Politics Plus

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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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.

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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TO CREATE OR NOT TO CREATE

Image source:  Facebook

Fact-checkers at AAP, AFP and Snopes debunked social media posts which claimed Tasuku Honjo, Nobel Prize winner in Physiology and Medicine in 2018, said the novel coronavirus was “not natural”, as it spreads in both hot and cold climates, and that it was”manufactured in China”.

Professor Honjo was quoted in these posts as having said: “I have done 40 years of research on animals and viruses. It is not natural. It is manufactured and the virus is completely artificial.”

Fact-checkers at AFP were unable to find any record of Professor Honjo making these remarks, and the professor himself issued a statement saying he was “greatly saddened that my name and that of Kyoto University have been used to spread false accusations and misinformation”.

 

ANOTHER PRESIDENT LIES

Image source: AP Photo/Alexander Joe

According to the BBC, President Andry Rajoelina of Madagascar officially launched an unproven herbal remedy by claiming the tea had already cured two people in the country, prompting people to queue for their supply of the free beverage.

According to Mr Rajoelina “This herbal tea gives results in seven days.”

But the World Health Organisation doesn’t recommend “self-medication with any medicines … as a prevention or cure for COVID-19” and in a report, the Bangkok Times, authored by AFP, has the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention note: “There is no scientific evidence that any of these alternative remedies can prevent or cure the illness caused by COVID-19. In fact, some of them may not be safe to consume.”

 

MASKS UNMASKED

Image source: Facebook

An infographic, purporting to show the effectiveness of face masks, claims a healthy person wearing a mask has a 70 per cent chance of being infected with the coronavirus by a sick person not wearing a mask. When mask-wearing is reversed, the apparent “contagion probability” falls to 5 per cent. When both healthy and sick people are fitted with masks, the chance of the healthy person of being infected is supposedly just 1 per cent.

Fact-checkers at Snopes and Reuters found that the information was mostly false**, as there was no scientific consensus of the efficacy of face masks nor data to support the quoted percentages. It was also unclear whether the post referred to surgical masks, homemade masks or N95 respirator masks.

However, as reported by Snopes, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that masks helped by “strengthening the social distancing that we are already doing”.

** The infographic made its appearance on Politics Plus too but with the footnote that the commenter who posted it could not vouch for the accuracy.

 

NO COVID-19 VACCINE YET

Image source: Facebook

Fact-checkers at Full Fact and factcheck.org have debunked a post shared on Facebook that falsely suggests a vaccine exists for the novel coronavirus.

In the post, a caption accompanying the photo of a vaccine vial states: “Now this was 2001 tell me why 19 years later they say there is no vaccine.”

However, the label on the vial clearly states “canine coronavirus vaccine”.

As may be known by now, coronaviruses are a family of viruses. The current outbreak relates to the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.

According to Full Fact: “Canine coronavirus doesn’t affect people, [but dogs] and is a gastrointestinal disease, not a respiratory one.”

 

NOT MADE IN CHINA EITHER

Image source: Twitter

A video in France has been shared with a misleading caption suggesting the faulty gear was made in China.

One version of a video, showing brand new medical gowns disintegrating in France, has been shared on Twitter and retweeted more than 250 times, is captioned: “Protect our doctors & nurses by not buying medical supplies from bloody #China!”, AFP Fact Check has found

But a spokesperson of the hospital featured in the video told AFP that the gowns were not made in China. Rather, they were French-made gowns that had been damaged while in storage in a humid place.

AND FROM WASHINGTON D.C.

US President Donald Trump’s recent claim that the US had done more testing for COVID-19 than “every country combined” has been rubbished by fact-checkers at factcheck.org.

When Mr Trump claimed on April 28, the US had carried out almost 6.03 million tests for the disease, which indeed is more than any other country but not more than all other countries combined, with more than 25 million tests administered outside the US.

When related to its population, the US is lagging behind other countries with 20,940 tested per million compared to for example 24,733 tested per million in Australia. Mr Trump may be aware of this and wants to conduct a suggested 5 million COVID-19 tests per day. However, the top US official in charge of testing, Admiral Brett Giroir, said that was not feasible with the current technology.

“There is absolutely no way on Earth, on this planet or any other planet, that we can do 20 million tests a day, or even five million tests a day,” Time magazine reported the testing czar as saying.

In its 56-page “roadmap” for a return to normalcy, a Harvard University study had suggested the US would need to conduct at least 5 million tests a day by early June, and 20 million per day by late July, something Giroir claimed was “an Ivory Tower, unreasonable benchmark”.

 

THE R NUMBER

Authorities in Germany and many other countries like Australia are paying very close attention to the rate of the spread of COVID-19, using the reproduction number or ‘R’ value as an important reference. The number indicates how many people one person with the virus can infect. For instance, if the rate is equal to 1, it means that one person is infecting – on average – one other person. Mary Colombel explains the logic behind the number.

 

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

#20: Aspirin with lemon juice and honey

“While some home remedies may provide comfort and alleviate symptoms of COVID-19, there is no evidence that current medicine can prevent or cure the disease.”– A spokesperson for the World Health Organisation, Philippines, as quoted by 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.