COVID-19 misinformation
[44] 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,[45][46][43] and has led to increased anti-Asian activity on social media and in the real world.
[56] 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.
[63][64] 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.
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".
[69][70] 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.
[95] 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 Level 4 virology lab, revoked after a Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigation.
[101] 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.
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.
[122] 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.
[163] 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.
[173] 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.
[194] 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.
[207][208][209] 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 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".
[243] In November 2020, an article by Genevieve Briand (assistant director for the Master's program in Applied Economics at JHU)[244] was published in the student-run Johns Hopkins News-Letter claiming to have found "no evidence that COVID-19 create[d] any excess deaths".
[296] 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.
[362] 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".
In Israel, some Ultra-Orthodox Jews initially refused to close synagogues and religious seminaries and disregarded government restrictions because "The Torah protects and saves",[369] which resulted in an eight-fold faster rate of infection among some groups.
[380] 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.
[395] 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.
"[418] In an update posted December 2022, the NIH position was unchanged: 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.
[440] The World Health Organization (WHO),[441] the European Medicines Agency (EMA),[442] the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA),[443] and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA)[444] all advise against using ivermectin in an attempt to treat or prevent COVID-19.
[446][447] 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.
[478] 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.
[480] 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.
The campaign was described by then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper as "payback" for COVID-19 disinformation by China directed against the U.S.[493] The operation spread to other regions such as in the Middle East and Central Asia like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, where the Pentagon aimed to intensify fears that the Chinese vaccine produced by Sinovac Biotech contained pork derivatives, and could be considered "haram", i.e. forbidden by Islamic law.
[494] In February 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) described a "massive infodemic", citing an over-abundance of reported information, which was false, about the virus that "makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it".
[524] In January 2022, 270 US healthcare professionals, scientists and professors wrote an open letter to Spotify complaining that podcast host Joe Rogan had a "concerning history of broadcasting misinformation, particularly regarding the Covid-19 pandemic" and describing him as a "menace to public health".
[531] In the Philippines,[532] China,[533] India,[534][535] Egypt,[536] Ethiopia,[537] Bangladesh,[538] Morocco,[539] Pakistan,[540] Saudi Arabia,[541] Oman,[542] Iran,[543] Vietnam, Laos,[544] Indonesia,[535] Mongolia,[535] Sri Lanka,[545] Kenya, South Africa,[546] Côte d'Ivoire,[547] Somalia,[548] Mauritius,[549] Zimbabwe,[550] Thailand,[551] Kazakhstan,[552] Azerbaijan,[553] Montenegro,[554] Serbia,[555][556] Malaysia,[557] Singapore,[558][559] and Hong Kong, people have been arrested for allegedly spreading false information about the COVID-19 pandemic.
[569] Cybersecurity firm Check Point stated there has been a large increase in phishing attacks to lure victims into unwittingly installing a computer virus under the guise of emails related to COVID-19 containing attachments.
