Bat Soup, A Secret Vaccine, Thousands Dead? The Coronavirus Myths We Need To Shut Down
Here’s what we know.
More than 80 people have now died after contracting coronavirus, all in China.
According to reports most of the victims were either middle-aged or elderly. Official records state that, as of about 1pm on Monday, 2,744 were confirmed to have been infected.
At the time of writing, it had been confirmed that 73 people had been tested for coronavirus in the UK. All of the tests had come back negative.
The virus is believed to have originated in a market in Wuhan and, just as lunar new year celebrations were set to get underway on Saturday, tens of millions of people in Hubei province found their cities in lockdown.
Yet with each passing hour social media has been bombarded with pictures and videos that purport to show an extreme situation – citizens collapsing in the streets, corpses lying in hospital corridors, medical staff breaking down.
The sheer rate at which new reports are emerging from China creates huge problems when it comes to measuring their authenticity.
But among all the noise, some clear lines of disinformation have emerged. Here they are – and the reasons you shouldn’t believe them.
1. The coronavirus outbreak was manufactured by the pharmaceutical industry to flog a vaccine.
With so little knowledge about where the coronavirus had come from, conspiracy theories about its origins were given plenty of space to germinate.
In particular, the idea that the virus was deliberately circulated in order to force people to buy a vaccine found popularity among those on the internet looking desperately for a source.
One of the most widely-shared tweets comes from YouTuber Jordan Sather, who on Wednesday described coronavirus as a “fad disease”, adding “funny enough, there was a patent for the...
