title: Pat Robertson

text: On November 7, 2007, Robertson announced that he was endorsing Rudy Giuliani to be the Republican nominee in the 2008 Presidential election. Some social conservatives criticized Robertson's endorsement of Giuliani, a pro-choice candidate who supported gay rights.


title: Pat Robertson

text: While usually associated with the political right, Robertson has endorsed environmental causes. He appeared in a commercial with Al Sharpton, joking about this, and urging people to join the "We Can Solve It" campaign against global warming.


title: Pat Robertson

text: In January 2009, on a broadcast of "The 700 Club", Robertson stated that he is "adamantly opposed" to the division of Jerusalem between Israel and the Palestinians. He also stated that Armageddon is "not going to be fought at Megiddo" but will be the "battle of Jerusalem," when "the forces of all nations come together and try to take Jerusalem away from the Jews. Jews are not going to give up Jerusalem—they shouldn't—and the rest of the world is going to insist they give it up." Robertson added that Jerusalem is a "spiritual symbol that must not be given away" because "Jesus Christ the Messiah will come down to the part of Jerusalem that the Arabs want," and that's "not good."


title: Pat Robertson

text: Robertson has repeatedly called for the legalization of cannabis, saying that it should be treated in a manner analogous to the regulation of alcoholic beverages and tobacco. Robertson has said, "I just think it's shocking how many of these young people wind up in prison and they get turned into hard-core criminals because they had a possession of a very small amount of controlled substance. The whole thing is crazy." In 2014, he turned against the legalization of cannabis.


title: Pat Robertson

text: In September 1986, Robertson announced his intention to seek the Republican nomination for President of the United States. Robertson said he would pursue the nomination only if three million people signed up to volunteer for his campaign by September 1987. Three million responded, and by the time Robertson announced he would be running in September 1987, he also had raised millions of dollars for his campaign fund. He surrendered his ministerial credentials and turned leadership of CBN over to his son, Tim. However, his campaign against incumbent Vice President George H. W. Bush was seen as a long shot.


title: Pat Robertson

text: Robertson ran on a standard conservative platform, and as a candidate he embraced the same policies as Ronald Reagan: lower taxes, a balanced budget, and a strong defense.


title: Pat Robertson

text: Robertson's campaign got off to a strong second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, ahead of Bush. He did poorly in the subsequent New Hampshire primary, however, and was unable to be competitive once the multiple-state primaries began. Robertson ended his campaign before the primaries were finished. His best finish was in Washington, winning the majority of caucus delegates. He later spoke at the 1988 Republican National Convention in New Orleans and told his remaining supporters to cast their votes for Bush, who ended up winning the nomination and the election. He then returned to CBN and remained there as a religious broadcaster.


title: Pat Robertson

text: In 1954, Robertson married Amelia "Dede" Elmer a fashion model and beauty queen in the Miss Ohio State contest, who was studying for her masters in nursing at Yale University. She had also been a nursing student at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. They remained married until her death in 2022, and had four children, among them Gordon P. Robertson.


title: Pat Robertson

text: On August 11, 2017, Robertson was hospitalized after sustaining minor injuries in a fall from a horseback riding incident.


title: Pat Robertson

text: On February 2, 2018, Robertson suffered an embolic stroke at his home in Virginia Beach. A member of his family noticed his symptoms and alerted emergency medical personnel. He was then taken to the nearest stroke center where he was administered the clot-busting drug tPA. Robertson was responsive, awake, and moving all of his limbs about eighty minutes after his stroke began. He was discharged two days later and recovered at home. Following this incident, Robertson and his family thanked the paramedics and medical staff for their "extraordinary care and rapid response." They also urged people to learn about stroke, its symptoms and treatments. Robertson resumed his hosting duties on "The 700 Club" on February 12.


title: Pat Robertson

text: In June 2019, Robertson was absent from "The 700 Club" for several days after he broke three ribs in a fall. Upon his return, described the experience as very painful but said "Us old guys are tough and we try to stay in there and keep on going." He then thanked viewers for their prayers.


title: Pat Robertson

text: As a commentator and minister, Robertson frequently generates controversy. Some of his remarks have been the subject of national and international media attention prompting responses from politicians.


title: Pat Robertson

text: Robertson's service as a minister has included the belief in the healing power of God. He has cautioned believers that some Protestant denominations may harbor the spirit of the Antichrist; prayed to deflect hurricanes; denounced Hinduism as "demonic" and Islam as "Satanic".


title: Pat Robertson

text: Robertson has denounced left-wing views of feminism, activism regarding homosexuality, abortion, and liberal college professors. Critics claim Robertson had business dealings in Africa with former president of Liberia and convicted war criminal Charles Taylor and former Zaire president Mobutu Sese Seko who both had been internationally denounced for claims of human rights violations. Robertson was criticized internationally for his call for Hugo Chávez's assassination and for his remarks concerning Ariel Sharon's ill-health as an act of God. In an interview on "The 700 Club", Robertson stated: ""I have said last year that Israel was entering into the most dangerous period of its entire existence as a nation. That is intensifying this year with the loss of Sharon. Sharon was personally a very likeable person. I am sad to see him in this condition. But I think we need to look at the Bible and the Book of Joel. The prophet Joel makes it very clear that God has enmity against those who, quote, 'divide my land.' God considers this land to be his. You read the Bible, he says, 'This is my land.' And for any prime minister of Israel who decides he going carve it up and give it away, God says, 'No. This is mine.' And the same thing -- I had a wonderful meeting with Yitzhak Rabin in 1974. He was tragically assassinated, and it was terrible thing that happened, but nevertheless, he was dead. And now Ariel Sharon, who was again a very likeable person, a delightful person to be with. I prayed with him personally. But here he is at the point of death. He was dividing God's land, and I would say woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the EU, the United Nations or United States of America. God said, 'This land belongs to me, you better leave it alone.'”"


title: Pat Robertson

text: During the week of September 11, 2001, Robertson interviewed Jerry Falwell, who expressed his own opinion that "the ACLU has to take a lot of blame for this" in addition to "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays, and the lesbians [who have] helped [the terror attacks of September 11th] happen." Robertson replied, "I totally concur". Both evangelists were seriously criticized by President George W. Bush for their comments, for which Falwell later issued an apology.


title: Pat Robertson

text: Less than two weeks after Hurricane Katrina killed 1,836 people, Robertson implied on the September 12, 2005 broadcast of "The 700 Club" that the storm was God's punishment in response to America's abortion policy. He suggested that the September 11 attacks and the disaster in New Orleans "could ... be connected in some way".


title: Pat Robertson

text: On November 9, 2009, Robertson said that Islam is "a violent political system bent on the overthrow of the governments of the world and world domination". He went on to elaborate that "you're dealing with not a religion, you're dealing with a political system, and I think we should treat it as such, and treat its adherents as such as we would members of the communist party, members of some fascist group".


title: Pat Robertson

text: Robertson's response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake also drew international condemnation. Robertson claimed that Haiti's founders had sworn a "pact to the Devil" in order to liberate themselves from the French slave owners and indirectly attributed the earthquake to the consequences of the Haitian people being "cursed" for doing so. CBN later issued a statement saying that Robertson's comments "were based on the widely-discussed 1791 slave rebellion led by Dutty Boukman at Bois Caïman, where the slaves allegedly made a famous pact with the devil in exchange for victory over the French". Various figures in mainline and evangelical Christianity have on occasion disavowed some of Robertson's remarks.


title: Pat Robertson

text: In March 2015, Robertson compared Buddhism to a disease on "The 700 Club". The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a conservative Christian watchdog group Robertson founded to promote Christian prayer in public schools, called for a multi-pronged attack on mindfulness programs because "they appear to be similar to Buddhist religious practices. Proponents of secular mindfulness say mindfulness is not a Buddhist practice; it is a contemplative practice used in religious traditions around the world by many different names."


title: Pat Robertson

text: Robertson's book "The New World Order" (1991) became a "New York Times" best seller. A review by Ephraim Radner, an Episcopalian professor of theology, stated:


title: Pat Robertson

text: In October 2003, Robertson was interviewed by author Joel Mowbray about his book "Dangerous Diplomacy", a book critical of the State Department. Robertson said that we could change American diplomacy by ridding ourselves of a large part of the State Department.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: False information, including intentional disinformation and conspiracy theories, about the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic and the origin, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of the disease has been spread through social media, text messaging, and mass media. False information has been propagated by celebrities, politicians, and other prominent public figures. Many countries have passed laws against "fake news", and thousands of people have been arrested for spreading COVID-19 misinformation. The spread of COVID-19 misinformation by governments has also been significant.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Commercial scams have claimed to offer at-home tests, supposed preventives, and "miracle" cures. Several religious groups have claimed their faith will protect them from the virus. Without evidence, some people have claimed the virus is a bioweapon accidentally or deliberately leaked from a laboratory, a population control scheme, the result of a spy operation, or the side effect of 5G upgrades to cellular networks.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: The World Health Organization (WHO) declared an "infodemic" of incorrect information about the virus that poses risks to global health. While belief in conspiracy theories is not a new phenomenon, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this can lead to adverse health effects. Cognitive biases, such as jumping to conclusions and confirmation bias, may be linked to the occurrence of conspiracy beliefs.<section end="Intro" /> In addition to health effects, harms resulting from the spread of misinformation and endorsement of conspiracy theories include increasing distrust of news organizations and medical authorities as well as divisiveness and political fragmentation.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: On 30 January 2020, the BBC reported on the developing issue of conspiracy theories and bad health advice regarding COVID-19. Examples at the time included false health advice shared on social media and private chats, as well as conspiracy theories such as the outbreak being planned with the participation of the Pirbright Institute. On 31 January, "The Guardian" listed seven instances of misinformation, adding the conspiracy theories about bioweapons and the link to 5G technology, and including varied false health advice.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In an attempt to speed up research sharing, many researchers have turned to preprint servers such as arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv, and SSRN. Papers are uploaded to these servers without peer review or any other editorial process that ensures research quality. Some of these papers have contributed to the spread of conspiracy theories. The most notable case was an unreviewed preprint paper uploaded to "bioRxiv" which claimed that the virus contained HIV "insertions". Following objections, the paper was withdrawn. Preprints about COVID-19 have been extensively shared online and some data suggest that they have been used by the media almost 10 times more than preprints on other topics.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: According to a study published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, most misinformation related to COVID-19 involves "various forms of reconfiguration, where existing and often true information is spun, twisted, recontextualised, or reworked"; less misinformation "was completely fabricated". The study also found that "top-down misinformation from politicians, celebrities, and other prominent public figures", while accounting for a minority of the samples, captured a majority of the social media engagement. According to their classification, the largest category of misinformation (39%) was "misleading or false claims about the actions or policies of public authorities, including government and international bodies like the WHO or the UN".


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In addition to social media, television and radio have been perceived as sources of misinformation. In the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, Fox News adopted an editorial line that the emergency response to the pandemic was politically motivated or otherwise unwarranted, and presenter Sean Hannity claimed on-air that the pandemic was a "hoax" (he later issued a denial). When evaluated by media analysts, the effect of broadcast misinformation has been found to influence health outcomes in the population. In a natural experiment (an experiment that takes place spontaneously, without human design or intervention), two similar television news items that were shown on the Fox News network one month apart in 2019 were compared. One item reported the effects of COVID-19 more seriously, while a second item downplayed the threat of COVID-19. The study found that audiences who were exposed to the news item downplaying the threat were statistically more susceptible to increased COVID-19 infection rates and death. In August 2021, television broadcaster Sky News Australia was criticised for posting videos on YouTube containing misleading medical claims about COVID-19. Conservative talk radio in the US has also been perceived as a source of inaccurate or misleading commentary on COVID-19. In August and September 2021, several radio hosts who had discouraged COVID-19 vaccination, or expressed skepticism toward the COVID-19 vaccine, subsequently died from COVID-19 complications, among them Dick Farrel, Phil Valentine and Bob Enyart.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Misinformation on the subject of COVID-19 has been used by politicians, interest groups, and state actors in many countries for political purposes: to avoid responsibility, scapegoat other countries, and avoid criticism of their earlier decisions. Sometimes there is a financial motive as well. Multiple countries have been accused of spreading disinformation with state-backed operations in the social media in other countries to generate panic, sow distrust, and undermine democratic debate in other countries, or to promote their models of government.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: A Cornell University study of 38 million articles in English-language media around the world found that US President Donald Trump was the single largest driver of the misinformation. Analysis published by National Public Radio in December 2021 found that as American counties showed higher vote shares for Trump in 2020, COVID-19 vaccination rates significantly decreased and death rates significantly increased. NPR attributed the findings to misinformation.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: The consensus among virologists is that the most likely origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to be natural crossover from animals, having spilled-over into the human population from bats, possibly through an intermediate animal host, although the exact transmission pathway has not been determined. Genomic evidence suggests an ancestor virus of SARS-CoV-2 originated in horseshoe bats.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: An alternative hypothesis under investigation, deemed unlikely by the majority of virologists given a lack of evidence, is that the virus may have accidentally escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the course of standard research. A poll in July 2021 found that 52% of US adults believe COVID-19 escaped from a lab.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Unsubstantiated speculation and conspiracy theories related to this topic have gained popularity during the pandemic. Common conspiracy theories state that the virus was intentionally engineered, either as a bio-weapon or to profit from the sale of vaccines. According to the World Health Organization, genetic manipulation has been ruled out by genomic analysis. Many other origin stories have also been told, ranging from claims of secret plots by political opponents to a conspiracy theory about mobile phones. The Pew Research Center found, for example, that one in three Americans believed the new coronavirus had been created in a lab; one in four thought it had been engineered intentionally. The spread of these conspiracy theories is magnified through mutual distrust and animosity, as well as nationalism and the use of propaganda campaigns for political purposes.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: The promotion of misinformation has been used by American far-right groups such as QAnon, by rightwing outlets such as Fox News, by former US President Donald Trump and also other prominent Republicans to stoke anti-China sentiments, and has led to increased anti-Asian activity on social media and in the real world. This has also resulted in the bullying of scientists and public health officials, both online and in-person, fueled by a highly political and oftentimes toxic debate on many issues. Such spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories has the potential to negatively affect public health and diminish trust in governments and medical professionals.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: The resurgence of the lab leak and other theories was fueled in part by the publication, in May 2021, of early emails between National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Anthony Fauci and scientists discussing the issue. Per the emails in question, Kristian Andersen (author of one study debunking genomic manipulation theories) had heavily considered the possibility, and emailed Fauci proposing possible mechanisms, before ruling out deliberate manipulation with deeper technical analysis. These emails were later misconstrued and used by critics to claim a conspiracy was occurring. However, despite claims to the contrary in some US newspapers, no new evidence has surfaced to support any theory of a laboratory accident, and the majority of peer-reviewed research points to a natural origin. This parallels previous outbreaks of novel diseases, such as HIV, SARS and H1N1, which have also been the subject of allegations of laboratory origin.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: One early source of the bio-weapon origin theory was former Israeli secret service officer Dany Shoham, who gave an interview to "The Washington Times" about the biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. A scientist from Hong Kong, Li-Meng Yan, fled China and released a preprint stating the virus was modified in a lab rather than having a natural evolution. In an ad hoc peer-review (as the paper was not submitted for traditional peer review as part of the standard scientific publishing process), her claims were labelled as misleading, unscientific, and an unethical promotion of "essentially conspiracy theories that are not founded in fact". Yan's paper was funded by the Rule of Law Society and the Rule of Law Foundation, two non-profits linked to Steve Bannon, a former Trump strategist, and Guo Wengui, an expatriate Chinese billionaire. This misinformation was further seized on by the American far-right, who have been known to promote distrust of China. In effect, this formed "a fast-growing echo chamber for misinformation". The idea of SARS-CoV-2 as a lab-engineered weapon is an element of the "Plandemic" conspiracy theory, which proposes that it was deliberately released by China.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: "The Epoch Times", an anti-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) newspaper affiliated with Falun Gong, has spread misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic in print and via social media including Facebook and YouTube. It has promoted anti-CCP rhetoric and conspiracy theories around the coronavirus outbreak, for example through an 8-page special edition called "How the Chinese Communist Party Endangered the World", which was distributed unsolicited in April 2020 to mail customers in areas of the United States, Canada, and Australia. In the newspaper, the SARS-CoV-2 virus is known as the " virus", and a commentary in the newspaper posed the question, "is the novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan an accident occasioned by weaponizing the virus at that [Wuhan P4 virology] lab?" The paper's editorial board suggested that COVID-19 patients cure themselves by "condemning the " and "maybe a miracle will happen".


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In response to the propagation of theories in the US of a Wuhan lab origin, the Chinese government promulgated the conspiracy theory that the virus was developed by the United States army at Fort Detrick.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: One idea used to support a laboratory origin invokes previous gain-of-function research on coronaviruses. Virologist Angela Rasmussen writes that this is unlikely, due to the intense scrutiny and government oversight gain-of-function research is subject to, and that it is improbable that research on hard-to-obtain coronaviruses could occur under the radar. The exact meaning of "gain of function" is disputed among experts.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In May 2020, Fox News host Tucker Carlson accused Anthony Fauci of having "funded the creation of COVID" through gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Citing an essay by science writer Nicholas Wade, Carlson alleged that Fauci had directed research to make bat viruses more infectious to humans.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In a hearing the next day, US senator Rand Paul alleged that the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) had been funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan, accusing researchers including epidemiologist Ralph Baric of creating "super-viruses".


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Both Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins have denied that the US government supported such research.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Baric likewise rejected Paul's allegations, saying that his lab's research into cross-species transmission of bat coronaviruses did not qualify as gain-of-function.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: A 2017 study of chimeric bat coronaviruses at the WIV listed NIH as a sponsor; however, NIH funding was only related to sample collection. Based on this and other evidence, "The Washington Post" rated the claim of an NIH connection to gain-of-function research on coronaviruses as "two pinocchios", representing "significant omissions and/or exaggerations".


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Another theory suggests the virus arose in humans from an accidental infection of laboratory workers by a natural sample. Unfounded online speculation about this scenario has been widespread.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In March 2021, an investigatory report released by the WHO described this scenario as "extremely unlikely" and not supported by any available evidence. The report acknowledged, however, that the possibility cannot be ruled out without further evidence. The investigation behind this report operated as a joint collaboration between Chinese and international scientists. At the release briefing for the report, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reiterated the report's calls for a deeper probe into all evaluated possibilities, including the laboratory origin scenario. The study and report were criticised by heads of state from the US, the EU, and other WHO member countries for a lack of transparency and incomplete access to data. Further investigations have also been requested by some scientists, including Anthony Fauci and signatories of a letter published in "Science".


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Since May 2021, some media organizations softened previous language that described the laboratory leak theory as "debunked" or a "conspiracy theory". On the other hand, scientific opinion that an accidental leak is possible, but unlikely, has remained steady. A number of journalists and scientists have said that they dismissed or avoided discussing the lab leak theory during the first year of the pandemic as a result of perceived polarization resulting from Donald Trump's embrace of the theory.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Some social media users have alleged that COVID-19 was stolen from a Canadian virus research lab by Chinese scientists. Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada said that this had "no factual basis". The stories seem to have been derived from a July 2019 CBC news article stating that some Chinese researchers had their security access to the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, a Level4 virology lab, revoked after a Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigation. Canadian officials described this as an administrative matter and said there was no risk to the Canadian public.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Responding to the conspiracy theories, the CBC stated that its articles "never claimed the two scientists were spies, or that they brought any version of [a] coronavirus to the lab in Wuhan". While pathogen samples were transferred from the lab in Winnipeg to Beijing on 31 March 2019, neither of the samples contained a coronavirus. The Public Health Agency of Canada has stated that the shipment conformed to all federal policies, and that the researchers in question are still under investigation, and thus it cannot be confirmed nor denied that these two were responsible for sending the shipment. The current location of the researchers under investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police has also not been released.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In a January 2020 press conference, NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg, when asked about the case, stated that he could not comment specifically on it, but expressed concerns about "increased efforts by the nations to spy on NATO allies in different ways".


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: According to "The Economist", conspiracy theories exist on China's internet about COVID-19 being created by the CIA in order to "keep China down". According to an investigation by ProPublica, such conspiracy theories and disinformation have been propagated under the direction of China News Service, the country's second largest government-owned media outlet controlled by the United Front Work Department. "Global Times" and Xinhua News Agency have similarly been implicated in propagating disinformation related to COVID-19's origins. NBC News however has noted that there have also been debunking efforts of US-related conspiracy theories posted online, with a WeChat search of "Coronavirus [disease 2019] is from the U.S." reported to mostly yield articles explaining why such claims are unreasonable.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: On 12 March 2020, two spokesmen for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zhao Lijian and Geng Shuang, alleged at a press conference that Western powers may have "bio-engineered" COVID-19. They were alluding that the US Army created and spread COVID-19, allegedly during the 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan, where numerous cases of influenza-like illness were reported.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: A member of the U.S. military athletics delegation based at Fort Belvoir, who competed in the 50mi Road Race at the Wuhan games, became the subject of online targeting by netizens accusing her of being "patient zero" of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, and was later interviewed by CNN, to clear her name from the "false accusations in starting the pandemic".


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In January 2021, Hua Chunying renewed the conspiracy theory from Zhao Lijian and Geng Shuang that the SARS-CoV-2 virus originating in the United States at the U.S. biological weapons lab Fort Detrick. This conspiracy theory quickly went trending on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, and Hua Chunying continued to cite evidence on Twitter, while asking the government of the United States to open up Fort Detrick for further investigation to determine if it is the source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. In August 2021, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman repeatedly used an official podium to elevate the Fort Detrick's origin unproven idea.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: According to a report from Foreign Policy, Chinese diplomats and government officials in concert with China's propaganda apparatus and covert networks of online agitators and influencers have responded, focused on repeating Zhao Lijian's allegation relating to Fort Detrick in Maryland, and the "over 200 U.S. biolabs" around the world.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: On 22 February 2020, US officials alleged that Russia is behind an ongoing disinformation campaign, using thousands of social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to deliberately promote unfounded conspiracy theories, claiming the virus is a biological weapon manufactured by the CIA and the US is waging economic war on China using the virus.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In March 2022, amid the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Defense Ministry stated that US President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, as well as billionaire George Soros, were closely tied to Ukrainian biolabs. American right-wing media personalities, such as Tucker Carlson, highlighted the story, while Chinese Communist Party-owned tabloid "Global Times" further stated that the labs had been studying bat coronaviruses, which spread widely on the Chinese internet for insinuating that the United States had created SARS-CoV-19 in Ukrainian laboratories.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: According to Washington, DC-based nonprofit Middle East Media Research Institute, numerous writers in the Arabic press have promoted the conspiracy theory that COVID-19, as well as SARS and the swine flu virus, were deliberately created and spread to sell vaccines against these diseases, and it is "part of an economic and psychological war waged by the U.S. against China with the aim of weakening it and presenting it as a backward country and a source of diseases".


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Accusations in Turkey of Americans creating the virus as a weapon have been reported, and a YouGov poll from August 2020 found that 37% of Turkish respondents believed the US government was responsible for creating and spreading the virus.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: An Iranian cleric in Qom said Donald Trump targeted the city with coronavirus "to damage its culture and honor". Reza Malekzadeh, Iran's deputy health minister and former Minister of Health, rejected claims that the virus was a biological weapon, pointing out that the US would be suffering heavily from it. He said Iran was hard-hit because its close ties to China and reluctance to cut air ties introduced the virus, and because early cases had been mistaken for influenza.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In Iraq, pro-Iranian social media users waged a Twitter campaign during Trump's Presidency to end U.S. presence in the country by blaming it for the virus. The campaign centered around hashtags such as #Bases_of_the_American_pandemic and #Coronavirus_is_Trump's_weapon. A March 2020 survey by USCENTCOM found that 67% of Iraqi respondents believed a foreign force was behind COVID-19, with 72% of them naming the USA as that force.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Theories blaming the USA have also circulated in the Philippines, Venezuela and Pakistan. An October 2020 Globsec poll of Eastern European countries found that 38% of respondents in Montenegro and Serbia, 37% of those in North Macedonia, and 33% in Bulgaria believed the USA deliberately created COVID-19.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Iran's Press TV asserted that "Zionist elements developed a deadlier strain of coronavirus against Iran." Similarly, some Arab media outlets accused Israel and the United States of creating and spreading COVID-19, avian flu, and SARS. Users on social media offered other theories, including the allegation that Jews had manufactured COVID-19 to precipitate a global stock market collapse and thereby profit via insider trading, while a guest on Turkish television posited a more ambitious scenario in which Jews and Zionists had created COVID-19, avian flu, and Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever to "design the world, seize countries, [and] neuter the world's population". Turkish politician Fatih Erbakan reportedly said in a speech: "Though we do not have certain evidence, this virus serves Zionism's goals of decreasing the number of people and preventing it from increasing, and important research expresses this."


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Israeli attempts to develop a COVID-19 vaccine prompted negative reactions in Iran. Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi denied initial reports that he had ruled that a Zionist-made vaccine would be halal, and one Press TV journalist tweeted that "I'd rather take my chances with the virus than consume an Israeli vaccine." A columnist for the Turkish "Yeni Akit" asserted that such a vaccine could be a ruse to carry out mass sterilization.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: An alert by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation regarding the possible threat of far-right extremists intentionally spreading COVID-19 mentioned blame being assigned to Jews and Jewish leaders for causing the pandemic and several statewide shutdowns.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In April 2022, two members of the Reichsbürger movement (later implicated in the 2022 German coup d'état plot) were charged with conspiring to kidnap the German health minister Karl Lauterbach.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: According to a study carried out by the University of Oxford in early 2020, nearly one-fifth of respondents in England believed to some extent that Jews were responsible for creating or spreading the virus with the motive of financial gain.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In India, Muslims have been blamed for spreading infection following the emergence of cases linked to a Tablighi Jamaat religious gathering. There are reports of vilification of Muslims on social media and attacks on individuals in India. Claims have been made that Muslims are selling food contaminated with SARS-CoV-2 and that a mosque in Patna was sheltering people from Italy and Iran. These claims were shown to be false. In the UK, there are reports of far-right groups blaming Muslims for the pandemic and falsely claiming that mosques remained open after the national ban on large gatherings.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: According to the BBC, Jordan Sather, a YouTuber supporting the QAnon conspiracy theory and the anti-vax movement, has falsely claimed that the outbreak was a population-control scheme created by the Pirbright Institute in England and by former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Piers Corbyn was described as "dangerous" by physician and broadcaster Hilary Jones during their joint interview on "Good Morning Britain" in early September 2020. Corbyn described COVID-19 as a "psychological operation to close down the economy in the interests of mega-corporations" and stated "vaccines cause death".


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: The first conspiracy theories purporting a link between COVID-19 and 5G mobile networks had already appeared by the end of January 2020. Such claims spread rapidly on social media networks, leading to the spread of misinformation in what has been likened to a "digital wildfire".


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In March 2020, Thomas Cowan, a holistic medical practitioner who trained as a physician and operates on probation with the Medical Board of California, alleged that COVID-19 is caused by 5G. He based this on the claims that African countries had not been affected significantly by the pandemic and Africa was not a 5G region. Cowan also falsely alleged that the viruses were waste from cells that were poisoned by electromagnetic fields, and that historical viral pandemics coincided with major developments in radio technology.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: The video of Cowan's claims went viral and was recirculated by celebrities, including Woody Harrelson, John Cusack, and singer Keri Hilson. The claims may also have been recirculated by an alleged "coordinated disinformation campaign", similar to campaigns used by the Internet Research Agency in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The claims were criticized on social media and debunked by Reuters, "USA Today", Full Fact and American Public Health Association executive director Georges C. Benjamin.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Cowan's claims were repeated by Mark Steele, a conspiracy theorist who claimed to have first-hand knowledge that 5G was in fact a weapon system capable of causing symptoms identical to those produced by the virus. Kate Shemirani, a former nurse who had been struck off the UK nursing registry and had become a promoter of conspiracy theories, repeatedly claimed that these symptoms were identical to those produced by exposure to electromagnetic fields.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Steve Powis, national medical director of NHS England, described theories linking 5G mobile-phone networks to COVID-19 as the "worst kind of fake news". Viruses cannot be transmitted by radio waves, and COVID-19 has spread and continues to spread in many countries that do not have 5G networks.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: There were 20 suspected arson attacks on phone masts in the UK over the 2020 Easter weekend. These included an incident in Dagenham where three men were arrested on suspicion of arson, a fire in Huddersfield that affected a mast used by emergency services, and a fire in a mast that provides mobile connectivity to the NHS Nightingale Hospital Birmingham. Some telecom engineers reported threats of violence, including threats to stab and murder them, by individuals who believe them to be working on 5G networks. On 12 April 2020, Gardaí and fire services were called to fires at 5G masts in County Donegal, Ireland. The Gardaí were treating the fires as arson. After the arson attacks, British Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove said the theory that COVID-19 virus may be spread by 5G wireless communication is "just nonsense, dangerous nonsense as well". Telecommunications provider Vodafone announced that two Vodafone masts and two it shares with O2, another provider, had been targeted.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: By 6 April 2020, at least 20 mobile-phone masts in the UK had been vandalised since the previous Thursday. Because of the slow rollout of 5G in the UK, many of the damaged masts had only 3G and 4G equipment. Mobile-phone and home broadband operators estimated there were at least 30 incidents where engineers maintaining equipment were confronted in the week up to 6 April. As of 30 May, there had been 29 incidents of attempted arson at mobile-phone masts in the Netherlands, including one case where "Fuck 5G" was written. There have also been incidents in Ireland and Cyprus. Facebook has deleted messages encouraging attacks on 5G equipment.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Engineers working for Openreach, a division of British Telecom, posted pleas on anti-5G Facebook groups asking to be spared abuse as they are not involved with maintaining mobile networks. Industry lobby group Mobile UK said the incidents were affecting the maintenance of networks that support home working and provide critical connections to vulnerable customers, emergency services, and hospitals. A widely circulated video showed a woman accusing employees of broadband company Community Fibre of installing 5G as part of a plan to kill the population.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Of those who believed that 5G networks caused COVID-19 symptoms, 60% stated that much of their knowledge about the virus came from YouTube. In April 2020, YouTube announced that it would reduce the amount of content claiming links between 5G and COVID-19. Videos that are conspiratorial about 5G that do not mention COVID-19 would not be removed, though they might be considered "borderline content" and therefore removed from search recommendations, losing advertising revenue. The discredited claims had been circulated by British conspiracy theorist David Icke in videos (subsequently removed) on YouTube and Vimeo, and an interview by London Live TV network, prompting calls for action by Ofcom. It took YouTube on average 41 days to remove Covid-related videos containing false information in the first half of 2020.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Ofcom issued guidance to ITV following comments by Eamonn Holmes about 5G and COVID-19 on "This Morning". Ofcom said the comments were "ambiguous" and "ill-judged" and they "risked undermining viewers' trust in advice from public authorities and scientific evidence". Ofcom also found local channel London Live in breach of standards for an interview it had with David Icke. It said that he had "expressed views which had the potential to cause significant harm to viewers in London during the pandemic".


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: On 24 April 2020, "The Guardian" revealed that Jonathan Jones, an evangelical pastor from Luton, had provided the male voice on a recording blaming 5G for deaths caused by COVID-19. He claimed to have formerly headed the largest business unit at Vodafone, but insiders at the company said that he was hired for a sales position in 2014 when 5G was not a priority for the company and that 5G would not have been part of his job. He had left Vodafone after less than a year.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: A tweet started an internet meme that Bank of England £20 banknotes contained a picture of a 5G mast and the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Facebook and YouTube removed items pushing this story, and fact checking organisations established that the picture is of Margate Lighthouse and the "virus" is the staircase at the Tate Britain.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In April 2020, rumors circulated on Facebook, alleging that the US Government had "just discovered and arrested" Charles Lieber, chair of the Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department at Harvard University for "manufacturing and selling" the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) to China. According to a report from "Reuters", posts spreading the rumor were shared in multiple languages over 79,000 times on Facebook. Lieber was arrested on 28 January 2020, and later charged with two federal counts of making an allegedly false statement about his links to a Chinese university, unrelated to the virus. The rumor of Lieber, a chemist in an area entirely unrelated to the virus research, developing COVID-19 and selling it to China has been discredited.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In 2020, a group of researchers that most notably included Edward J. Steele and Chandra Wickramasinghe, the foremost living proponent of panspermia, claimed in ten research papers that COVID-19 originated from a meteor spotted as a bright fireball over the city of Songyuan in Northeast China on 11 October 2019 and that a fragment of the meteor landed in the Wuhan area, which started the first COVID-19 outbreaks. However, the group of researchers did not provide any direct evidence proving this conjecture.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In an August 2020 article, Astronomy.com called the meteor origin conjecture "so remarkable that it makes the others look boring by comparison".


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In April 2020, ABC News reported that, in November 2019, "U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China's Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population". The article stated that the National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), had produced an intelligence report in November 2019 which raised concerns about the situation. The director of the NCMI, Col. R. Shane Day said "media reporting about the existence/release of a National Center for Medical Intelligence Coronavirus-related product/assessment in November 2019 is not correct. No such NCMI product exists".


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In reality, the reverse transcription PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 is highly sensitive to the virus, and testing laboratories have controls in place to prevent and detect contamination. However, the tests only reveal the presence of the virus and not whether it remains infectious.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Social-media posts have falsely claimed that Kary Mullis, the inventor of polymerase chain reaction (PCR), said that PCR testing for SARS-CoV-2 does not work. Mullis, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the invention of PCR, died in August 2019 before the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and never made these statements. Several posts claim Mullis said "PCR tests cannot detect free infectious viruses at all", that PCR testing was designed to detect any non-human DNA or the DNA and RNA of the person being tested, or that the process of DNA amplification used in PCR will lead to contamination of the samples. A video of a 1997 interview with Mullis has also been widely circulated, in which Mullis says PCR will find "anything"; the video description asserts that this means PCR cannot be used to reliably detect SARS-CoV-2.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: A claim attributed to the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health that PCR testing is fraudulent became popular in the Philippines and remains a widespread belief. According to a report from AFP, research associate Joshua Miguel Danac of the University of the Philippines' National Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology debunked the claim, calling PCR tests "the gold standard for diagnosis". Fake testing and perception of fake testing remains a problem in the Philippines.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In early 2020, there were a number of viral photos and videos that were mischaracterized as showing an extreme severity to COVID-19 exposure. In January and February 2020, a number of videos from China were circulated on social media that purported to show people infected with COVID-19 either suddenly collapsing, or having already collapsed, on the street. Some of these videos were republished or referenced by some tabloid newspapers, including the "Daily Mail" and "The Sun". However, the people in these videos are generally believed to have been suffering from something other than COVID-19, such as one who was drunk.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: A video from February 2020 purported to be of dead COVID-19 victims in China was actually a video from Shenzhen of people sleeping on the street. Similarly, a photo that circulated in March 2020 of dozens of people lying down in the street, purported to be of COVID-19 victims in either China or Italy, was in fact a photo of living people from a 2014 art project in Germany.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Correctly reporting the number of people who were sick or who had died was difficult, especially during the earliest days of the pandemic.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Leaked documents show that China's public reporting of cases gave an incomplete picture during the early stages of the pandemic. For example, on 10 February 2020, China publicly reported 2,478 new confirmed cases. However, confidential internal documents that later leaked to CNN showed 5,918 new cases on 10 February. , 1,772 clinically diagnosed cases and 1,796 suspected cases.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: On 24 January 2020, a video circulated online appearing to be of a nurse named Jin Hui in Hubei, describing a far more dire situation in Wuhan than reported by Chinese officials. However, the BBC said that, contrary to its English subtitles in one of the video's existing versions, the woman does not claim to be either a nurse or a doctor in the video and that her suit and mask do not match the ones worn by medical staff in Hubei.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: The video claimed that more than 90,000 people had been infected with the virus in China, that the virus could spread from one person to 14 people () and that the virus was starting a second mutation. The video attracted millions of views on various social media platforms and was mentioned in numerous online reports. The claimed of 14 in the video was noted by the BBC to be inconsistent with the expert estimation of 1.4 to 2.5 at that time. The video's claim of 90,000 infected cases was noted to be 'unsubstantiated'.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: On 5 February 2020, "Taiwan News" published an article claiming that Tencent may have accidentally leaked the real numbers of death and infection in China. "Taiwan News" suggested that the Tencent Epidemic Situation Tracker had briefly showed infected cases and death tolls many times higher of the official figure, citing a Facebook post by a 38-year-old Taiwanese beverage store owner and an anonymous Taiwanese netizen. The article, referenced by other news outlets such as the "Daily Mail" and widely circulated on Twitter, Facebook and 4chan, sparked a wide range of conspiracy theories that the screenshot indicates the real death toll instead of the ones published by health officials.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: The author of the original news article defended the authenticity and newsworthiness of the leak on a WION program.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: On 8 February 2020, a report emerged on Twitter claiming that data showed a massive increase in sulfur emissions over Wuhan, China. The Twitter thread then claimed the reason was due to the mass cremation those who died from COVID-19. The story was shared on multiple media outlets, including "Daily Express", "Daily Mail", and "Taiwan News". "Snopes" debunked the misinformation, pointing out that the maps used by the claims were not real-time observations of sulfur dioxide (SO) concentrations above Wuhan. Instead, the data was a computer-generated model based on historical information and forecast on SO emissions.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: A story in "The Epoch Times" on 17 February 2020 shared a map from the Internet that falsely alleged massive sulfur dioxide releases from crematoriums during the COVID-19 pandemic in China, speculating that 14,000 bodies may have been burned. A fact check by AFP reported that the map was a NASA forecast taken out of context.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: There was a decrease of nearly 21 million cellphone subscriptions among the three largest cellphone carriers in China, which led to misinformation that this is evidence for millions of deaths due to COVID-19 in China. The drop is attributed to cancellations of phone services due to a downturn in the social and economic life during the outbreak.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Accusations have been made of under-reporting, over-reporting, and other problems. Necessary data was corrupted in some places, for example, on the state level in the United States.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: The public health handling of the pandemic has been hampered by the use of archaic technology (including fax machines and incompatible formats), poor data flow and management (or even no access to data), and general lack of standardization and leadership. Privacy laws hampered contact tracing and case finding efforts, which resulted in under-diagnosis and under-reporting.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In August 2020, President Donald Trump retweeted a conspiracy theory alleging that COVID-19 deaths are systematically overcounted, and that only 6% of the reported deaths in the United States were actually from the disease. This 6% number is based on only counting death certificates where COVID-19 is the sole condition listed. The lead mortality statistician at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics said that those death certificates likely did not include all the steps that led to the death and thus were incomplete. The CDC collects data based on case surveillance, vital records, and excess deaths. A FactCheck.org article on the issue reported that while 6% of the death certificates included COVID-19 exclusively as the cause of death and 94% had additional conditions that contributed to it, COVID-19 was listed as the underlying cause of death in 92% of them, as it may directly cause other severe conditions such as pneumonia or acute respiratory distress syndrome.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: The U.S. experienced 882,000 "excess deaths" (i.e., deaths above the baseline expected from normal mortality in previous years) between February 2020 and January 2022, which is somewhat higher than the officially recorded mortality from COVID-19 during that period (835,000 deaths). Analysis of weekly data from each U.S. state shows that the calculated excess deaths are strongly correlated with COVID-19 infections, undercutting the notion that the deaths were primarily caused by some factor other than the disease.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: On 22 November 2020, an article by Genevieve Briand (assistant director for the Master's program in Applied Economics at JHU) was published in the student-run "Johns Hopkins News-Letter" claiming to have found "no evidence that COVID-19 create[d] any excess deaths". The article was later retracted after it was used to promote conspiracy theories on right-wing social media accounts and misinformation websites, but the presentation was not removed from YouTube, where it had been viewed more than 58,000 times as of 3 December 2020.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Briand compared data from spring 2020 and January 2018, ignoring expected seasonal variations in mortality and unusual peaks in the spring and summer of 2020 compared to previous spring and summer months. Briand's article failed to account for the total excess mortality from all causes reported during the pandemic, with 300,000 deaths associated with the virus per CDC data in 2020. Deaths per age group were also shown as a percentage rather than as raw numbers, greatly underestimating the effects of the pandemic given large population sizes. The article also suggested that deaths attributed to cardiac and respiratory diseases in infected persons were incorrectly categorized as deaths due to COVID-19. This view fails to recognize that those with such conditions are more vulnerable to the virus and therefore more likely to die from it. The retraction of Briand's article went viral on social media under false claims of censorship.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: On 26 February 2020, the Taiwanese Central News Agency reported that large amounts of misinformation had appeared on Facebook claiming the pandemic in Taiwan was out of control, the Taiwanese government had covered up the total number of cases, and that President Tsai Ing-wen had been infected. The Taiwan fact-checking organization had suggested the misinformation on Facebook shared similarities with mainland China due to its use of simplified Chinese characters and mainland China vocabulary. The organization warned that the purpose of the misinformation is to attack the government.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In March 2020, Taiwan's Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau warned that China was trying to undermine trust in factual news by portraying the Taiwanese government reports as fake news. Taiwanese authorities have been ordered to use all possible means to track whether the messages were linked to instructions given by the Chinese Communist Party. The PRC's Taiwan Affairs Office denied the claims, calling them lies, and said that Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party was "inciting hatred" between the two sides. They then claimed that the "DPP continues to politically manipulate the virus". According to "The Washington Post", China has used organized disinformation campaigns against Taiwan for decades.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Nick Monaco, the research director of the Digital Intelligence Lab at Institute for the Future, analyzed the posts and concluded that the majority appear to have come from ordinary users in China, not the state. However, he criticized the Chinese government's decision to allow the information to spread beyond China's Great Firewall, which he described as "malicious". According to "Taiwan News", nearly one in four cases of misinformation are believed to be connected to China.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: On 27 March 2020, the American Institute in Taiwan announced that it was partnering with the Taiwan FactCheck Center to help combat misinformation about the COVID-19 outbreak.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In early February 2020, a decade-old map illustrating a hypothetical viral outbreak published by the World Population Project (part of the University of Southampton) was misappropriated by a number of Australian media news outlets (and British tabloids "The Sun", "Daily Mail" and "Metro") which claimed the map represented the COVID-19 pandemic. This misinformation was then spread via the social media accounts of the same media outlets, and while some outlets later removed the map, the BBC reported, on 19 February, that a number of news sites had yet to retract the map.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: COVID-19 deniers use the word "casedemic" as a shorthand for a conspiracy theory holding that COVID-19 is harmless and that the reported disease figures are merely a result of increased testing. The concept is particularly attractive to anti-vaccination activists, who use it to argue that public health measures, and particularly vaccines, are not needed to counter what they say is a fake epidemic.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: David Gorski writes that the word "casedemic" was seemingly coined by Ivor Cummins—an engineer whose views are popular among COVID-19 deniers—in August 2020.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: The term has been adopted by alternative medicine advocate Joseph Mercola, who has exaggerated the effect of false positives in polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests to construct a false narrative that testing is invalid because it is not perfectly accurate . In reality, the problems with PCR testing are well-known and accounted for by public health authorities. Such claims also disregard the possibility of asymptomatic spread, the number of potentially-undetected cases during the initial phases of the pandemic in comparison to the present due to increased testing and knowledge since, and other variables that can influence PCR tests.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Early in the pandemic, little information was known about how the virus spreads, when the first people became sick, or who was most vulnerable to infection, serious complications, or death. During 2020, it became clear that the main route of spread was through exposure to the virus-laden respiratory droplets produced by an infected person. There were also some early questions about whether the disease might have been present earlier than reported; however, subsequent research disproved this idea.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In March 2020, Victor Davis Hanson publicized a theory that COVID-19 may have been in California in the fall of 2019 resulting in a level of herd immunity to at least partially explain differences in infection rates in cities such as New York City vs Los Angeles. Jeff Smith of Santa Clara County stated that evidence indicated the virus may have been in California since December 2019. Early genetic and antibody analyses refute the idea that the virus was in the United States prior to January 2020.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In March 2020, conspiracy theorists started the false rumor that Maatje Benassi, a US army reservist, was "Patient Zero" of the pandemic, the first person to be infected with COVID-19. Benassi was targeted because of her participation in the 2019 Military World Games at Wuhan before the pandemic started, even though she never tested positive for the virus. Conspiracy theorists even connected her family to the DJ Benny Benassi as a Benassi virus plot, even though they are not related and Benny had also not had the virus.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Early in the pandemic it was claimed that COVID-19 could be spread by contact with contaminated surfaces or fomites—even though this is an uncommon transmission route for other respiratory viruses. This led to recommendations that high-contact surfaces (like playground equipment or school desks) be frequently deep-cleaned and that certain items (like groceries or mailed packages) be disinfected. Ultimately, the US CDC concluded that the likelihood of transmission under these scenarios was less than 1 in 10,000. They further concluded that handwashing reduced the risk of exposure to COVID-19, but surface disinfection did not.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: There have been claims that specific ethnicities are more or less vulnerable to COVID-19. COVID-19 is a new zoonotic disease, so no population has yet had the time to develop population immunity.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Beginning on 11 February 2020, reports quickly spread via Facebook, implied that a Cameroonian student in China had been completely cured of the virus due to his African genetics. While a student was successfully treated, other media sources have indicated that no evidence implies Africans are more resistant to the virus and labeled such claims as false information. Kenyan Secretary of Health Mutahi Kagwe explicitly refuted rumors that "those with black skin cannot get coronavirus [disease 2019]", while announcing Kenya's first case on 13 March. This false myth was cited as a contributing factor in the disproportionately high rates of infection and death observed among African Americans.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: There have been claims of "Indian immunity": that the people of India have more immunity to the COVID-19 virus due to living conditions in India. This idea was deemed "absolute drivel" by Anand Krishnan, professor at the Centre for Community Medicine of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). He said there was no population immunity to the COVID-19 virus yet, as it is new, and it is not even clear whether people who have recovered from COVID-19 will have lasting immunity, as this happens with some viruses but not with others.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed the virus was genetically targeted at Iranians by the US, giving this explanation for the pandemic having seriously affected Iran. He did not offer any evidence.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: A group of Jordanian researchers published a report claiming that Arabs are less vulnerable to COVID-19 due to a genetic variation specific to those of Middle East heritage. This paper had not been debunked by November 2020.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: COVID-19-related xenophobic attacks have been made against individuals with the attacker blaming the victim for COVID-19 on the basis of the victim's ethnicity. People who are considered to look Chinese have been subjected to COVID-19-related verbal and physical attacks in many other countries, often by people accusing them of transmitting the virus. Within China, there has been discrimination (such as evictions and refusal of service in shops) against people from anywhere closer to Wuhan (where the pandemic started) and against anyone perceived as being non-Chinese (especially those considered African), as the Chinese government has blamed continuing cases on re-introductions of the virus from abroad (90% of reintroduced cases were by Chinese passport-holders). Neighbouring countries have also discriminated against people seen as Westerners.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: People have also simply blamed other local groups along the lines of pre-existing social tensions and divisions, sometimes citing reporting of COVID-19 cases within that group. For instance, Muslims have been widely blamed, shunned, and discriminated against in India (including some violent attacks), amid unfounded claims that Muslims are deliberately spreading COVID-19, and a Muslim event at which the disease did spread has received far more public attention than many similar events run by other groups and the government. White supremacist groups have blamed COVID-19 on non-whites and advocated deliberately infecting minorities they dislike, such as Jews.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Some media outlets, including "Daily Mail" and RT, as well as individuals, disseminated a video showing a Chinese woman eating a bat, falsely suggesting it was filmed in Wuhan and connecting it to the outbreak. However, the widely circulated video contains unrelated footage of a Chinese travel vlogger, Wang Mengyun, eating bat soup in the island country of Palau in 2016. Wang posted an apology on Weibo, in which she said she had been abused and threatened, and that she had only wanted to showcase Palauan cuisine. The spread of misinformation about bat consumption has been characterized by xenophobic and racist sentiment toward Asians. In contrast, scientists suggest the virus originated in bats and migrated into an intermediary host animal before infecting people.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: South Korean "conservative populist" Jun Kwang-hun told his followers there was no risk to mass public gatherings as the virus was impossible to contract outdoors. Many of his followers are elderly.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Misinformation has spread that the lifetime of SARS-CoV-2 is only 12 hours and that staying home for 14 hours during the Janata curfew would break the chain of transmission. Another message claimed that observing the Janata curfew would result in the reduction of COVID-19 cases by 40%.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: It has been claimed that mosquitoes transmit COVID-19. There is no evidence that this is true. COVID-19 is likely to spread through small droplets of saliva and mucus.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: A fake Costco product recall notice circulated on social media purporting that Kirkland-brand bath tissue had been contaminated with COVID-19 (meaning SARS-CoV-2) due to the item being made in China. No evidence supports that SARS-CoV-2 can survive on surfaces for prolonged periods of time (as might happen during shipping), and Costco has not issued such a recall.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: A warning claiming to be from the Australia Department of Health said COVID-19 spreads through petrol pumps and that everyone should wear gloves when filling up petrol in their cars.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: There were claims that wearing shoes in one's home was the reason behind the spread of COVID-19 in Italy.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In March 2020, the "Miami New Times" reported that managers at Norwegian Cruise Line had prepared a set of responses intended to convince wary customers to book cruises, including "blatantly false" claims that COVID-19 "can only survive in cold temperatures, so the Caribbean is a fantastic choice for your next cruise", that "Scientists and medical professionals have confirmed that the warm weather of the spring will be the end of the Coronavirus ", and that the virus "cannot live in the amazingly warm and tropical temperatures that your cruise will be sailing to".


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Flu is seasonal (becoming less frequent in the summer) in some countries, but not in others. While it is possible that COVID-19 will also show some seasonality, this has not yet been determined. When COVID-19 spread along international air travel routes, it did not bypass tropical locations. Outbreaks on cruise ships, where an older population lives in close quarters, frequently touching surfaces which others have touched, were common.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: It seems that COVID-19 can be transmitted in all climates. It has seriously affected many warm-climate countries. For instance, Dubai, with a year-round average daily high of 28.0 Celsius (82.3 °F) and the airport said to have the world's most international traffic, has had thousands of cases.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: While commercial companies that make breastmilk substitutes promote their products during the pandemic, the WHO and UNICEF advise that women should continue to breastfeed during the COVID-19 pandemic even if they have confirmed or suspected COVID-19. Current evidence indicates that it is unlikely that COVID-19 can be transmitted through breast milk.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: COVID-19 can persist in men's semen even after they have begun to recover, although the virus cannot replicate in the reproductive system.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Chinese researchers who found the virus in the semen of men infected with COVID-19, claimed that this opened up a small chance the disease could be sexually transmitted, though this claim has been questioned by other academics since this has been shown with many other viruses such as Ebola and Zika.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: A team of Italian scholars found that 11 of 43 men who recovered from infections, or one-quarter of the test subjects, had either azoospermia (no sperm in semen) or oligospermia (low sperm count). Mechanisms through which infectious diseases affect sperm is roughly divided into two categories. One involves viruses entering the testes, where they attack spermatogonia. The other involves high fever exposing the testes to heat and thereby killing sperm.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: People tried many different things to prevent infection. Sometimes the misinformation was false claims of efficacy, such as claims that the virus could not spread during religious ceremonies, and at other times the misinformation was false claims of inefficacy, such as claiming that alcohol-based hand sanitizer did not work. In other cases, especially with regard to public health advice about wearing face masks, additional scientific evidence resulted in different advice over time.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Claims that hand sanitizer is merely "antibacterial not antiviral", and therefore ineffective against COVID-19, have spread widely on Twitter and other social networks. While the effectiveness of sanitiser depends on the specific ingredients, most hand sanitiser sold commercially inactivates SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19. Hand sanitizer is recommended against COVID-19, though unlike soap, it is not effective against all types of germs. Washing in soap and water for at least 20 seconds is recommended by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) as the best way to clean hands in most situations. However, if soap and water are not available, a hand sanitizer that is at least 60% alcohol can be used instead, unless hands are visibly dirty or greasy. The CDC and the Food and Drug Administration both recommend plain soap; there is no evidence that antibacterial soaps are any better, and limited evidence that they might be worse long-term.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Authorities, especially in Asia, recommended wearing face masks in public early in the pandemic. In other parts of the world, authorities made conflicting (or contradictory) statements. Several governments and institutions, such as in the United States, initially dismissed the use of face masks by the general population, often with misleading or incomplete information about their effectiveness. Commentators have attributed the anti-mask messaging to attempts at managing mask shortages caused by initial inaction, remarking that the claims went beyond the science, or were simply lies.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In February 2020, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams tweeted "Seriously people—STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus [disease 2019]"; he later reversed his position with increasing evidence that masks can limit the spread of COVID-19. On 12 June 2020, Anthony Fauci (a key member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force) confirmed that the American public were told not to wear masks from the beginning, due to a shortage of masks, and then explained that masks do actually work.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Some media outlets claimed that neck gaiters were worse than not wearing masks at all in the COVID-19 pandemic, misinterpreting a study which was intended to demonstrate a method for evaluating masks (and not actually to determine the effectiveness of different types of masks). The study also only looked at one wearer wearing the one neck gaiter made from a polyester/spandex blend, which is not sufficient evidence to support the claim about gaiters made in the media. The study found that the neck gaiter, which was made from a thin and stretchy material, appeared to be ineffective at limiting airborne droplets expelled from the wearer; Isaac Henrion, one of the co-authors, suggests that the result was likely due to the material rather than the style, stating that "Any mask made from that fabric would probably have the same result, no matter the design." Warren S. Warren, a co-author, said that they tried to be careful with their language in interviews, but added that the press coverage has "careened out of control" for a study testing a measuring technique.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: There are false claims spread that the usage of masks causes adverse health-related issues such as low blood oxygen levels, high blood carbon dioxide levels, and a weakened immune system. Some also falsely claimed that masks cause antibiotic-resistant pneumonia by preventing pathogenic organisms to be exhaled away from the body.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Individuals have speciously claimed legal or medical exemptions to avoid complying with mask mandates. Individuals have, for instance, claimed that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA; designed to prohibit discrimination based on disabilities) allows exemption from mask requirements. The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) responded that the Act "does not provide a blanket exemption to people with disabilities from complying with legitimate safety requirements necessary for safe operations". The DOJ also issued a warning about cards (sometimes featuring DOJ logos or ADA notices) that claim to "exempt" their holders from wearing masks, stating that these cards are fraudulent and not issued by any government agency.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Contrary to some reports, drinking alcohol does not protect against COVID-19, and can increase short term and long term health risks. Drinking alcohol is made with pure ethanol. Other substances such as hand sanitizer, wood alcohol, and denatured alcohol contain other alcohols, such as isopropanol or methanol. These other alcohols are poisonous, and may cause gastric ulcers, blindness, liver failure, or death. Such chemicals are commonly present in improperly fermented or distilled alcoholic beverages.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Several countries, including Iran and Turkey have reported incidents of methanol poisoning, caused by the false belief that drinking alcohol would cure or protect against COVID-19. alcohol is banned in Iran, and bootleg alcohol may contain methanol. According to the Associated Press in March 2020, 480 people had died and 2,850 become ill due to methanol poisoning. That figure reached 700 by April.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In Kenya, in April 2020, the Governor of Nairobi Mike Sonko came under scrutiny for including small bottles of the cognac Hennessy in care packages, falsely claiming that alcohol serves as "throat sanitizer".


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In 2020, tobacco smoking spread on social media as a false remedy to COVID-19 after a few small observational studies were published in which tobacco smoking was shown to be preventative against SARS-CoV-2. In April 2020, researchers at a Paris hospital noted an inverse relationship between smoking and COVID-19 infections, which led to an increase in tobacco sales in France. These results were at first so astonishing that the French government initiated a clinical trial with transdermal nicotine patches. More recent clinical evidence based on larger studies clearly demonstrates that smokers have an increased chance of COVID-19 infection and experience more severe respiratory symptoms.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In early 2020, several viral tweets spread around Europe and Africa, suggesting that snorting cocaine would sterilize one's nostrils of SARS-CoV-2. In response, the French Ministry of Health released a public service announcement debunking this claim, saying "No, cocaine does NOT protect against COVID-19. It is an addictive drug that causes serious side effects and is harmful to people's health." The World Health Organization also debunked the claim.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: There were several claims that drinking warm drinks at a temperature of around protects one from COVID-19, most notably by Alberto Fernández, the president of Argentina said "The WHO recommends that one drink many hot drinks because heat kills the virus." Scientists commented that the WHO had made no such recommendation, and that drinking hot water can damage the oral mucosa.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: A number of religious groups have claimed protection due to their faith. Some refused to stop practices, such as gatherings of large groups, that promoted the transmission of the virus.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In Israel, some Ultra-Orthodox Jews initially refused to close synagogues and religious seminaries and disregarded government restrictions because "The Torah protects and saves", which resulted in an eight-fold faster rate of infection among some groups.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In South Korea the River of Grace Community Church in Gyeonggi Province spread the virus after spraying salt water into their members' mouths in the belief that it would kill the virus, while the Shincheonji Church of Jesus in Daegu where a church leader claimed that no Shincheonji worshipers had caught the virus in February while hundreds died in Wuhan, later caused the biggest spread of the virus in the country. In Tanzania, President John Magufuli, instead of banning congregations, urged the faithfuls to go to pray in churches and mosques in the belief that it will protect them. He said that COVID-19 is a devil, therefore "cannot survive in the body of Jesus Christ; it will burn" (the "body of Jesus Christ" refers to the Christian church).


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, on 9 March 2020, the Church of Greece announced that Holy Communion, in which churchgoers eat pieces of bread soaked in wine from the same chalice, would continue as a practice. The Holy Synod said Holy Communion "cannot be the cause of the spread of illness", with Metropolitan Seraphim saying the wine was without blemish because it represented the blood and body of Christ, and that "whoever attends Holy Communion is approaching God, who has the power to heal". The Church refused to restrict Christians from taking Holy Communion, which was supported by several clerics, some politicians, and health professionals. The Greek Association of Hospital Doctors criticized these professionals for putting their religious beliefs before science. A review of the medical publications on the subject, published by a Greek physician, claims that the transmission of any infectious disease through the Holy Communion has never been documented. This controversy divided the Greek society, the politics and medical experts.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: The Islamic missionary movement Tablighi Jamaat organised Ijtema mass gatherings in Malaysia, India, and Pakistan whose participants believed that God will protect them, causing the biggest rise in COVID-19 cases in these and other countries. In Iran, the head of Fatima Masumeh Shrine encouraged pilgrims to visit the shrine despite calls to close the shrine, saying that they "consider this holy shrine to be a place of healing". In Somalia, myths have spread claiming Muslims are immune to the virus.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In Sri Lanka, the Philippines and India, it has been claimed that one should stay at home on particular days when helicopters spray "COVID-19 disinfectant" over homes. No such spraying has taken place, nor is it planned, nor, as of July 2020, is there any such agent that could be sprayed.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In India, fake news circulated that the World Health Organization warned against eating cabbage to prevent COVID-19 infection. Claims that the poisonous fruit of the "Datura" plant is a preventive measure for COVID-19 resulted in eleven people being hospitalized in India. They ate the fruit, following the instructions from a TikTok video that propagated misinformation regarding the prevention of COVID-19.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Claims that vegetarians are immune to COVID-19 spread online in India, causing "#NoMeat_NoCoronaVirus" to trend on Twitter. Such claims are false.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In February 2020, claims that Vitamin D pills could help prevent COVID-19 circulated on social media in Thailand. Some conspiracy theorists have claimed that vitamin D was being intentionally suppressed as a preventative option by governments.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: There is weak evidence vitamin D levels may reduce the likelihood of intensive care admission for people with COVID 19; it has no effect of mortality.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: A preprint of a journal article from Indonesia purporting to show a beneficial effect of vitamin D for COVID-19 went viral across social media, and was cited several times in mainstream academic literature, including in a recommendation from NICE. Tabloid newspapers such as the "Daily Mail" and "The Sun" likewise promoted the story. Subsequent investigation, however, found none of the authors seemed to be known of at the hospitals listed as their affiliations, suggesting the paper was entirely fraudulent.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: A study of YouTube content concerning vitamin D and COVID-19 in 2020 found that over three quarters of the 77 videos analysed as part of the study contained false and misleading information. Most alarmingly according to the study's authors, the majority of the purveyors of misinformation in these videos were medical professionals. The study concluded that much of the advice given by these YouTube videos was likely to result in adverse health outcomes such as increases in rates of skin cancer if viewers of this content had taken it.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Some conservative figures in the United States, such as Richard Epstein, downplayed the scale of the pandemic, saying it has been exaggerated as part of an effort to hurt President Trump. Some people pointed to empty hospital parking lots as evidence that the virus has been exaggerated. Despite the empty parking lots, many hospitals in New York City and other places experienced thousands of COVID-19-related hospitalizations.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In the course of 2020, conspiracy theorists used the #FilmYourHospital hashtag to encourage people to record videos in seemingly empty, or sparsely populated hospitals, in order to prove that the pandemic was a "hoax".


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Widely circulated posts on social media have made many unfounded claims of treatment methods of COVID-19. Some of these claims are scams, and some promoted methods are dangerous and unhealthy.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Various national and party-held Chinese media heavily advertised an "overnight research" report by Wuhan Institute of Virology and Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, on how , an herb mixture from traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), can effectively inhibit COVID-19. The report led to a purchase craze of .


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: The president of Madagascar Andry Rajoelina launched and promoted in April 2020 a herbal drink based on an artemisia plant as a miracle cure that can treat and prevent COVID-19 despite a lack of medical evidence. The drink has been exported to other African countries.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Based on "in-vitro" studies, extracts of "E. purpurea" (Echinaforce) showed virucidal activity against coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2. Because the data was experimental and solely derived from cell cultures, antiviral effects in humans have not been elucidated. As a result, regulatory agencies have not recommended the use of "Echinacea" preparations for the prophylaxis and treatment of COVID-19.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: During the COVID-19 pandemic, vitamin C was the subject of more FDA warning letters than any other quack treatment for COVID-19.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In March 2020, a photo circulated online showing a 30-year-old Indian textbook that lists aspirin, antihistamines, and nasal spray as treatments for coronavirus diseases. False claims spread asserting that the book was evidence that COVID-19 started much earlier than reported and that common cold treatments could be a cure for COVID-19. The textbook actually talks about coronaviruses in general, as a family of viruses.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: A rumor circulated on social media posts on Weibo, Facebook and Twitter claiming that Chinese experts said saline solutions could kill COVID-19. There is no evidence for this.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: A tweet from French health minister Olivier Véran, a bulletin from the French health ministry, and a small speculative study in "The Lancet Respiratory Medicine" raised concerns about ibuprofen worsening COVID-19, which spread extensively on social media. The European Medicines Agency and the World Health Organization recommended COVID-19 patients keep taking ibuprofen as directed, citing lack of convincing evidence of any danger.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Indian political activist Swami Chakrapani and Member of the Legislative Assembly Suman Haripriya claimed that drinking cow urine and applying cow dung on the body can cure COVID-19. In Manipur, two people were arrested under the National Security Act for social media posts which said cow urine and dung did not cure the virus. (They were arrested under Section 153 of the Indian Penal Code for allegedly promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc. and acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony).


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: WHO's chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan criticised politicians incautiously spreading such misinformation without evidence.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: A drug based on 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG) was approved by the Drugs Controller General of India for emergency use as adjunct therapy in moderate to severe COVID-19 patients.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: The drug was launched at a press conference with a false claim that it was approved by the World Health Organization. It was developed by the DRDO along with Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, who stated in a press release, that the drug "helps in faster recovery of hospitalised patients and reduces supplemental oxygen dependence". The Wire as well as The Hindu noted that the approval was based on poor evidence; no journal publication (or preprint) concerning efficacy and safety are yet available.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Since its third version, the COVID management guidelines from the Chinese National Health Commission recommends using Traditional Chinese medicines to treat the disease. In Wuhan, China Central Television reported that local authorities have pushed for a set of TCM prescriptions to be used for every case since early February. One formula was promoted at the national level by mid-February. The local field hospitals were explicitly TCM-oriented. According to state media, as of 16 March 2020, 91.91% of all Hubei patients have used TCM, with the rate reaching 99% in field hospitals and 94% in bulk quarantine areas. In March 2020, the online insert of the official "People's Daily", distributed in "The Daily Telegraph", published an article stating that Traditional Chinese medicine "helps fight coronavirus [disease 2019]".


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: On 11 March 2020, Adrian Bye, a tech startup leader who is not a doctor, suggested to cryptocurrency investors Gregory Rigano and James Todaro that "chloroquine will keep most people out of hospital". (Bye later admitted that he had reached this conclusion through "philosophy" rather than medical research.) Two days later, Rigano and Todaro promoted chloroquine in a self-published article that claimed affiliation with the Stanford University School of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences and the Birmingham School of Medicine – the three institutions mentioned that they had no links to the article, and Google removed the article for violating its terms of service.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Some QAnon proponents, including Jordan Sather and others, have promoted gargling "Miracle Mineral Supplement" (actually chlorine dioxide, a chemical used in some industrial applications as a bleach that may cause life-threatening reactions and even death) as a way of preventing or curing the disease. The Food and Drug Administration has warned multiple times that drinking MMS is "dangerous" as it may cause "severe vomiting" and "acute liver failure".


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Twelve people were hospitalized in India when they ingested the poisonous thornapple ("Datura stramonium" AKA Jimsonweed) after seeing the plant recommended as a 'coronavirus [disease 2019] home remedy' in a TikTok video. Datura species contain many substances poisonous to humans, mainly through anticholinergic effects.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In February 2020, televangelist Jim Bakker promoted a colloidal silver solution, sold on his website, as a remedy for COVID-19; naturopath Sherrill Sellman, a guest on his show, falsely stated that it "hasn't been tested on this strain of the coronavirus, but it's been tested on other strains of the coronavirus and has been able to eliminate it within 12 hours". The US Food and Drug Administration and New York Attorney General's office both issued cease-and-desist orders against Bakker, and he was sued by the state of Missouri over the sales.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: The New York Attorney General's office also issued a cease-and-desist order to radio host Alex Jones, who was selling silver-infused toothpaste that he falsely claimed could kill the virus and had been verified by federal officials, causing a Jones spokesman to deny the products had been sold for the purpose of treating any disease. The FDA later threatened Jones with legal action and seizure of several silver-based products if he continued to promote their use against COVID-19.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: The yoga guru Ramdev claimed that one can treat COVID-19 by pouring mustard oil through the nose, causing the virus to flow into the stomach where it would be destroyed by gastric acid. He also claimed that if a person can hold their breath for a minute, it means they do not have any type of coronavirus, symptomatic or asymptomatic. Both these claims were found to be false.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Misinformation that the Indian government was spreading an "anti-corona" drug in the country during Janata curfew, a stay-at-home curfew enforced in India, went viral on social media.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Following the first reported case of COVID-19 in Nigeria on 28 February, untested cures and treatments began to spread via platforms such as WhatsApp.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In March 2020, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested actor Keith Lawrence Middlebrook for wire fraud with a fake COVID-19 cure.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Another televangelist, Kenneth Copeland, claimed on Victory Channel during a programme called "Standing Against Coronavirus", that he can cure television viewers of directly from the television studio. The viewers had to touch the television screen to receive the spiritual healing.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: In India, baseless rumours spread saying that people were being taken to care centres and killed to harvest their organs, with their bodies then being swapped to avoid suspicion. These rumours spread more quickly through online platforms such as WhatsApp, and resulted in protests, attacks against healthcare workers, and reduced willingness to seek COVID-19 testing and treatment.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Social media posts and Internet memes claimed that "COVID-19" derives from "Chinese Originated Viral Infectious Disease 19", or similar, as supposedly the "19th virus to come out of China". In fact, the WHO named the disease as follows: CO stands for "corona", VI for "virus", Dfor "disease" and 19 for when the outbreak was first identified (31 December 20"19").


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Another false social media rumor claimed "COVID-19" was an acronym derived from a series of ancient symbols interpreted as "see a sheep surrender."


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Claims that "The Simpsons" had predicted the COVID-19 pandemic in 1993, accompanied by a doctored screenshot from the show (where the text "Corona Virus" was layered over the original text "Apocalypse Meow", without blocking it from view), were later found to be false. The claim had been widely spread on social media.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: During the pandemic, many false and misleading images or news reports about the environmental impact of the COVID-19 pandemic were shared by clickbait journalism sources and social media.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: A viral post that originated on Weibo and spread on Twitter claimed that a pack of elephants descended on a village under quarantine in China's Yunnan, got drunk on corn wine, and passed out in a tea garden. A Chinese news report debunked the claim that the elephants got drunk on corn wine and noted that wild elephants were a common sight in the village; the image attached to the post was originally taken at the Asian Elephant Research Center in Yunnan in December 2019.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Following reports of reduced pollution levels in Italy as a result of lockdowns, images purporting to show swans and dolphins swimming in Venice canals went viral on social media. The image of the swans was revealed to have been taken in Burano, where swans are common, while footage of the dolphins was filmed at a port in Sardinia hundreds of miles away. The Venice mayor's office clarified that the reported water clarity in the canals was due to the lack of sediment being kicked up by boat traffic, not a reduction in water pollution as initially reported.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: Following the lockdown of India, a video clip purporting to show the extremely rare Malabar civet (a critically endangered, possibly extinct, species) walking the empty streets of Meppayur went viral on social media. Experts later identified the civet in the video as actually being the much commoner small Indian civet. Another viral Indian video clip showed a pod of humpback whales allegedly returning to the Arabian Sea offshore from Mumbai following the shutdown of shipping routes; however, this video was found to have actually been taken in 2019 in the Java Sea.


title: COVID-19 misinformation

text: It has been wrongly claimed that anyone infected with COVID-19 will have the virus in their bodies for life. While there is no curative treatment, most infected people recover from the disease and eliminate the virus from their bodies.