erecting 5G masts in the UK holding up an electrical circuit board and claiming it is “a piece of kit that has COV-19 on it”.

Reuters found that this video was staged; the circuit board isn’t used in 5G technology but was taken from a Virgin Media box for cable television. Virgin Media told Reuters the board was from a “very old set-top box” and had never been inscribed or imprinted with “COV-19”. Virgin maintained
“[The board] has absolutely no relation with any mobile network infrastructure, including that used for 5G.”

Another claim that “radiation pneumonitis”, allegedly caused by 5G, was being misdiagnosed as COVID-19 was also found to be false by Reuters.

 

REMDESIVIR FACTS

Remdesivir is an experimental antiviral drug, manufactured by the pharmaceutical company Gilead and recently approved as a COVID-19 treatment in the US. In Australia, the drug is not yet being used in any clinical trials, although it is expected some hospitals are to receive doses of the drug for use with COVID-19 patients.

Misinformation around many COVID-19 treatments, including remdesivir, has spread rapidly throughout the pandemic. For example, a Facebook post claimed that hydroxychloroquine, another touted COVID-19 treatment mentioned here before, was “91 per cent effective” and cheap, while remdesivir was effective in just 50 per cent of patients and cost US$1,000. “Why is Fauci pushing Remdesivir? It was invented by Fauci and Gates. Its stock is now soaring. Always follow the $$$$$$$.” the post stated, pointing to US infectious diseases expert and White House adviser Anthony Fauci and the much-maligned Bill Gates.

But as USA Today found, neither hydroxychloroquine nor remdesivir had been proven effective against COVID-19, with clinical trials ongoing. Further, Gilead Sciences is the only organisation that could profit from the sale of remdesivir and neither Mr Gates nor Dr Fauci had any involvement in the development of the drug.

Another Facebook post imagines a remdesivir conspiracy centred around Unitaid, which it suggests is Gilead’s “drug patent sharing subsidiary branch”. According to the post, Unitaid has an office in Wuhan and is backed by Bill and Melinda Gates, billionaire investor George Soros and the World Health Organisation. Hillary Clinton, Dr Fauci and Wuhan’s Institute of Virology are also mentioned.

Snopes found these claims to be false. Unitaid is not linked to Gilead and does not have an office near Wuhan. And while the organisation, which invests in innovations to prevent, diagnose and treat several global health issues, is supported financially by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, it has no ties to Mr Soros or Dr Fauci. Unitaid is a “hosted partnership” of the WHO but receives no financial support from the organisation.

 

PNEUMONIA VS THROMBOSIS

Image source: AP/Zhang Yuwei Via Xinhua

Some news stories lately have raised concerns that COVID-19, which has been viewed mainly as respiratory disease, may also have patients die through thrombosis (the formation of blood clots).

Full Fact took a look at claims posted on social media that COVID-19 patients were being misdiagnosed with pneumonia when in fact they were suffering from thrombosis. The posts propagated to fight the disease is with “antibiotics, antivirals, anti-inflammatories and anticoagulants”.

The fact-checkers found that patients were not being “misdiagnosed” with pneumonia. Rather, both pneumonia and Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation (DIC), which leads to thrombosis, was present in COVID-19 cases. Indian-based BOOM also found that respiratory failure rather than thrombosis was the leading cause of COVID-19 deaths with thrombosis of the lungs “a factor that can further complicate the course of pneumonia in COVID-19 patients,” they said.

Full Fact found that antibiotics were not recommended for treatment, as they are effective for bacterial infections only and no specific antiviral has been shown conclusively to be effective against COVID-19. Anti-inflammatories such as ibuprofen could help treat COVID-19 symptoms at home, and there was evidence to suggest anticoagulants facilitated the treatment of some patients.

 

EXERCISE

Many are turning to exercise to relieve boredom and stay fit and healthy during the coronavirus restrictions. Some online claims, however, have suggested that exercise may weaken the immune system. One advertisement linking to an article claims that a “window of opportunity” exists in the hours after strenuous exercise which can leave people vulnerable to infection from viruses.

USA Today’s fact-checkers found that the “window of opportunity” theory has been around for decades, supported by at least one study that found “vigorous workouts could have a temporary negative effect on the immune system”.  But as to the long-term effects of exercising, several scientific studies suggested regular exercise promotes good health and reduces the risk of infections.

John Campbell, of the University of Bath’s Department of Health, told USA Today that “People should not fear that their immune system will be suppressed by exercise, placing them at increased risk of coronavirus.”

 

FROM WASHINGTON, D.C.

As the US grapples with soaring numbers of COVID-19 cases and the highest number of deaths in the world, Republicans are blaming former Democratic president Barack Obama for having left the current administration poorly placed to cope with the pandemic.

During an online discussion hosted by President Trump’s re-election campaign, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said it may no longer be that pandemics are a once-in-100-year occurrence, and he wanted to be ready for the next one.

“Clearly, the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this.”

But fact-checkers at the Washington Post, CNN’s Fact First and Politifact found that claim to be false, and that the Obama administration had left behind a 40-page National Security Council “playbook” on fighting pandemics.

“McConnell is wrong to say the Obama administration left “no game plan” to deal with a pandemic,” the Washington Post concluded. “The Obama team crafted a detailed document setting forth questions and policies that should be considered, as well as put in place programs that might have helped spur action sooner.”

Senator McConnell later conceded in a Fox News interview: “I was wrong.”

 

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

#26: Brown sugar
“There is no official cure for COVID-19 as of May 21, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). There are several clinical trials being conducted to test potential cures, but consuming brown sugar is not one of them.” Rappler

 

*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.

Share
May 212020
 

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.*


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.

Share
May 182020
 

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.*


WORLD HEALTH ACCORDING TO ANTI-VAXXERS

A tweet, believed to have been posted by a user named VaccineTruths on May 3, contains a screenshot of a page from the website WorldHealth.net and alleges that a 2017 study showed that people who had received a flu vaccine would be the “first to die” in a global pandemic. The page on the website appears to have been deleted, but an archived version exists.

WorldHealth.net Internet has been included NewsGuard’s list of websites publishing false coronavirus information the site “violates basic standards of credibility and transparency”.

The text screenshot contains comes from an article headlined “BOMBSHELL: Flu Shots Scientifically Proven to Weaken Immune Response in Subsequent Years”, which cites a 2017 study conducted by Lisa Christian of the Ohio State Medical Centre. This study, however, looked into the effect of flu vaccinations on pregnant women and newborns and makes no mention of a person’s likelihood of dying in a pandemic.

According to RMIT Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow Kylie Quinn, who has researched vaccines, there was no evidence in the paper that a flu vaccine made people more susceptible to influenza.

In general, there was no evidence at all that people who had received flu shots would be the first to die in a pandemic. Dr Quinn said that she knew of no credible evidence to support other claims contained in the post, such as people who received a flu jab in 2008 “experienced a 250 per cent increase in influenza infections in subsequent years”.

 

THAT BILL GATES AGAIN

Image source: Snopes

More misinformation, or should we say disinformation, regarding Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, appeared as a photo, shared on social media, which showed a crop circle in the UK featuring the Microsoft logo.

“Amazing crop circle arrives overnight near Stonehenge, UK… Think they are trying to tell us something…? Microsoft Bill Gates made the Corona Virus?” one tweet featuring the photo reads.

But fact-checkers at Snopes were able to track down the original image of a 2004 crop circle altered to feature the Microsoft logo.

 

ANOTHER WRITER WRONGLY ATTRIBUTED

Image source: Facebook

A passage of text quoting an imaginary exchange between Satan and Jesus has been misattributed to the Chronicles of Narnia author C.S. Lewis, written supposedly during WWII, circa 1942.

The text quotes Satan as saying he will “shut down business, schools, places of worship, and sport events” and “cause economic turmoil”, while Jesus retorts: “I will bring together neighbours [and] restore the family unit.” Jesus continues: “I will help people slow down their lives and appreciate what really matters.”

Reuters found the real author to be a social media user named Heidi May, who told the fact-checkers she wrote the post on a day she was feeling overwhelmed in early March.

 

INTERNATIONAL CORONAVIRUS FACT-CHECKING

The International Fact-Checking Network’s database of coronavirus fact checks, created to combat misinformation about the virus, has already hit a milestone 5,000 fact checks.

The five most popular fact checks:

  1. An investigation by Spanish Maldita.es into a WhatsApp message claiming that Pope Francis had instructed believers to put a white cloth on their doorsteps to protect them from the plague. They found no evidence of any such advice in the Pope’s public appearances and statements.
  2. The same Spanish outlet also debunked several of the coronavirus-related claims made by disgraced virologist Judy Mikovits in the viral video “Plandemic”, as noted in COVID-19 Fact and Fiction #6
  3. The Mexican fact-checking network Animal Politico looked into claims that COVID-19 is a thrombosis which should be treated with antibiotics. They found that while some Italian researchers found pulmonary thrombosis to be linked to the coronavirus, the virus was essentially a respiratory illness, and was not treatable with antibiotics.
  4. In India, FactCrescendo debunked a video which purported to show bodies of coronavirus victims being thrown into the sea. The video actually showed the bodies of African migrants who had been trying to get to Europe washed ashore in Libya in 2014.
  5. Bothes and India Today debunked the claim that Harvard Professor Charles Lieber was arrested for creating the coronavirus and selling it to China. Lieber was certainly arrested but in reality, charged with concealing a foreign conflict of interest from investigators according to a US Justice Department statement.

 

SAFE TO FLY

Reuters: Kham

In the US, with some states are relaxing lockdown rules and summer holidays approach, the CEO of Southwest Airlines claimed in an appearance on CBS that an aeroplane is “as safe as an environment as you’re going to find”.

Fact-checkers at PolitiFact noted that planes had air ventilation systems that circulate purified air and that airlines were taking substantial steps to protect travellers. Experts said flying would be relatively safe as long as everyone onboard wore masks and wiped down surfaces but also noted passengers would be unable to maintain distance from each other inside the aircraft.

There would still be risks despite protective measures being taken by the airlines. “Is an airplane potentially carrying an infectious passenger safer than your own home, where the only contact with a stranger you have is grabbing the takeout dinner order left on your porch by a delivery person?” PolitiFact posed. “Clearly not.”

 

FROM WASHINGTON, D.C.

Barack Obama has criticised his successor, calling President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic “an absolute chaotic disaster“.

The critique led Mr Trump to retweet a claim that “Barack Hussain Obama is the first Ex-President to ever speak against his successor, which was [a] long tradition of decorum and decency.”

He tagged the post: “He got caught, OBAMAGATE!

But PolitiFact found that, in fact, a long line of former presidents had offered their successors “improvement suggestions”.

Herbert Hoover, for example, railed against Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and liberalism “from the time he left office in 1933 until his death in the mid-1960s”. Historians contacted by PolitiFact also pointed out that Jimmy Carter’s policies were ridiculed by predecessor Gerald Ford.

“Carter carried on the tradition. In November 1982, he said President Ronald Reagan had undermined confidence in America’s global leadership,” PolitiFact noted.

 

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

#24: Palm oil

“No, palm oil will not stop the coronavirus.” – Africa 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.

Share
May 142020
 

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.*


THOSE ANTI-VAXXERS AGAIN

Australia’s professional Rugby’s preparations to get back to business was somewhat hampered by the refusal of two Queensland NRL players refusing to have a flu shot, mandated by the Queensland Government, for which they were stood down.

In response to the mandate, Shanelle Cartwright, the wife of one of the players, took to Instagram to say the edict had entered “scary territory”. “Especially considering the flu shot has been proven to increase the incidence of corona viruses by 36%,” she posted on Instagram.

However, fact-checkers at factcheck.org and Lead Stories, as well as scientists at Health Feedback, have found there to be no evidence that the flu jab increases a person’s risk of being diagnosed with COVID-19. The “question of whether the flu vaccine causes an increased risk of coronavirus infection requires more scientific studies to answer” (Health Feedback).

As Health Feedback found, the claim seems to rely on a January 2020 study which showed individuals who received the flu vaccine had a higher chance of contracting the seasonal coronaviruses that lead to the common cold. But these viruses are not the same as the novel coronavirus, which causes COVID-19. And the study itself states that “vaccinated personnel did not have significant odds of respiratory illnesses”.

A second study was also used to support the claim but looked only at children. It suggested an increased risk of non-influenza viruses among kids who were vaccinated but it doesn’t mention an increased risk for seasonal coronavirus infection, according to Sheena Sullivan, an associate professor at Melbourne’s Doherty Institute.

Update: Both players are now allowed to play again; one player because he took the jab – as two other protesters did before him – the other because he showed an allergic reaction to a previous flu jab.

 

MY MASK IS KILLING ME

Image source: Facebook

Recently face-mask wearers may have been alarmed by a Facebook post or news article claiming that face masks could cause hypercapnia or hypoxia if worn for too long.

One viral post presents the apparent symptoms of hypercapnia, which is a form of respiratory failure involving a build-up of carbon dioxide in the bloodstream, and states “it can be caused by rebreathing your own exhaled CO2 by wearing a mask continually”.

Reuters found this claim to be partly false, citing the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as saying that while CO2 could build up in a face mask over time, it would likely be tolerable and result in a headache, rather than the more severe symptoms of hypercapnia shown in the Facebook post.

Meanwhile, fact-checkers at Snopes have debunked a Nigerian newspaper column by “Dr Dennis A Castro B” which claimed the prolonged use of face masks could lead to hypoxia with symptoms of discomfort and the “loss of reflexes and conscious thought”.

“Ultimately, the impact of a mask on its wearer depends on the wearer’s health, any pre-existing respiratory illnesses, the type of mask, and the length of time the person wears it,” Snopes found. “In most instances, the effects of prolonged cloth mask usage are small.”

 

COVID APP

Image source: Facebook

Australia, like many other countries around the world, has developed a telephone app to trace COVID-19 infection. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said that while he wants 40 per cent of Australians to download the government’s COVIDSafe phone app he will not make it compulsory.

But a Facebook post shared more than 34,000 times claims that while the Federal Government may not make downloading the app mandatory, private businesses could pressure individuals to install the app on their phone, on post giving examples such as a supermarket refusing entry if an individual hasn’t got the app on their phone.

The post points to a privacy impact assessment carried out by a law firm on behalf of the government which did acknowledge concerns that individuals could in some circumstances be pressured to download the app.

But fact-checkers at AAP found that those concerns were directly addressed by the Biosecurity (Human Biosecurity Emergency) (Human Coronavirus with Pandemic Potential) (Emergency Requirements—Public Health Contact Information) Determination 2020, which prohibits a person from requiring another person to download the app. It also prohibits someone from refusing a person entry to premises or from refusing to enter into an employment contract, if they haven’t downloaded the app.

Not complying with the Biosecurity determination may be a criminal offence, punishable by a maximum of five years in prison.

While Australia has this safeguard built-in with the Biosecurity determination, other countries seeking to implement similar apps may have other safeguards in place.

 

COVID PATENT

Image source: Facebook

Fact-checkers at Reuters have debunked a claim, made in a video viewed more than 2.6 million times, that patents for the novel coronavirus have existed since 2006 and were “perfected” in November 2019.

However, the two patents, presented as “proof” that pharmaceutical companies have known about and concealed the novel coronavirus for years, are for SARS, which is caused by SARS-CoV-1, rather than COVID-19, which is caused by SARS-CoV-2.

The fact-checkers also note “[Its] application for the patent was neither hidden nor part of a conspiracy as it was for a different virus strain entirely.”

 

DOCTOR ON THE LOOSE

Image source: Facebook

Dr Buttar, a healthcare professional who keeps himself occupied by spreading misinformation, is featured in the item above about the existence of apparent patents for the novel coronavirus, but he’s also been fact-checked for a claim he made regarding flu vaccines.

“The studies clearly show that if you’ve had a flu shot you’re going to test positive for COVID-19,” Dr Buttar said in an interview posted to Facebook.

Fact-checkers at Reuters and AFP have found that claim to be incorrect. As one US expert, John Sanders, of Wake Forest Baptist Health, told AFP Fact Check: “I’m happy to say this is unsubstantiated rubbish.”

It turned out that of the studies cited by Dr Buttar as “proof” of his claim was conducted on cats in 1984 — 35 years before COVID-19 was identified and became a pandemic. The second study cited by Dr Buttar was published seven years before the outbreak of COVID-19.

 

FROM WASHINGTON, D.C.

Jimmy Kimmel has “apologised” on Twitter after wrongly suggesting US Vice-President Mike Pence had offered to carry empty boxes to the door of a healthcare centre as part of a delivery of personal protective equipment.

A clip aired by Late night television host Kimmel on May 7 appeared to show Mr Pence suggesting he carry empty boxes “for the camera” after he had helped carry a couple of full boxes.

“Mike Pence pretending to carry a big box of PPEs into a hospital is the perfect metaphor for who he is and what he’s doing: a big box of nothing, delivering another box of nothing,” Kimmel said during the program.

But as fact-checkers at the Washington Post, Snopes, Lead Stories, USA Today and PolitiFact found, the clip had been edited. It showed that Mr Pence suggested he could carry the empty boxes “for the camera” after carrying in some full ones but the door of the van closed and Pence didn’t carry any of the empty boxes left in the van.

The fact checks prompted Kimmel to delete the clip from Twitter and issue an apology of sorts. “It would appear that [Mr Pence] was joking about carrying empty boxes for a staged publicity stunt,” Kimmel tweeted. “The full video reveals that he was carrying full boxes for a staged publicity stunt. My apologies. I know how dearly this administration values truth.”

The picture in Kimmel’s Tweet shows a van with a large number of apparently empty boxes left after the full ones were taken out. So this filming of Pence, without a face-mask, delivering PPE material was certainly designed as a publicity stunt based on a few full boxes instead of a whole van filled with material.

 

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

#23: Drinking sugarless black tea at dawn

“Tea cannot protect one from infection with COVID-19.” – Dr Moses Masika, a virologist at the University of Nairobi, as quoted by Africa 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.

Share
May 122020
 

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.*


SOME SERIOUS ANTI-VAXXING

Image source: plandemicmovie.com

Regular Facebook users have almost certainly come across a viral video in recent days: the 27-minute trailer for a yet-to-be-released film called “Plandemic: The hidden agenda behind COVID-19” continues to spread widely despite censoring efforts by Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo and Twitter. The movie’s makers maintain it will “expose the scientific and political elite who run the scam that is our global health system”.

The glossy trailer features a long interview with Dr Judy Mikovits, described by the Washington Post as a “well-known figure in the anti-vaccination movement”.

According to PolitiFact, however, a number of the claims made by Dr Mikovits in the clip are “either unsupported or outright false”, including her claim that she was jailed without charge.

Dr Mikovits makes other claims without any evidence to support them, including that the coronavirus was “clearly manipulated”, that the virus is a derivative of SARS 1, that hydroxychloroquine is effective against coronaviruses generally and that the flu vaccine increases the odds of getting COVID-19 by 36 per cent. The fact-checkers also debunked Dr Mikovits’s claims that the flu vaccine contains coronaviruses and that wearing a mask can make you sick.

Retraction Watch, which tracks retractions of scientific studies, has published at least 10 posts on the discredited scientist since 2011.

 

DON’T QUIT SMOKING?

In late April, headlines suggested that according to a French study smokers may be less likely to contract the coronavirus. The study found that just 4.4 per cent of COVID-19 patients admitted to a Paris hospital were smokers, as were 5.3 per cent of people suffering from the virus at home but that the smoking rate in the general population is 40 per cent for people aged 44-53 and 11 per cent for 65-75 year-olds.

But USA Today pointed to an overview of studies observing the effects of nicotine in severe COVID-19 cases made by the US National Center for Biotechnology Information which found instead that “smoking is most likely associated with the negative progression and adverse outcomes of COVID-19”.

The newspaper also spoke to other researchers, who urged caution regarding the French study. Academics writing in The Conversation noted that the “counterintuitive results may be due to several biases”, that the study had yet to be peer-reviewed, and that it was completed at “pandemic speed”.

 

BILL GATES REVISITED

Image source: Facebook

In COVID-19 facts and fiction 3, several false claims about Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who seems to act as a lightning rod for coronavirus misinformation, especially it concerns a COVID-19 vaccine.

This time the false claim relates to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has contributed more than $250 million to the fight against the novel coronavirus.

A Facebook photo showing the outside of the foundation’s headquarters emblazoned with the sign “Centre for Global Population Reduction” was photoshopped, according to fact-checkers at Politifact, Snopes and Lead Stories.

“There is no such thing as the Center for Global Human Population Reduction,” Lead Stories concluded. “It is just one in a long chain of false rumours about Gates in circulation.”

 

WHO CREATES FAKE NEWS?

Image source: BBC

As we have seen in previous articles, misinformation and disinformation are being dispersed faster and more widely when riding on the back of the global health crisis. But who is responsible for starting and spreading rumours, hoaxes and conspiracies? According to the BBC, viral misinformation spreaders often fit into one of several categories.

  1. The ‘joker’, who posts misinformation for a laugh. The readers who aren’t in on the joke, pass it on as if it is true.
  2. The ‘scammer’, who uses the pandemic deliberately to fool people into handing over money.
  3. Politicians, such as US President Donald Trump
  4. Celebrities, for example, actor Woody Harrelson.
  5. Conspiracy theorists.
  6. And last but not least, relatives. “They’re trying to be helpful and they think they’re doing something positive,” the BBC suggests. “But, of course, that doesn’t make the messages they pass along true.”

 

WILDLIFE RETURNS

Image source: Facebook

We’ve all seen the many images of wildlife reclaiming urban centres in coronavirus lockdown, but some have been fake or misleading. In the newest example, fact-checkers at Snopes found that an image of hundreds of flamingos in the canals of Venice is the result of digital manipulation.

The photo was created by an artist on Instagram, who clearly categorized her image as “art” and told commenters the photo wasn’t real. On Facebook, however, the image has been shared more than 19,000 times, without any qualification.

 

FROM WASHINGTON, D.C.

In March, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg declared that the social media giant was tackling “misinformation that has imminent risk of danger”, including claims that drinking bleach could cure COVID-19, which he described as being “in a different class”.

However, when US President Donald Trump mused about introducing disinfectants and UV light into the body as potential treatments for the COVID-19, Facebook, as well as Twitter and YouTube, declined to remove Mr Trump’s statements, arguing that he did not specifically direct people to drink or inject disinfectants or use UV lighting in an attempt to cure or prevent the disease.

Mr Trump may not have given a specific directive but others did take the next step, and the social media companies can’t keep up.

According to an investigation by the New York Times, hundreds of Facebook groups and pages and thousands of tweets pushing unproven UV therapies remained live as of April 30, a week after Mr Trump’s comments. More than 5,000 posts, videos and comments promoting the use of disinfectants as a virus cure remained on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

 

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

#22: CBD oil
There are no credible animal or human studies showing CBD [cannabidiol] has any effect on SARS-CoV-2 or the course of COVID-19 infection.” – Professor C. Michael White,  Head of the Department of Pharmacy Practice, University of Connecticut, The Conversation

*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.

Share
May 082020
 

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.*


SATIRE IN THE NAME OF FITZGERALD

Image source: Facebook

A letter attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald, supposedly written by the Great Gatsby author during the Spanish influenza pandemic, continues to be shared widely on Facebook despite being debunked.

The letter, purportedly sent by Fitzgerald to a friend in 1920 and including references to his wife Zelda and fellow writer Ernest Hemingway, is, in reality, a parody written by Nick Farriella for the satirical website McSweeney’s, according to fact-checkers at Reuters and Snopes.

Farriella tweeted on March 18 that his creation had been turned into “fake news” but continues to be shared, including as recently as April 29 on Facebook.

 

MOSQUITOES JOIN THE MYTHS

Image source: Twitter/Peter Kyle MP

Mosquitoes can indeed spread certain diseases such as malaria through their bite but fact-checkers at PolitiFact and Associated Press found there’s no evidence that COVID-19 can be spread by the insects.

A Tik Tok video suggesting the coronavirus could be caught from mosquitoes which had bitten someone infected with the virus had been viewed more than 1 million times.

The World Health Organisation has stated that to date “there has been no information nor evidence to suggest that the new coronavirus could be transmitted by mosquitoes”, and Joseph M. Conlon, a representative of the American Mosquito Control Association, told PolitiFact no coronavirus had shown the necessary replication inside mosquitoes or ticks for the virus to be passed from person to person via insect bites.

 

KEEP YOUR DISTANCE

Image source: Twitter/Peter Kyle MP

Photos may not be what they seem. The team at Full Fact in the UK have put together a guide on what you should know about photos of overcrowded public places that suggest a lack of regard for social distancing rules which are distortions of reality through the use of telephoto lenses and different camera angles.

“It’s important to say that these images aren’t fake: they are authentic images, but choices the photographer makes can result in very different impressions of a scene,” Full Fact says.

In one example, a regular jogger in England explained in a Twitter thread how a photo of 40 people apparently crowded together along the Bournemouth foreshore actually showed an area half a kilometre in length.

In another example, British Labour MP Peter Kyle tweeted out the two images above.
“Same spot. Same moment. Same camera,” he announced. “Can the media please stop popping to our beautiful seafront and using zoom lenses to give the impression people are selfishly endangering others. Overwhelmingly they are not. Photos can lie just as words can.”

 

MISINFORMATION SUPERSPREADERS

from Darren McCaffrey, Euronews

With a worldwide increase in media consumption due to the pandemic the insidious danger of misinformation has also increased. The analytics firm NewsGuard found dozens of popular Facebook pages that are publishing, repeating and sharing false stories about the coronavirus across Europe. The offending pages each had more than 40,000 likes on Facebook and had a combined following of more than 13 million users; larger than the population of most European countries.

NewsGuard reports that the hoax social media pages have been targetting audiences in English, French, German and Italian to share myths that the novel coronavirus had been created in a lab, or engineered as a bioweapon, despite no evidence to support the theory. Some of the posts have had little or no supervision from Facebook, which is under intense pressure to monitor fake news during the pandemic.

Matthew Holroyd explores the phenomenon of “superspreaders” of false information.

 

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

#21: Eating papaya salad
“It’s a bogus claim. The most effective way to protect yourself from infection is to wash your hands regularly, wear facial masks, and keep social distance from 1-1.5 metres.”– Dr Thira Woratanarat, department of preventive and social medicine at Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University, quoted by AFP

 

*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.

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