34 Facts About COVID-19 misinformation

Preprints about COVID-19 misinformation 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.

When evaluated by media analysts, the effect of broadcast COVID-19 misinformation has been found to influence health outcomes in the population.

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.

Promotion of COVID-19 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 other prominent Republicans to stoke anti-China sentiments, and has led to increased anti-Asian activity on social media and in the real world.

Some social media users have alleged that COVID-19 misinformation was stolen from a Canadian virus research lab by Chinese scientists.

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COVID-19 misinformation 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.

Users on social media offered other theories, including the allegation that Jews had manufactured COVID-19 misinformation 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 misinformation, avian flu, and Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever to "design the world, seize countries, [and] neuter the world's population".

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

COVID-19 misinformation based this on the claims that African countries had not been affected significantly by the pandemic and Africa was not a 5G region.

Viruses cannot be transmitted by radio waves, and COVID-19 misinformation has spread and continues to spread in many countries that do not have 5G networks.

COVID-19 misinformation 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.

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.

Snopes debunked the COVID-19 misinformation, pointing out that the maps used by the claims were not real-time observations of sulfur dioxide concentrations above Wuhan.

On 26 February 2020, the Taiwanese Central News Agency reported that large amounts of COVID-19 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.

In March 2020, Victor Davis Hanson publicized a theory that COVID-19 misinformation 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.

Early in the pandemic it was claimed that COVID-19 misinformation could be spread by contact with contaminated surfaces or fomites—even though this is an uncommon transmission route for other respiratory viruses.

COVID-19 misinformation is a new zoonotic disease, so no population has yet had the time to develop population immunity.

COVID-19 misinformation 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.

COVID-19 misinformation-related xenophobic attacks have been made against individuals with the attacker blaming the victim for COVID-19 misinformation on the basis of the victim's ethnicity.

People who are considered to look Chinese have been subjected to COVID-19 misinformation-related verbal and physical attacks in many other countries, often by people accusing them of transmitting the virus.

COVID-19 misinformation is likely to spread through small droplets of saliva and mucus.

When COVID-19 misinformation spread along international air travel routes, it did not bypass tropical locations.

Sometimes the COVID-19 misinformation was false claims of efficacy, such as claims that the virus could not spread during religious ceremonies, and at other times the COVID-19 misinformation was false claims of inefficacy, such as claiming that alcohol-based hand sanitizer did not work.

Claims that hand sanitizer is merely "antibacterial not antiviral", and therefore ineffective against COVID-19 misinformation, have spread widely on Twitter and other social networks.

COVID-19 misinformation said that COVID-19 is a devil, therefore "cannot survive in the body of Jesus Christ; it will burn" .

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Claims that the poisonous fruit of the Datura plant is a preventive measure for COVID-19 misinformation resulted in eleven people being hospitalized in India.

Preprint of a journal article from Indonesia purporting to show a beneficial effect of vitamin D for COVID-19 misinformation went viral across social media, and was cited several times in mainstream academic literature, including in a recommendation from NICE.

False claims spread asserting that the book was evidence that COVID-19 misinformation started much earlier than reported and that common cold treatments could be a cure for COVID-19 misinformation.

The European Medicines Agency and the World Health Organization recommended COVID-19 misinformation patients keep taking ibuprofen as directed, citing lack of convincing evidence of any danger.

Yoga guru Ramdev claimed that one can treat COVID-19 misinformation by pouring mustard oil through the nose, causing the virus to flow into the stomach where it would be destroyed by gastric acid.

COVID-19 misinformation 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.

Social media posts and Internet memes claimed that COVID-19 misinformation derives from "Chinese Originated Viral Infectious Disease 19", or similar, as supposedly the "19th virus to come out of China".

WHO began working with Wikipedia to provide much of its infographics and reports on COVID-19 to help fight misinformation, with plans to use similar approaches for fighting misinformation about other infectious diseases in the future.

In Cambodia, at least 17 individuals who expressed concerns about the spread of COVID-19 misinformation were arrested between January and March 2020 on "fake news" charges.