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, but now appear only once a week.*

Again, there seems to be little fact-checking done this week; not because there is less misinformation, disinformation or even malinformation about, I think, but because it loses in strength every time it looks like it repeats itself within a small window of time. Fact-checkers are trying to avoid that their readers get bored or think it an actual repeat and skip it, l expect and not giving up hope that their efforts to debunk are having results.

Most of what was reported this week was Australian based again, but some items are of interest elsewhere and are included in this overview.

HAS THE CSIRO’S PANDEMIC PREPAREDNESS BEEN HAMPERED BY FUNDING CUTS?

As efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine continue, Australian Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has used a National Press Club address to call for better pandemic preparedness.

Mr Albanese said the Coalition Government’s first budget had cut $110 million from science funding and “hollowed out” the nation’s lead scientific agency, the CSIRO, one on the frontline in the groups responding to the coronavirus that Australia was “now counting on” to develop a COVID-19 vaccine.

Its recent work includes a collaboration with the University of Queensland to develop a vaccine based on so-called “molecular clamp” technology. The agency is also conducting pre-clinical trials for two separate vaccines.

However, Dr Trevor Drew recently told the ABC’s Four Corners program that cuts in 2014 had “impacted on the research capability” of the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness, the CSIRO’s high-containment facility for studying deadly viruses, of which he was director.

Fact-check took a look at the 2014-15 budget papers, which show the newly-elected Abbott government had earmarked $111.4 million in “reduced funding” for the CSIRO over the four years from 2014-15. The CSIRO’s annual reports confirm the agency lost $60 million in nominal government revenue in the first two budget years alone.

In the year after the 2014-15 budget, the agency shed 11 per cent of its research staff and 12 per cent of its total workforce, not counting contractors. Some jobs have since returned but, five years on, there remained 215 fewer research staff than before the Coalition took office.

But while Mr Albanese linked the funding cuts to the agency’s role in developing a coronavirus vaccine, a CSIRO spokesman implied that the cuts had resulted in a reorganisation in “areas related to vaccine development and pandemic preparedness”, where “[a]s part of the creation of our new strategy in 2015, CSIRO brought together experts from a range of backgrounds to build a ‘one health’ model that could respond to a new disease threat in multiple ways, from vaccine development and medical supply production to data modelling and environmental science.”

“As a result, our overall capability in pandemic preparedness has expanded, including an increase in research staff working on human diseases.” In short, the cuts resulted in a far more efficient organisation.

The current pandemic has also led the Morrison Government to put aside $222 million to upgrade the CSIRO’s ageing containment facility and a further $66 million for future pandemic planning and research in a bid to develop a vaccine and treatments for COVID-19.

WHY WE NEED TO BE WARY OF THE DATA

COVID-19 is evidently impacting countries to varying degrees. Differences in preparedness, population density and the quality of national healthcare systems, as well as in the how governments respond to the pandemic, have led to marked differences in outcomes.

So stark is the contrast that, had Australia’s coronavirus path tracked similarly to Belgium’s, the nation would have recorded more than 21,000 deaths – more than 200 times its current toll of 104.

The figures are extrapolations based on data that tracks the number of coronavirus deaths per million of population.

While experts caution that variables in the way countries compile their statistics and in their definitions, as well as variations in demographics and cultural norms, make for inexact comparisons, deaths-per-million gives a clearer snapshot of how severely the coronavirus is impacting different jurisdictions.

For example, the US tops the global death count with around 130,000 fatalities, with Brazil having swiftly climbed to second place (60,000). But, as bleak as those figures are, they translate to 388 and 284 deaths per million of the population respectively, ranking both countries behind Belgium, the UK, Spain, Italy, Sweden and France.

Image source: Our World in Data

Again caution is called for. Belgium’s figures include suspected – as well as confirmed – coronavirus deaths in care homes, which is likely inflating the country’s toll. Also, figures are subject to sudden change as countries reassess definitions and revise their data, as was the case in China, where authorities revised upwards by 50 per cent coronavirus totals for the city of Wuhan when they realised that their case definition was so stringent.

Likewise, New York City; it added more than 3,700 deaths to its COVID-19 toll in one stroke after new guidance from US health authorities recommended taking into account “probable” and “presumed” coronavirus deaths even in the absence of testing.

Figures for some countries are also likely unreliable due to poor accounting or because, with healthcare systems overwhelmed, untold numbers of people have been left to die at home.

While the Swedish Government shared the global objective of flattening the coronavirus curve, the debate continues over the merits of its approach. Its 5,333 deaths to date (523 per million people) far exceed the per capita tolls of neighbouring Denmark (104 deaths per million), Finland (59) and Norway (47).

A QUICK PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

A viral Facebook post claims that police have issued a bulletin about door-knocking thieves who say to be part of a government initiative to distribute masks is false, according to fact-checkers at AFP Australia, Full Fact and Reuters in the UK, and PolitiFact in the US. The masks they hand out are supposedly laced with chemicals “which knocks you out cold and once you’re knocked out they proceed to rob you”.

In a statement provided to AFP, a Victoria Police spokesperson said the force was “unaware of any instances of this nature” occurring in Victoria. Other global fact-checkers were unable to find any such police bulletin.

FROM WASHINGTON, D.C.

The notion that COVID-19 very rarely leads to serious illness or death, a favourite argument of those wanting coronavirus restrictions eased or lifted, has been shared by US President Donald Trump when speaking on US Independence Day, July 4, and claiming that 99 per cent of coronavirus cases in the United States was “totally harmless“; a fact, he said, that was unique to the US.

But fact-checkers at PolitiFact, the Associated Press and FactCheck.org disputed this statement.

According to FactCheck.org, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that through to May 30, 14 per cent of coronavirus cases led to hospitalisation, and 2 per cent required intensive care. Meanwhile, PolitiFact estimated the case fatality rate for confirmed cases in the US to be at least 4.2 per cent. And while some experts do put the death rate around 1 per cent, that is not the same as the coronavirus being “totally harmless” in 99 per cent of cases.

“To cavalierly say that only 1 per cent of infections result in problems is wildly inaccurate,” Donald Thea, a professor of Global Health at Boston University told PolitiFact. “We are seeing reports of young people who have recovered from mild cases developing diabetes or blood clots and suffering from chronic fatigue, respiratory compromise, persistent fever or coming back with bacterial sepsis weeks later. There’s too many reports of other organ damage that hints that there are possible long term serious implications.”

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.

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.*

ASYMPTOMATIC COVID-19 CARRIERS DO INFECT OTHERS — BUT DETAILS ARE STILL UNKNOWN

Image source: Facebook

Six months after the novel coronavirus outbreak was first identified, scientists and health authorities still have to answer major questions about it. One is: how easily can asymptomatic carriers pass the virus onto others?

Fact-checkers at PolitiFact found a claim that the World Health Organisation  “now admits that asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19 is very rare” to be only half true. An official of the WHO did make that comment on June 8: “They’re following asymptomatic cases, they’re following contacts and they’re not finding secondary transmission onward — it’s very rare.”, but when seeking to clarify her comments, she said she had been referring data in the subset of studies as well as unpublished data, not the of transmissions as such.

FactCheck.org also unpacked the official’s statements, concluding: “It is well documented that people without symptoms can transmit SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. But it is not yet known how often that happens, or how frequently that involves someone who is completely asymptomatic.”

IN AUSTRALIA, A VIRUS SPIKE IS LINKED TO FAMILIES, NOT TO BLACK LIVES MATTER RALLY

Image source: ABC News/Will Jackson

With COVID-19 case numbers on the rise in one of Australia’s states, Victoria, some people have drawn an unsubstantiated link between the spike and the large Black Lives Matter protest held in its capital Melbourne on June 6.

Tweeting this week, Liberal⁺ senator Sarah Henderson said:  “Daniel Andrews blames law abiding Victorian families for doing the wrong thing rather than 10,000 illegal protesters?”

A number of Senator Henderson’s Liberal Party⁺ colleagues, as well as Evan Mulholland of the Institute of Public Affairs, tweeted similar criticisms, while headlines have also declared that the “upsurge in COVID cases [is] linked to Melbourne Black Lives Matter protests”.

But these declarations contradict the guidance of officials of the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services, who continue to report that the current burst of cases does not stem from the rally. They have said that while one protester “may have been infectious at the rally”, two others who have since tested positive for COVID-19 were not infectious at the rally, nor is there evidence they contracted the virus at the rally. Rather the increase in cases have been linked to family gatherings, citing family spread as the “main cause” of 120 cases in the week to June 22, by not following advice around physical distancing, hygiene and limiting the number of people invited into the home.

Australia’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Nick Coatsworth, also dismissed claims the spike could be linked to the protests, telling reporters that “there is no evidence that there have been chains of community transmission that we are aware of through the Black Lives Matter protests”.^§

⁺ The Liberal party is part of the Coalition which currently forms the centre-right Australian Federal Government, where the liberal parties of Europe can also be found.

^§Despite great opposition of the federal and state governments to these protests, people took to the streets in exceptionally great numbers in the states which had very low transmissions at the time. No other cases of contraction of the new coronavirus were linked to any of the other rallies.

BLM AND COVID-19 CONVERGE IN THE US

Image source: Supplied

In the US, where the coronavirus pandemic has hit hard and momentum continues to build for the Black Lives Matter movement, the convergence of the two events has inevitably led to the spread of more misinformation, complete with a conspiracy theory involving Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

Fact-checkers at Reuters have found a claim that Melinda Gates, wife of Bill, said that “black people must be vaccinated first” for COVID-19 misleading. The claim appeared on Facebook as protesters took to the streets in the US as part of the Black Lives Matter movement.

What Ms Gates told TIME magazine was that, after healthcare workers, black people and other people of colour should have priority access to a vaccine in the US as they were being disproportionately affected by the virus.

Meanwhile, a claim that George Floyd’s murder must have been filmed before the coronavirus crisis, because no-one in the video is wearing a face mask, has been rated “pants on fire” by PolitiFact. They found that bystanders seen in the video were indeed wearing masks, even though it was filmed one day before Minneapolis started requiring people to wear the protective coverings in indoor public spaces.

STILL NO EVIDENCE THE NOVEL CORONAVIRUS WAS CREATED IN A LAB

Image source: LifeSiteNews

Claims that the novel coronavirus was created in and released from a lab in Wuhan, China, continue to circulate, despite scientific consensus that the virus more likely originated in nature.

In one “exclusive article” published by Canadian Christian website LifeSiteNews, a headline — “Virus researchers uncover new evidence implying COVID-19 was created in a lab” —  misrepresents a yet-to-be peer-reviewed Australian study, according to the researchers. While the research did conclude that the unintentional release of COVID-19 from a lab could have happened, it did not imply it was the most likely option nor did it suggest that other possibilities were unlikely as LifeSiteNews suggested.

Flinders University’s Nikolai Petrovsky, one of the authors of the study, told RMIT ABC Fact Check: “We can only speculate as to what this finding means in terms of origin of the virus.”

Meanwhile, fact-checkers at Full Fact have said that despite some claims, peer-reviewed research from Norway had not found the virus to have been artificially engineered.

The claims had reportedly appeared in an earlier, non-peer-reviewed version of the study, and were aired in the Norwegian press by one of the study’s authors. However, the final version of the paper “doesn’t actually make any claims about whether the virus was natural or man-made in its current form”, according to the fact-checkers.

“The scientific community widely agrees that the virus was not artificially engineered,” they added.

ANTI-AFRICAN SENTIMENT SPREADS IN CHINA

The Washington Post Fact-checker has found that despite assurances from officials, black and African residents of the Chinese city of Guangzhou have been the subject of a targeted crackdown over fears they are spreading the coronavirus.

In one incident caught on film, a McDonald’s store in the city displayed a sign informing patrons that “black people are not allowed to enter the restaurant”. Meanwhile, a pizza shop owner wrote on LinkedIn that local authorities had told him to refuse dine-in service to foreigners, “especially black people”.

According to the Washington Post, officials claimed such events were the result of a “miscommunication”.

But the fact-checkers found that as reports emerged in early April of Nigerian men testing positive for the virus in Guangzhou, anti-African sentiment started spreading on Chinese social media, with a reported uptick in posts using the n-word and referring to “illegals”.

A landlord has received instructions to report any black people in their building to authorities, while an African-Canadian man in the city said he had been confronted by officials in his home and refused entry to the subway. Yet Chinese state media said reports of discrimination were “fake news” and a police officer “assured the public that all foreigners in Guangzhou were treated equally to Chinese nationals”.

However, the bottom line was that “Africans and the larger black community in Guangzhou faced evictions, discrimination and the restriction of their movements on the basis of the colour of their skin over coronavirus fears”.

FROM WASHINGTON, D.C.

The US continues to hold the bleak title of the country with the highest number of COVID-19 cases (more than 2 million) as well as deaths (more than 120,000), but that hasn’t stopped President Donald Trump from claiming the outbreak is worse elsewhere.

Speaking on June 5, Mr Trump said that the city of Tijuana, which lies on the westernmost point of Mexico’s border with the US, was the “most heavily infected place anywhere in the world, as far as the plague is concerned”.

FactCheck.org found that claim to be inaccurate, and that even the US city nearest to Tijuana, San Diego, had more cases and a higher rate of infection, though it had recorded fewer deaths.

In the District of Columbia, where Mr Trump lives in the White House, the rate of COVID-19 infection was 10 times higher than that of Tijuana, the fact-checkers found, while in Queens County, New York, a virus hotpot, the rate was 21 times higher.

Despite his claims being debunked, President Donald Trump has continued to argue at his much-hyped campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that the coronavirus outbreak is worse elsewhere, suggesting that widespread testing had led to higher numbers of COVID-19 cases being recorded.

“When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases,” he said, echoing comments he made a few days earlier at a White House round-table discussion, and on Twitter.

“We will show more — more cases when other countries have far more cases than we do; they just don’t talk about it.”

But PolitiFact found that while the US has conducted a large volume of testing, this simply reflected the extent of the outbreak in the country. “A way to understand this: the number of tests necessary to identify a positive case,” the fact-checkers said. “If it’s easier to find a positive case, that suggests the virus has spread further and more testing is necessary to track the spread of COVID-19.”

According to a fact check compiled by the New York Times, the US on average returns one positive case every 21 tests, whereas Italy, another country hit hard by the virus, is recording one positive case in every 188 tests.

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

#31: Cold weather and snow
“There is no reason to believe that cold weather can kill the new coronavirus or other diseases.” ⁠— World Health Organisation

#32: Taking a hot bath
“Taking a hot bath will not prevent you from catching COVID-19. Your normal body temperature remains around 36.5°C to 37°C, regardless of the temperature of your bath or shower. Actually, taking a hot bath with extremely hot water can be harmful, as it can burn you.” ⁠— 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.

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.*

INACCURATE LOCKDOWN INFORMATION

Image source: Facebook

A post of an unhappy Facebook user argues that the restrictions are overreach by claiming the unverified COVID-19 survival rate is 98.54 per cent, while others put the death rate at 0.1 per cent or even as low as 0.004 per cent.

Fact-checkers at PolitiFact found that although a 98.54 per cent survival rate wasn’t too far off the current figure for the US, the numbers were preliminary, likely to change and not as promising as it sounds. PolitiFact noted “Even a 1 per cent mortality rate (99 per cent survival rate) would mean that a disease is 10-times more lethal than the seasonal flu.”

Meanwhile, Full Fact looked into that same figure when it was shared in the UK when the true survival rate [in the US] or in the UK is not yet known.

In the US, Lead Stories looked into a claim that a “22 Trillion dollar economy” had been shut down to stop the spread of a virus with a 0.1 per cent death rate. However, this is roughly the death rate of the seasonal flu, while figures at the time showed about 5.8 per cent of confirmed coronavirus patients were dying.

Fact-checkers at Reuters, AAP, USA Today and AFP have all debunked similar claims.

QUEEN HASN’T ANNOUNCED CHILDREN TO BE TAKEN AWAY FROM HOMES

Image source: YouTube/Ricco Chie

The title of a YouTube video viewed more than 230,000 times suggests the World Health Organisation and Queen Elizabeth II are conspiring to remove children from their homes amid the coronavirus pandemic.

However, as Reuters points out, the title does not represent the footage it shows — neither the Queen nor the WHO have made any announcements regarding the evacuation of children from coronavirus-infected homes.

The video shows a WHO senior adviser saying that because people were quarantining at home to comply with lockdown laws, some vulnerable and sick people may be removed from homes so they could be isolated, but at no point mentions children.

Meanwhile, the Queen’s special broadcast amid the pandemic saw her reflecting on her first-ever broadcast in 1940, where she spoke of children being evacuated from cities during World War II. Referring to current lockdown measures, she noted that “once again, many will feel a painful sense of separation from their loved ones”.

WRONG QUOTE ATTRIBUTION

Image source: Facebook

“Once the herd accepts mandatory forcible vaccination, it’s game over,” the quote attributed to former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, which has spread on Facebook, begins. “They will accept anything — forcible blood or organ donation — for the ‘greater good’.”

While the image has been circulating since at least early 2019, i.e. before the start of the pandemic, it has gained traction in recent months despite the ongoing efforts of fact-checkers around the world as scientists work to produce a COVID-19 vaccine and authorities urge people to get a flu shot so as not to put added strain on healthcare systems during the pandemic.

Fact-checkers from PolitiFact, Snopes and Africa Check last year found no evidence of Dr Kissinger having ever made such a claim. Since the coronavirus outbreak and re-appearance of Kissinger’s image, Reuters and Full Fact have also dismissed the claim, with representatives of Dr Kissinger telling Reuters that the quote is a “complete fabrication”.

5G BIOSHIELD

Image source: Twitter/@TheKenMunroShow

A video claiming that 5G radio waves “penetrate red blood in the lungs, making them easy prey for COVID-19 to enter and cause oxygen starvation” has been debunked by Lead Stories.

“Scientists have proven that 5G broadband can’t enter the body because skin protects the internal organs,” the fact-checkers said.” A study cited in the video as evidence for the danger was found to relate to Wi-Fi, rather than 5G, and had been widely criticised by scientists.

Meanwhile, scams used the fear these claims invoke; a device marketed as a protective measure against the supposed harm of 5G has been found by IT experts to be nothing more than a cheap USB drive with a sticker on it.

The “quantum holographic catalyzer technology for the balance and harmonisation of the harmful effects of imbalanced electric radiation” was being sold for as much as £300 ($550).

Despite the myth being busted time again, anti-5G activists continue to push disinformation, with hundreds protesting in Australia over the rollout of the technology, as well as other gripes including vaccination and the coronavirus lockdown (see COVID-19 Fact and Fiction #13).

ANTIVAXXERS STRIKE AGAIN

Image source: Facebook

A Facebook post claiming that no virus harmful to humans “has ever been proven to exist” and that “you can’t make a vaccine for something you can’t even prove exists” has quickly been discredited by Reuters. Its fact-checkers reviewed an article published in the American Society for Microbiology’s Journal of Virology which listed measles, poliomyelitis, rabies, yellow fever and smallpox as viruses which infect and are harmful to humans.

And Lynda Coughlin, a virologist at Mt Sinai Hospital, told Reuters: “The statement that “no virus harmful to humans has ever been proven to exist” is absolutely false. There are numerous examples of viruses which are known to cause disease in humans.”

COORDINATED TROLLING ABOUND

Fact-checkers, researchers and journalists all over the world are piecing together a picture of the networks, groups and individuals spreading coronavirus misinformation, including some who are pushing nationalistic disinformation.

An investigation by the BBC found that a network of more than 1,200 Twitter, YouTube and Facebook accounts was being used to praise Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus crisis and at the same time amplifying negative messages about those who are critical of China’s response.

“Although there is no definitive evidence that this network is linked to the Chinese government,” the BBC said, “it does display features similar to a state-backed information operation originating in China that Facebook and Twitter removed last year.”

In the US, NBC has reported that “troll farms” in North Macedonia and the Philippines have been responsible for coronavirus disinformation on Facebook. A large publisher of fake content, Natural News”, an anti-vaccination news site that frequently posts false coronavirus conspiracy theories about 5G towers and Bill Gates, is already banned from the social media platform after pushing the discredited “Plandemic” video. NBC added that the trolls also posted content from Natural News’ sister sites, NewsTarget and Brighteon.

Meanwhile, new research commissioned by the Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology and conducted by experts at the Queensland University of Technology has found that pro-Trump and QAnon conspiracy Twitter bots have been responsible for pushing the theory that COVID-19 is a Chinese bio-weapon.

“The coordinated efforts to promote the bioweapon conspiracy theory focused on 882 original tweets, which were retweeted 18,498 times and liked 31,783 times, creating an estimated 5 million impressions on Twitter users,” the researchers found.

“Similar research in January suggests there is a sustained, coordinated effort to promote this theory by pro-Trump, Republican and aligned networks of accounts.”

FROM WASHINGTON, D.C.

The Washington Post’s Fact-checker, having analysed thousands of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube posts and advertisements from US President Donald Trump, his campaign team and “a long list of surrogates”, has found that together they are creating an online “alternate reality” around the coronavirus.

“The data revealed the backbone of a five-point strategy to tell their version of the coronavirus story,” the fact-checkers determined. “Rewriting mistakes, highlighting achievements, deflecting blame, declaring victory and creating distraction.” (emphasis mine)

After downplaying the threat in the early stages of the virus outbreak, according to the Post, Mr Trump cum suis have pivoted to more self-promotional tactics in early March. By mid-April to early May, “[Mr] Trump and his team appeared to all but claim victory over the virus”, before moving on to discuss new topics online, including launching attacks on his political adversaries and presumptive election opponent Joe Biden.

“All presidential campaigns try to portray their candidate in the best possible light,” the fact-checkers concluded. “But what is notable about the Trump campaign is that its social media reach allows the campaign to rewrite even the most recent history.”

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

#29: Exposing yourself to the sun or temperatures higher than 25C
“You can catch COVID-19, no matter how sunny or hot the weather is. Countries with hot weather have reported cases of COVID-19.” –  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.

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.