[It's Here!] New Indian Covid19 "double mutant strain" virus is coming to rape and kill you

[busy123]

If ignoring instructions regarding mask use was benign it would be fine just to follow the rules to avoid getting into trouble. The problem is that poor mask hygiene makes things worse and increases infections. A comparison of the data proves this fact.

i thinks you are not being very practical, like sweep the virus under the carpet. make no sense.

 

[Leongsam]

i thinks you are not being very practical, like sweep the virus under the carpet. make no sense.

I'm not sweeping anything under the carpet. The virus is killing people but so too do a whole lot of other factors. For example air pollution kills almost 9 MILLION people annually and has been doing so for many years but nobody suggested that we ban all cars, coal fired power stations etc to save these poor souls.

Covid has killed less than 1/3rd that number. What makes a Covid death worse than a pollution death? Both are very unpleasant.

By all means take measures to minimise the effects of Covid 19 but to force everyone to wear face napkins and come up with all sorts of ridiculous ad hoc rules regarding gathering numbers just makes no sense. Worst of all this face mask craze is actually killing more people than it saves.

 

[Hypocrite-The]

More young people getting sick with COVID-19 in Brazil
Doctors in Brazil have noticed a worrying new trend, with a growing number of young people getting severely ill and dying from COVID-19.


Natalie Brownnatalieisbrown

MARCH 25, 20217:14PM

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With several strains of the virus already circulating, will the current vaccines still be effective?

Since the new year, doctors in Brazil have noted a worrying new trend.
During the South American country’s surge of COVID-19 cases when the pandemic first struck, as in most countries around the world it was mostly elderly people getting sick and dying from the virus.
But since the start of 2021, when the nation began its descent into its worst days of the pandemic so far, a growing number of young people appear to be getting severely ill and dying from the disease, doctors have told CNN.
One of the hardest-hit countries globally — second only to the United States in its death toll and number of infections — more than 12 million residents have contracted the virus while close to 300,700 have died.
“The acceleration of the epidemic in various states is leading to the collapse of their public and private hospital systems, which may soon become the case in every region of Brazil,” the National Council of Health Secretaries (CONASS) warned earlier this month.
“Sadly, the anaemic rollout of vaccines and the slow pace of which they’re becoming available still does not suggest that this scenario will be reversed in the short term.”
RELATED: UK facing horror third wave of COVID

More than 12 million residents have contracted the virus while close to 300,700 have died in Brazil, which is now facing its worst days of the pandemic so far. Picture: Buda Mendes/Getty ImagesSource:Getty Images

‘We have otherwise healthy patients that are between 30 and 50 years old and that is the profile for the majority of patients,’ one ICU doctor said. Picture: Buda Mendes/Getty ImagesSource:Getty Images
In this latest wave of infections and deaths, intensive care doctors have said the patients are younger than ever.
“We have otherwise healthy patients that are between 30- and 50-years-old and that is the profile for the majority of patients,” Rio de Janeiro intensive care physician, Dr Pedro Archer, told CNN.


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“That is the big differentiator in this latest wave.”
ICU doctor Luan Matos de Menezes echoed the sentiment back in January, telling the network that “the numbers of serious infections are much higher than in the first wave” for young people that “you can tell their conditions are much more critical”.

National statistics published by Brazil’s Health Ministry on the ages of COVID-19 victims found the number of people aged 30 to 59 represented about 27 per cent of deaths over the past three months — a seven per cent increase from statistics before December.
State health officials also said that 60 per cent of younger patients with the virus needed ICU beds, a higher figure than earlier in the pandemic.
New variants, one epidemiologist said, could be playing a role as well.
The new variant, known as P. 1, is 1.4 to 2.2 times more contagious than versions of the virus previously found in Brazil, and 25 per cent to 61 per cent more capable of reinfecting people who had been infected by an earlier strain, according to a study released in February.
“It’s possible that these new variants are more lethal but we don’t have scientific data to confirm that,” Jesem Orellana, a Brazilian epidemiologist, told CNN.
“But what we do know is that the P1 variant is more transmissible and that plays a big part in this second wave.”
RELATED: ‘Ticking time bomb’: PNG on the brink

Aerial view of a burial at the Vila Formosa cemetery during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on March 23. Picture: Miguel Schincariol/AFPSource:AFP
Younger people taking part in illegal gatherings while the mutant strain circulates has also contributed to the current situation.
“You have a much more transmissible virus going around,” Brazilian microbiologist Natalia Pasternak told the network.
“It’s going to infect more people, including more young people. (The surge) may just be an epidemiological effect of having so many more people infected at the same time.”
As intensive care doctor Rosa Lopez told The Wall Street Journal, “the virus is behaving differently”.
“It’s really aggressive … the situation is very difficult, really terrible.”

 

[redbull313]

You are a misanthrope. We can see in your thinking a neurosis that unfortunately is not benign. At some point in your childhood your family of origin failed to care for you, and to show you the full joy and extent of the healthy ego, or self. Such individuals who come these environments tend to have problems forming healthy relationships with others, and fear intimacy, or are repulsed from it.

You not doubt are predisposed to violence. Misanthropes do not just wish harm upon others, they are pure sociopaths.

You are indeed very unwell. This explains your constant need to wish for harm to others, because it reflects your inner torment.

Only you can help yourself, but in the end you are obviously a very unhappy individual, with no real purpose or nor attachments.

If you wish to help yourself, speak to a mental health specialist today.

You are in no condition to be giving others advice. You cannot give what you do not have.

kindly contact us for an assessment:

https://www.imh.com.sg/

Institute of Mental Health
http://www.imh.com.sg/
Buangkok Green Medical Park
10 Buangkok View
Singapore 539747

he's a stupid piece of shit. why waste your time on filth?

 

[redbull313]

I'm not sweeping anything under the carpet. The virus is killing people but so too do a whole lot of other factors. For example air pollution kills almost 9 MILLION people annually and has been doing so for many years but nobody suggested that we ban all cars, coal fired power stations etc to save these poor souls.

Covid has killed less than 1/3rd that number. What makes a Covid death worse than a pollution death? Both are very unpleasant.

By all means take measures to minimise the effects of Covid 19 but to force everyone to wear face napkins and come up with all sorts of ridiculous ad hoc rules regarding gathering numbers just makes no sense. Worst of all this face mask craze is actually killing more people than it saves.

you are the such a dumb fuck no matter keep posting here I'll just remind you how fucked in the head you and your piece of shit dumb fuck lies are

fuck you

 

[tanwahtiu]

Stop the spread..... u still don't get it.... dumb twit...

Masks and lockdown are the options to use.

Mask use are to stop the spread individually.

The lockdown is to stop the spread in a bigger scale in suburbs, restaurants, events, sports etc.

until the spread is reduce significantly and under control and manageable, then open the economy is better reset....

the same as they closed all borders domestic and international.... stop the spread.... twit...

It's not about virus "denialism" it's all about virus realism.

Shutting down economies and hiding behind face napkins is not going to stop the virus. In fact the data shows that it makes things worse.

Mankind survives by facing adversity not hiding from it.

 

[tanwahtiu]

Look at US they are bashing the Asians becos the Trump TACP had not stop the spread.

Instead it was allowed to spread and Trump add fuel to the fire with Chinese and kungfu rethoric.

The other 4 eyes did the lockdown and wear masks has has kept all races at bay and away from each other help lessen the hatred among the races.

No bashing of Asians in the 4 eye proven that stop the spread works using lockdown and masks.

Go charge Trump for violation of human rights law....

 

[Peiweh]

We have asked you many times to come into the Institute for help. You persist in making wild claims that are preposterous and have no basis in scientific knowledge. This is the reason we work so hard to help people see reality. COVID-19 is real. It is dangerous and you make a mockery of all health professionals worldwide who battle this Pandemic while innocent lives are lost every day. You have no sense of empathy.

You are very ill. Only you can change your behavior.

kindly contact us for an assessment:

https://www.imh.com.sg/

Institute of Mental Health
http://www.imh.com.sg/
Buangkok Green Medical Park
10 Buangkok View
Singapore 539747

is the hospital full of PRCs? If not, go round them up and admit them all.

 

[Leongsam]

Stop the spread..... u still don't get it.... dumb twit...

Masks and lockdown are the options to use.

Mask use are to stop the spread individually.

The lockdown is to stop the spread in a bigger scale in suburbs, restaurants, events, sports etc.

until the spread is reduce significantly and under control and manageable, then open the economy is better reset....

the same as they closed all borders domestic and international.... stop the spread.... twit...

All good in theory but the data shows that masks and lockdowns don't make any difference and in many cases they actually make things worse.

 

[Leongsam]

you are the such a dumb fuck no matter keep posting here I'll just remind you how fucked in the head you and your piece of shit dumb fuck lies are

fuck you

Do you not believe the data that shows pollution killing 9 million a year?

 

[IMHDOCTOR]

I'm not sweeping anything under the carpet. The virus is killing people but so too do a whole lot of other factors. For example air pollution kills almost 9 MILLION people annually and has been doing so for many years but nobody suggested that we ban all cars, coal fired power stations etc to save these poor souls.

Covid has killed less than 1/3rd that number. What makes a Covid death worse than a pollution death? Both are very unpleasant.

By all means take measures to minimise the effects of Covid 19 but to force everyone to wear face napkins and come up with all sorts of ridiculous ad hoc rules regarding gathering numbers just makes no sense. Worst of all this face mask craze is actually killing more people than it saves.

We have already assessed you situation and find you to be a very sick, demented individual. True to classic DSM-V Clinical symptoms, inability to cope, refusal to assess the self, or ego, anger, rage directed outwards, and clinging on to lies and misinformation are all confirmation that you have a personality disorder.

The pain and suffering you must be feeling on a daily basis, trying to manage and cope, just to function in your daily life must be debilitating.

Why not start the healing process? you can being any time, but it is up to you

kindly contact us for an assessment:

https://www.imh.com.sg/

Institute of Mental Health
http://www.imh.com.sg/
Buangkok Green Medical Park
10 Buangkok View
Singapore 539747

 

[Leongsam]

We have already assessed you situation and find you to be a very sick, demented individual. True to classic DSM-V Clinical symptoms, inability to cope, refusal to assess the self, or ego, anger, rage directed outwards, and clinging on to lies and misinformation are all confirmation that you have a personality disorder.

The pain and suffering you must be feeling on a daily basis, trying to manage and cope, just to function in your daily life must be debilitating.

Why not start the healing process? you can being any time, but it is up to you

kindly contact us for an assessment:

https://www.imh.com.sg/

Institute of Mental Health
http://www.imh.com.sg/
Buangkok Green Medical Park
10 Buangkok View
Singapore 539747

Here's some headlines for you. It shows just how quickly things can change.

This shows that masks don't work.

 

[IMHDOCTOR]

Here's some headlines for you. It shows just how quickly things can change.

View attachment 106696

This shows that masks don't work.

The individual suffering from you subtype of personality disorder sees the pain and suffering of others and is excited. Seeing so much death, pain, suffering, economic destruction makes you feel alive. It gives you fuel, a purpose. You thrive off the very negativity of the event, rather than identify it as unfortunate.

As we have already assessed it is a function of your childhood drama. At some point during your developmental years, you were not taught appropriate self care. You therefore attach yourself to insane notions most well adjusted individuals would not even entertain, and when it is pointed out to you, you refuse to see the reality presented in front of you. You lacked nurturing. You inner psyche is crying out for help, and this is why you latch on to insane media sources that make you feel better, that the pain and death is real to you, when in fact it is not.

We can help you any time

kindly contact us for an assessment:

https://www.imh.com.sg/

Institute of Mental Health
http://www.imh.com.sg/
Buangkok Green Medical Park
10 Buangkok View
Singapore 539747

 

[Leongsam]

The individual suffering from you subtype of personality disorder sees the pain and suffering of others and is excited. Seeing so much death, pain, suffering, economic destruction makes you feel alive. It gives you fuel, a purpose. You thrive off the very negativity of the event, rather than identify it as unfortunate.

As we have already assessed it is a function of your childhood drama. At some point during your developmental years, you were not taught appropriate self care. You therefore attach yourself to insane notions most well adjusted individuals would not even entertain, and when it is pointed out to you, you refuse to see the reality presented in front of you. You lacked nurturing. You inner psyche is crying out for help, and this is why you latch on to insane media sources that make you feel better, that the pain and death is real to you, when in fact it is not.

We can help you any time

kindly contact us for an assessment:

https://www.imh.com.sg/

Institute of Mental Health
http://www.imh.com.sg/
Buangkok Green Medical Park
10 Buangkok View
Singapore 539747

I present data not opinions. No agenda, just the facts.

 

[tanwahtiu]

Stop the spread.... period

I present data not opinions. No agenda, just the facts.

 

[TuckFrump]

I present data not opinions. No agenda, just the facts.

https://khn.org/news/article/lie-of-the-year-the-downplay-and-denial-of-the-coronavirus/

Lie of the Year: The Downplay and Denial of the Coronavirus
By Daniel Funke, PolitiFact and Katie Sanders, PolitiFactDECEMBER 16, 2020


A Florida taxi driver and his wife had seen enough conspiracy theories online to believe the virus was overblown, maybe even a hoax. So no masks for them. Then they got sick. She died. A college lecturer had trouble refilling her lupus drug after the president promoted it as a treatment for the new disease. A hospital nurse broke down when an ICU patient insisted his illness was nothing worse than the flu, oblivious to the silence in beds next door.

Lies infected America in 2020. The very worst were not just damaging, but deadly.

President Donald Trump fueled confusion and conspiracies from the earliest days of the coronavirus pandemic. He embraced theories that COVID-19 accounted for only a small fraction of the thousands upon thousands of deaths. He undermined public health guidance for wearing masks and cast Dr. Anthony Fauci as an unreliable flip-flopper.

But the infodemic was not the work of a single person.

Anonymous bad actors offered up junk science. Online skeptics made bogus accusations that hospitals padded their coronavirus case numbers to generate bonus payments. Influential TV and radio opinion hosts told millions of viewers that physical distancing was a joke and that states had all of the personal protective equipment they needed (when they didn’t).

It was a symphony of counter-narrative, and Trump was the conductor, if not the composer. The message: The threat to your health was overhyped to hurt the political fortunes of the president.

Every year, PolitiFact editors review the year’s most inaccurate statements to elevate one as the Lie of the Year. The “award” goes to a statement, or a collection of claims, that prove to be of substantive consequence in undermining reality.

It has become harder and harder to choose when cynical pundits and politicians don’t pay much of a price for saying things that aren’t true. For the past month, unproven claims of massive election fraud have tested democratic institutions and certainly qualify as historic and dangerously baldfaced. Fortunately, the constitutional foundations that undergird American democracy are holding.

Meanwhile, the coronavirus has killed more than 300,000 in the United States, a crisis exacerbated by the reckless spread of falsehoods.

PolitiFact’s 2020 Lie of the Year: claims that deny, downplay or disinform about COVID-19.

‘I Wanted to Always Play It Down’

On Feb. 7, Trump leveled with book author Bob Woodward about the dangers of the new virus that was spreading across the world, originating in central China. He told the legendary reporter that the virus was airborne, tricky and “more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”

Trump told the public something else. On Feb. 26, the president appeared with his coronavirus task force in the crowded White House briefing room. A reporter asked if he was telling healthy Americans not to change their behavior.

“Wash your hands, stay clean. You don’t have to necessarily grab every handrail unless you have to,” he said, the room chuckling. “I mean, view this the same as the flu.”

Three weeks later, March 19, he acknowledged to Woodward: “To be honest with you, I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down. Because I don’t want to create a panic.”

His acolytes in politics and the media were on the same page. Rush Limbaugh told his audience of about 15 million on Feb. 24 that the coronavirus was being weaponized against Trump when it was just “the common cold, folks.” That’s wrong — even in the early weeks, it was clear the virus had a higher fatality rate than the common cold, with worse potential side effects, too.

As the virus was spreading, so was the message to downplay it.

“There are lots of sources of misinformation, and there are lots of elected officials besides Trump that have not taken the virus seriously or promoted misinformation,” said Brendan Nyhan, a government professor at Dartmouth College. “It’s not solely a Trump story — and it’s important to not take everyone else’s role out of the narrative.”

Hijacking the Numbers

In August, there was a growing movement on Twitter to question the disproportionately high U.S. COVID-19 death toll.

The skeptics cited Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data to claim that only 6% of COVID-19 deaths could actually be attributed to the virus. On Aug. 24, BlazeTV host Steve Deace amplified it on Facebook.

“Here’s the percentage of people who died OF or FROM Covid with no underlying comorbidity,” he said to his 120,000 followers. “According to CDC, that is just 6% of the deaths WITH Covid so far.”

That misrepresented the reality of coronavirus deaths. The CDC had always said people with underlying health problems — comorbidities — were most vulnerable if they caught COVID-19. The report was noting that 6% died even without being at obvious risk.

But for those skeptical of COVID-19, the narrative confirmed their beliefs. Facebook users copied and pasted language from influencers like Amiri King, who had 2.2 million Facebook followers before he was banned. The Gateway Pundit called it a “SHOCK REPORT.”

“I saw a statistic come out the other day, talking about only 6% of the people actually died from COVID, which is very interesting — that they died from other reasons,” Trump told Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Sept. 1.

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, addressed the claim on “Good Morning America” the same day.

“The point that the CDC was trying to make was that a certain percentage of them had nothing else but just COVID,” he said. “That does not mean that someone who has hypertension or diabetes who dies of COVID didn’t die of COVID-19 — they did.”

Trump retweeted the message from an account that sported the slogans and symbols of QAnon, a conspiracy movement that claims Democrats and Hollywood elites are members of an underground pedophilia ring.

False information moved between social media, Trump and TV, creating its own feedback loop.

“It’s an echo effect of sorts, where Donald Trump is certainly looking for information that resonates with his audiences and that supports his political objectives. And his audiences are looking to be amplified, so they’re incentivized to get him their information,” said Kate Starbird, an associate professor and misinformation expert at the University of Washington.

Weakening the Armor: Misleading on Masks

At the start of the pandemic, the CDC told healthy people not to wear masks, saying they were needed for health care providers on the front lines. But on April 3 the agency changed its guidelines, saying every American should wear non-medical cloth masks in public.

Trump announced the CDC’s guidance, then gutted it.

“So it’s voluntary. You don’t have to do it. They suggested for a period of time, but this is voluntary,” Trump said at a press briefing. “I don’t think I’m going to be doing it.”

Rather than an advance in best practices on coronavirus prevention, face masks turned into a dividing line between Trump’s political calculations and his decision-making as president. Americans didn’t see Trump wearing a mask until a July visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Meanwhile, disinformers flooded the internet with wild claims: Masks reduced oxygen. Masks trapped fungus. Masks trapped coronavirus. Masks just didn’t work.

In September, the CDC reported a correlation between people who went to bars and restaurants, where masks can’t consistently be worn, and positive COVID-19 test results. Bloggers and skeptical news outlets countered with a misleading report about masks.

On Oct. 13, the story landed on Fox News’ flagship show, “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” During the show, Carlson claimed “almost everyone — 85% — who got the coronavirus in July was wearing a mask.”

“So clearly [wearing a mask] doesn’t work the way they tell us it works,” Carlson said.

That’s wrong, and it misrepresented a small sample of people who tested positive. Public health officials and infectious disease experts have been consistent since April in saying that face masks are among the best ways to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

But two days later, Trump repeated the 85% stat during a rally and at a town hall with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie.

“I tell people, wear masks,” he said at the town hall. “But just the other day, they came out with a statement that 85% of the people that wear masks catch it.”

The Assault on Hospitals

On March 24, registered nurse Melissa Steiner worked her first shift in the new COVID-19 ICU of her southeastern Michigan hospital. After her 13-hour workday caring for two critically ill patients on ventilators, she posted a tearful video.

“Honestly, guys, it felt like I was working in a war zone,” Steiner said. “[I was] completely isolated from my team members, limited resources, limited supplies, limited responses from physicians because they’re just as overwhelmed.”

“I’m already breaking, so for f—’s sake, people, please take this seriously. This is so bad.”

Steiner’s post was one of many emotional pleas offered by overwhelmed hospital workers last spring urging people to take the threat seriously. The denialists mounted a counteroffensive.

On March 28, Todd Starnes, a conservative radio host and commentator, tweeted a video from outside Brooklyn Hospital Center. There were few people or cars in sight.

“This is the ‘war zone’ outside the hospital in my Brooklyn neighborhood,” Starnes said sarcastically. The video racked up more than 1.5 million views.

Starnes’ video was one of the first examples of #FilmYourHospital, a conspiratorial social media trend that pushed back on the idea that hospitals had been strained by a rapid influx of coronavirus patients.

Several internet personalities asked people to go out and shoot their own videos. The result: a series of user-generated clips taken outside hospitals, where the response to the pandemic was not easily seen. Over the course of a week, #FilmYourHospital videos were uploaded to YouTube and posted tens of thousands of times on Twitter and Facebook.

Nearly two weeks and more than 10,000 deaths later, Fox News featured a guest who opened a new misinformation assault on hospitals.

Dr. Scott Jensen, a Minnesota physician and Republican state senator, told Ingraham that, because hospitals were receiving more money for COVID-19 patients on Medicare — a result of a coronavirus stimulus bill — they were overcounting COVID-19 cases. He had no proof of fraud, but the cynical story took off.

Trump used the false report on the campaign trail to continue to minimize the death toll.

“Our doctors get more money if somebody dies from COVID,” Trump told supporters at a rally in Waterford, Michigan, on Oct. 30. “You know that, right? I mean, our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say, ‘I’m sorry, but, you know, everybody dies of COVID.’”

The Real Fake News: The Plandemic

The most viral disinformation of the pandemic was styled to look as if it had the blessing of people Americans trust: scientists and doctors.

In a 26-minute video called “Plandemic: The Hidden Agenda Behind COVID-19,” a former scientist at the National Cancer Institute claimed the virus was manipulated in a lab, hydroxychloroquine is effective against coronaviruses, and face masks make people sick.

Judy Mikovits’ conspiracies received more than 8 million views, partly credited to the online outrage machine — anti-vaccine activists, anti-lockdown groups and QAnon supporters — that push disinformation into the mainstream. The video was circulated in a coordinated effort to promote Mikovits’ book release.

Around the same time, a similar effort propelled another video of fact-averse doctors to millions of people in only a few hours.

On July 27, Breitbart published a clip of a press conference hosted by a group called America’s Frontline Doctors in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. Looking authoritative in white lab coats, these doctors discouraged mask-wearing and falsely said there was already a cure in hydroxychloroquine, a drug used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

Trump, who had been talking up the drug since March and claimed to be taking it himself as a preventive measure in May, retweeted clips of the event before Twitter removed them as misinformation about COVID-19. He defended the “very respected doctors” in a July 28 press conference.

When Olga Lucia Torres, a lecturer at Columbia University, heard Trump touting the drug in March, she knew it didn’t bode well for her own prescription. Sure enough, the misinformation led to a run on hydroxychloroquine, creating a shortage for Americans like her who needed the drug for chronic conditions.

A lupus patient, she went to her local pharmacy to request a 90-day supply of the medication. But she was told they were granting only partial refills. It took her three weeks to get her medication through the mail.

“What about all the people who were silenced and just lost access to their staple medication because people ran to their doctors and begged to take it?” Torres said.

No Sickbed Conversion

On Sept. 26, Trump hosted a Rose Garden ceremony to announce his nominee to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court. More than 150 people attended the event introducing Amy Coney Barrett. Few wore masks, and the chairs weren’t spaced out.

In the weeks afterward, more than two dozen people close to Trump and the White House became infected with COVID-19. Early on Oct. 2, Trump announced his positive test.

Those hoping the experience and Trump’s successful treatment at Walter Reed might inform his view of the coronavirus were disappointed. Trump snapped back into minimizing the threat during his first moments back at the White House. He yanked off his mask and recorded a video.

“Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it,” he said, describing experimental and mostly out-of-reach therapies he received. “You’re going to beat it.”

In Trump’s telling, his hospitalization was not the product of poor judgment about large gatherings like the Rose Garden event, but the consequence of leading with bravery. Plus, now, he claimed, he had immunity to the virus.

On the morning after he returned from Walter Reed, Trump tweeted a seasonal flu death count of 100,000 lives and added that COVID-19 was “far less lethal” for most populations. More false claims at odds with data — the U.S. average for flu deaths over the past decade is 36,000, and experts said COVID-19 is more deadly for each age group over 30.

When Trump left the hospital, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 was more than 200,000. Today it is more than 300,000. Meanwhile, this month the president has gone ahead with a series of indoor holiday parties.

The Vaccine War

The vaccine disinformation campaign started in the spring but is still underway.

In April, blogs and social media users falsely claimed Democrats and powerful figures like Bill Gates wanted to use microchips to track which Americans had been vaccinated for the coronavirus. Now, false claims are taking aim at vaccines developed by Pfizer and BioNTech and other companies.

• A blogger claimed Pfizer’s head of research said the coronavirus vaccine could cause female infertility. That’s false.
• An alternative health website wrote that the vaccine could cause an array of life-threatening side effects, and that the FDA knew about it. The list included all possible — not confirmed— side effects.
• Social media users speculated that the federal government would force Americans to receive the vaccine. Neither Trump nor President-elect Joe Biden has advocated for that, and the federal government doesn’t have the power to mandate vaccines, anyway.

As is often the case with disinformation, the strategy is to deliver it with a charade of certainty.

“People are anxious and scared right now,” said Dr. Seema Yasmin, director of research and education programs at the Stanford Health Communication Initiative. “They’re looking for a whole picture.”

Most polls have shown far from universal acceptance of vaccines, with only 50% to 70% of respondents willing to take the vaccine. Black and Hispanic Americans are even less likely to take it so far.

Meanwhile, the future course of the coronavirus in the U.S. depends on whether Americans take public health guidance to heart. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projected that, without mask mandates or a rapid vaccine rollout, the death toll could rise to more than 500,000 by April 2021.

“How can we come to terms with all that when people are living in separate informational realities?” Starbird said.

PolitiFact staff researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

Note: Readers can find the detailed source list for this story, as well as PolitiFact’s related coverage, or vote in the Lie of the Year Readers’ Choice Poll at PolitiFact.com.

 

[Leongsam]

https://khn.org/news/article/lie-of-the-year-the-downplay-and-denial-of-the-coronavirus/

Lie of the Year: The Downplay and Denial of the Coronavirus
By Daniel Funke, PolitiFact and Katie Sanders, PolitiFactDECEMBER 16, 2020


A Florida taxi driver and his wife had seen enough conspiracy theories online to believe the virus was overblown, maybe even a hoax. So no masks for them. Then they got sick. She died. A college lecturer had trouble refilling her lupus drug after the president promoted it as a treatment for the new disease. A hospital nurse broke down when an ICU patient insisted his illness was nothing worse than the flu, oblivious to the silence in beds next door.

Lies infected America in 2020. The very worst were not just damaging, but deadly.

President Donald Trump fueled confusion and conspiracies from the earliest days of the coronavirus pandemic. He embraced theories that COVID-19 accounted for only a small fraction of the thousands upon thousands of deaths. He undermined public health guidance for wearing masks and cast Dr. Anthony Fauci as an unreliable flip-flopper.

But the infodemic was not the work of a single person.

Anonymous bad actors offered up junk science. Online skeptics made bogus accusations that hospitals padded their coronavirus case numbers to generate bonus payments. Influential TV and radio opinion hosts told millions of viewers that physical distancing was a joke and that states had all of the personal protective equipment they needed (when they didn’t).

It was a symphony of counter-narrative, and Trump was the conductor, if not the composer. The message: The threat to your health was overhyped to hurt the political fortunes of the president.

Every year, PolitiFact editors review the year’s most inaccurate statements to elevate one as the Lie of the Year. The “award” goes to a statement, or a collection of claims, that prove to be of substantive consequence in undermining reality.

It has become harder and harder to choose when cynical pundits and politicians don’t pay much of a price for saying things that aren’t true. For the past month, unproven claims of massive election fraud have tested democratic institutions and certainly qualify as historic and dangerously baldfaced. Fortunately, the constitutional foundations that undergird American democracy are holding.

Meanwhile, the coronavirus has killed more than 300,000 in the United States, a crisis exacerbated by the reckless spread of falsehoods.

PolitiFact’s 2020 Lie of the Year: claims that deny, downplay or disinform about COVID-19.

‘I Wanted to Always Play It Down’

On Feb. 7, Trump leveled with book author Bob Woodward about the dangers of the new virus that was spreading across the world, originating in central China. He told the legendary reporter that the virus was airborne, tricky and “more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”

Trump told the public something else. On Feb. 26, the president appeared with his coronavirus task force in the crowded White House briefing room. A reporter asked if he was telling healthy Americans not to change their behavior.

“Wash your hands, stay clean. You don’t have to necessarily grab every handrail unless you have to,” he said, the room chuckling. “I mean, view this the same as the flu.”

Three weeks later, March 19, he acknowledged to Woodward: “To be honest with you, I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down. Because I don’t want to create a panic.”

His acolytes in politics and the media were on the same page. Rush Limbaugh told his audience of about 15 million on Feb. 24 that the coronavirus was being weaponized against Trump when it was just “the common cold, folks.” That’s wrong — even in the early weeks, it was clear the virus had a higher fatality rate than the common cold, with worse potential side effects, too.

As the virus was spreading, so was the message to downplay it.

“There are lots of sources of misinformation, and there are lots of elected officials besides Trump that have not taken the virus seriously or promoted misinformation,” said Brendan Nyhan, a government professor at Dartmouth College. “It’s not solely a Trump story — and it’s important to not take everyone else’s role out of the narrative.”

Hijacking the Numbers

In August, there was a growing movement on Twitter to question the disproportionately high U.S. COVID-19 death toll.

The skeptics cited Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data to claim that only 6% of COVID-19 deaths could actually be attributed to the virus. On Aug. 24, BlazeTV host Steve Deace amplified it on Facebook.

“Here’s the percentage of people who died OF or FROM Covid with no underlying comorbidity,” he said to his 120,000 followers. “According to CDC, that is just 6% of the deaths WITH Covid so far.”

That misrepresented the reality of coronavirus deaths. The CDC had always said people with underlying health problems — comorbidities — were most vulnerable if they caught COVID-19. The report was noting that 6% died even without being at obvious risk.

But for those skeptical of COVID-19, the narrative confirmed their beliefs. Facebook users copied and pasted language from influencers like Amiri King, who had 2.2 million Facebook followers before he was banned. The Gateway Pundit called it a “SHOCK REPORT.”

“I saw a statistic come out the other day, talking about only 6% of the people actually died from COVID, which is very interesting — that they died from other reasons,” Trump told Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Sept. 1.

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, addressed the claim on “Good Morning America” the same day.

“The point that the CDC was trying to make was that a certain percentage of them had nothing else but just COVID,” he said. “That does not mean that someone who has hypertension or diabetes who dies of COVID didn’t die of COVID-19 — they did.”

Trump retweeted the message from an account that sported the slogans and symbols of QAnon, a conspiracy movement that claims Democrats and Hollywood elites are members of an underground pedophilia ring.

False information moved between social media, Trump and TV, creating its own feedback loop.

“It’s an echo effect of sorts, where Donald Trump is certainly looking for information that resonates with his audiences and that supports his political objectives. And his audiences are looking to be amplified, so they’re incentivized to get him their information,” said Kate Starbird, an associate professor and misinformation expert at the University of Washington.

Weakening the Armor: Misleading on Masks

At the start of the pandemic, the CDC told healthy people not to wear masks, saying they were needed for health care providers on the front lines. But on April 3 the agency changed its guidelines, saying every American should wear non-medical cloth masks in public.

Trump announced the CDC’s guidance, then gutted it.

“So it’s voluntary. You don’t have to do it. They suggested for a period of time, but this is voluntary,” Trump said at a press briefing. “I don’t think I’m going to be doing it.”

Rather than an advance in best practices on coronavirus prevention, face masks turned into a dividing line between Trump’s political calculations and his decision-making as president. Americans didn’t see Trump wearing a mask until a July visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Meanwhile, disinformers flooded the internet with wild claims: Masks reduced oxygen. Masks trapped fungus. Masks trapped coronavirus. Masks just didn’t work.

In September, the CDC reported a correlation between people who went to bars and restaurants, where masks can’t consistently be worn, and positive COVID-19 test results. Bloggers and skeptical news outlets countered with a misleading report about masks.

On Oct. 13, the story landed on Fox News’ flagship show, “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” During the show, Carlson claimed “almost everyone — 85% — who got the coronavirus in July was wearing a mask.”

“So clearly [wearing a mask] doesn’t work the way they tell us it works,” Carlson said.

That’s wrong, and it misrepresented a small sample of people who tested positive. Public health officials and infectious disease experts have been consistent since April in saying that face masks are among the best ways to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

But two days later, Trump repeated the 85% stat during a rally and at a town hall with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie.

“I tell people, wear masks,” he said at the town hall. “But just the other day, they came out with a statement that 85% of the people that wear masks catch it.”

The Assault on Hospitals

On March 24, registered nurse Melissa Steiner worked her first shift in the new COVID-19 ICU of her southeastern Michigan hospital. After her 13-hour workday caring for two critically ill patients on ventilators, she posted a tearful video.

“Honestly, guys, it felt like I was working in a war zone,” Steiner said. “[I was] completely isolated from my team members, limited resources, limited supplies, limited responses from physicians because they’re just as overwhelmed.”

“I’m already breaking, so for f—’s sake, people, please take this seriously. This is so bad.”

Steiner’s post was one of many emotional pleas offered by overwhelmed hospital workers last spring urging people to take the threat seriously. The denialists mounted a counteroffensive.

On March 28, Todd Starnes, a conservative radio host and commentator, tweeted a video from outside Brooklyn Hospital Center. There were few people or cars in sight.

“This is the ‘war zone’ outside the hospital in my Brooklyn neighborhood,” Starnes said sarcastically. The video racked up more than 1.5 million views.

Starnes’ video was one of the first examples of #FilmYourHospital, a conspiratorial social media trend that pushed back on the idea that hospitals had been strained by a rapid influx of coronavirus patients.

Several internet personalities asked people to go out and shoot their own videos. The result: a series of user-generated clips taken outside hospitals, where the response to the pandemic was not easily seen. Over the course of a week, #FilmYourHospital videos were uploaded to YouTube and posted tens of thousands of times on Twitter and Facebook.

Nearly two weeks and more than 10,000 deaths later, Fox News featured a guest who opened a new misinformation assault on hospitals.

Dr. Scott Jensen, a Minnesota physician and Republican state senator, told Ingraham that, because hospitals were receiving more money for COVID-19 patients on Medicare — a result of a coronavirus stimulus bill — they were overcounting COVID-19 cases. He had no proof of fraud, but the cynical story took off.

Trump used the false report on the campaign trail to continue to minimize the death toll.

“Our doctors get more money if somebody dies from COVID,” Trump told supporters at a rally in Waterford, Michigan, on Oct. 30. “You know that, right? I mean, our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say, ‘I’m sorry, but, you know, everybody dies of COVID.’”

The Real Fake News: The Plandemic

The most viral disinformation of the pandemic was styled to look as if it had the blessing of people Americans trust: scientists and doctors.

In a 26-minute video called “Plandemic: The Hidden Agenda Behind COVID-19,” a former scientist at the National Cancer Institute claimed the virus was manipulated in a lab, hydroxychloroquine is effective against coronaviruses, and face masks make people sick.

Judy Mikovits’ conspiracies received more than 8 million views, partly credited to the online outrage machine — anti-vaccine activists, anti-lockdown groups and QAnon supporters — that push disinformation into the mainstream. The video was circulated in a coordinated effort to promote Mikovits’ book release.

Around the same time, a similar effort propelled another video of fact-averse doctors to millions of people in only a few hours.

On July 27, Breitbart published a clip of a press conference hosted by a group called America’s Frontline Doctors in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. Looking authoritative in white lab coats, these doctors discouraged mask-wearing and falsely said there was already a cure in hydroxychloroquine, a drug used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

Trump, who had been talking up the drug since March and claimed to be taking it himself as a preventive measure in May, retweeted clips of the event before Twitter removed them as misinformation about COVID-19. He defended the “very respected doctors” in a July 28 press conference.

When Olga Lucia Torres, a lecturer at Columbia University, heard Trump touting the drug in March, she knew it didn’t bode well for her own prescription. Sure enough, the misinformation led to a run on hydroxychloroquine, creating a shortage for Americans like her who needed the drug for chronic conditions.

A lupus patient, she went to her local pharmacy to request a 90-day supply of the medication. But she was told they were granting only partial refills. It took her three weeks to get her medication through the mail.

“What about all the people who were silenced and just lost access to their staple medication because people ran to their doctors and begged to take it?” Torres said.

No Sickbed Conversion

On Sept. 26, Trump hosted a Rose Garden ceremony to announce his nominee to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court. More than 150 people attended the event introducing Amy Coney Barrett. Few wore masks, and the chairs weren’t spaced out.

In the weeks afterward, more than two dozen people close to Trump and the White House became infected with COVID-19. Early on Oct. 2, Trump announced his positive test.

Those hoping the experience and Trump’s successful treatment at Walter Reed might inform his view of the coronavirus were disappointed. Trump snapped back into minimizing the threat during his first moments back at the White House. He yanked off his mask and recorded a video.

“Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it,” he said, describing experimental and mostly out-of-reach therapies he received. “You’re going to beat it.”

In Trump’s telling, his hospitalization was not the product of poor judgment about large gatherings like the Rose Garden event, but the consequence of leading with bravery. Plus, now, he claimed, he had immunity to the virus.

On the morning after he returned from Walter Reed, Trump tweeted a seasonal flu death count of 100,000 lives and added that COVID-19 was “far less lethal” for most populations. More false claims at odds with data — the U.S. average for flu deaths over the past decade is 36,000, and experts said COVID-19 is more deadly for each age group over 30.

When Trump left the hospital, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 was more than 200,000. Today it is more than 300,000. Meanwhile, this month the president has gone ahead with a series of indoor holiday parties.

The Vaccine War

The vaccine disinformation campaign started in the spring but is still underway.

In April, blogs and social media users falsely claimed Democrats and powerful figures like Bill Gates wanted to use microchips to track which Americans had been vaccinated for the coronavirus. Now, false claims are taking aim at vaccines developed by Pfizer and BioNTech and other companies.

• A blogger claimed Pfizer’s head of research said the coronavirus vaccine could cause female infertility. That’s false.
• An alternative health website wrote that the vaccine could cause an array of life-threatening side effects, and that the FDA knew about it. The list included all possible — not confirmed— side effects.
• Social media users speculated that the federal government would force Americans to receive the vaccine. Neither Trump nor President-elect Joe Biden has advocated for that, and the federal government doesn’t have the power to mandate vaccines, anyway.

As is often the case with disinformation, the strategy is to deliver it with a charade of certainty.

“People are anxious and scared right now,” said Dr. Seema Yasmin, director of research and education programs at the Stanford Health Communication Initiative. “They’re looking for a whole picture.”

Most polls have shown far from universal acceptance of vaccines, with only 50% to 70% of respondents willing to take the vaccine. Black and Hispanic Americans are even less likely to take it so far.

Meanwhile, the future course of the coronavirus in the U.S. depends on whether Americans take public health guidance to heart. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projected that, without mask mandates or a rapid vaccine rollout, the death toll could rise to more than 500,000 by April 2021.

“How can we come to terms with all that when people are living in separate informational realities?” Starbird said.

PolitiFact staff researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

Note: Readers can find the detailed source list for this story, as well as PolitiFact’s related coverage, or vote in the Lie of the Year Readers’ Choice Poll at PolitiFact.com.

The article is just an opinion. People die all the time for all sorts of reasons.

California followed all the so called guidelines but death toll there is no different.

The fact remains that Covid has killed only 0.035% of the population. It is not even a pinprick.

 

[cowbellc]

That is why it's important to be exposed to as many viruses as possible.

everyday i wish there is a virus that wipe out entire human. or a big space rock that smash into earth

 

[capamerica]

The article is just an opinion. People die all the time for all sorts of reasons.

California followed all the so called guidelines but death toll there is no different.

The fact remains that Covid has killed only 0.035% of the population. It is not even a pinprick.

You mean your opinion. I have facts you don't. And your opinion is terrible to boot.

 

[capamerica]

https://khn.org/news/article/lie-of-the-year-the-downplay-and-denial-of-the-coronavirus/

Lie of the Year: The Downplay and Denial of the Coronavirus
By Daniel Funke, PolitiFact and Katie Sanders, PolitiFactDECEMBER 16, 2020


A Florida taxi driver and his wife had seen enough conspiracy theories online to believe the virus was overblown, maybe even a hoax. So no masks for them. Then they got sick. She died. A college lecturer had trouble refilling her lupus drug after the president promoted it as a treatment for the new disease. A hospital nurse broke down when an ICU patient insisted his illness was nothing worse than the flu, oblivious to the silence in beds next door.

Lies infected America in 2020. The very worst were not just damaging, but deadly.

President Donald Trump fueled confusion and conspiracies from the earliest days of the coronavirus pandemic. He embraced theories that COVID-19 accounted for only a small fraction of the thousands upon thousands of deaths. He undermined public health guidance for wearing masks and cast Dr. Anthony Fauci as an unreliable flip-flopper.

But the infodemic was not the work of a single person.

Anonymous bad actors offered up junk science. Online skeptics made bogus accusations that hospitals padded their coronavirus case numbers to generate bonus payments. Influential TV and radio opinion hosts told millions of viewers that physical distancing was a joke and that states had all of the personal protective equipment they needed (when they didn’t).

It was a symphony of counter-narrative, and Trump was the conductor, if not the composer. The message: The threat to your health was overhyped to hurt the political fortunes of the president.

Every year, PolitiFact editors review the year’s most inaccurate statements to elevate one as the Lie of the Year. The “award” goes to a statement, or a collection of claims, that prove to be of substantive consequence in undermining reality.

It has become harder and harder to choose when cynical pundits and politicians don’t pay much of a price for saying things that aren’t true. For the past month, unproven claims of massive election fraud have tested democratic institutions and certainly qualify as historic and dangerously baldfaced. Fortunately, the constitutional foundations that undergird American democracy are holding.

Meanwhile, the coronavirus has killed more than 300,000 in the United States, a crisis exacerbated by the reckless spread of falsehoods.

PolitiFact’s 2020 Lie of the Year: claims that deny, downplay or disinform about COVID-19.

‘I Wanted to Always Play It Down’

On Feb. 7, Trump leveled with book author Bob Woodward about the dangers of the new virus that was spreading across the world, originating in central China. He told the legendary reporter that the virus was airborne, tricky and “more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”

Trump told the public something else. On Feb. 26, the president appeared with his coronavirus task force in the crowded White House briefing room. A reporter asked if he was telling healthy Americans not to change their behavior.

“Wash your hands, stay clean. You don’t have to necessarily grab every handrail unless you have to,” he said, the room chuckling. “I mean, view this the same as the flu.”

Three weeks later, March 19, he acknowledged to Woodward: “To be honest with you, I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down. Because I don’t want to create a panic.”

His acolytes in politics and the media were on the same page. Rush Limbaugh told his audience of about 15 million on Feb. 24 that the coronavirus was being weaponized against Trump when it was just “the common cold, folks.” That’s wrong — even in the early weeks, it was clear the virus had a higher fatality rate than the common cold, with worse potential side effects, too.

As the virus was spreading, so was the message to downplay it.

“There are lots of sources of misinformation, and there are lots of elected officials besides Trump that have not taken the virus seriously or promoted misinformation,” said Brendan Nyhan, a government professor at Dartmouth College. “It’s not solely a Trump story — and it’s important to not take everyone else’s role out of the narrative.”

Hijacking the Numbers

In August, there was a growing movement on Twitter to question the disproportionately high U.S. COVID-19 death toll.

The skeptics cited Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data to claim that only 6% of COVID-19 deaths could actually be attributed to the virus. On Aug. 24, BlazeTV host Steve Deace amplified it on Facebook.

“Here’s the percentage of people who died OF or FROM Covid with no underlying comorbidity,” he said to his 120,000 followers. “According to CDC, that is just 6% of the deaths WITH Covid so far.”

That misrepresented the reality of coronavirus deaths. The CDC had always said people with underlying health problems — comorbidities — were most vulnerable if they caught COVID-19. The report was noting that 6% died even without being at obvious risk.

But for those skeptical of COVID-19, the narrative confirmed their beliefs. Facebook users copied and pasted language from influencers like Amiri King, who had 2.2 million Facebook followers before he was banned. The Gateway Pundit called it a “SHOCK REPORT.”

“I saw a statistic come out the other day, talking about only 6% of the people actually died from COVID, which is very interesting — that they died from other reasons,” Trump told Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Sept. 1.

Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, addressed the claim on “Good Morning America” the same day.

“The point that the CDC was trying to make was that a certain percentage of them had nothing else but just COVID,” he said. “That does not mean that someone who has hypertension or diabetes who dies of COVID didn’t die of COVID-19 — they did.”

Trump retweeted the message from an account that sported the slogans and symbols of QAnon, a conspiracy movement that claims Democrats and Hollywood elites are members of an underground pedophilia ring.

False information moved between social media, Trump and TV, creating its own feedback loop.

“It’s an echo effect of sorts, where Donald Trump is certainly looking for information that resonates with his audiences and that supports his political objectives. And his audiences are looking to be amplified, so they’re incentivized to get him their information,” said Kate Starbird, an associate professor and misinformation expert at the University of Washington.

Weakening the Armor: Misleading on Masks

At the start of the pandemic, the CDC told healthy people not to wear masks, saying they were needed for health care providers on the front lines. But on April 3 the agency changed its guidelines, saying every American should wear non-medical cloth masks in public.

Trump announced the CDC’s guidance, then gutted it.

“So it’s voluntary. You don’t have to do it. They suggested for a period of time, but this is voluntary,” Trump said at a press briefing. “I don’t think I’m going to be doing it.”

Rather than an advance in best practices on coronavirus prevention, face masks turned into a dividing line between Trump’s political calculations and his decision-making as president. Americans didn’t see Trump wearing a mask until a July visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

Meanwhile, disinformers flooded the internet with wild claims: Masks reduced oxygen. Masks trapped fungus. Masks trapped coronavirus. Masks just didn’t work.

In September, the CDC reported a correlation between people who went to bars and restaurants, where masks can’t consistently be worn, and positive COVID-19 test results. Bloggers and skeptical news outlets countered with a misleading report about masks.

On Oct. 13, the story landed on Fox News’ flagship show, “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” During the show, Carlson claimed “almost everyone — 85% — who got the coronavirus in July was wearing a mask.”

“So clearly [wearing a mask] doesn’t work the way they tell us it works,” Carlson said.

That’s wrong, and it misrepresented a small sample of people who tested positive. Public health officials and infectious disease experts have been consistent since April in saying that face masks are among the best ways to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

But two days later, Trump repeated the 85% stat during a rally and at a town hall with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie.

“I tell people, wear masks,” he said at the town hall. “But just the other day, they came out with a statement that 85% of the people that wear masks catch it.”

The Assault on Hospitals

On March 24, registered nurse Melissa Steiner worked her first shift in the new COVID-19 ICU of her southeastern Michigan hospital. After her 13-hour workday caring for two critically ill patients on ventilators, she posted a tearful video.

“Honestly, guys, it felt like I was working in a war zone,” Steiner said. “[I was] completely isolated from my team members, limited resources, limited supplies, limited responses from physicians because they’re just as overwhelmed.”

“I’m already breaking, so for f—’s sake, people, please take this seriously. This is so bad.”

Steiner’s post was one of many emotional pleas offered by overwhelmed hospital workers last spring urging people to take the threat seriously. The denialists mounted a counteroffensive.

On March 28, Todd Starnes, a conservative radio host and commentator, tweeted a video from outside Brooklyn Hospital Center. There were few people or cars in sight.

“This is the ‘war zone’ outside the hospital in my Brooklyn neighborhood,” Starnes said sarcastically. The video racked up more than 1.5 million views.

Starnes’ video was one of the first examples of #FilmYourHospital, a conspiratorial social media trend that pushed back on the idea that hospitals had been strained by a rapid influx of coronavirus patients.

Several internet personalities asked people to go out and shoot their own videos. The result: a series of user-generated clips taken outside hospitals, where the response to the pandemic was not easily seen. Over the course of a week, #FilmYourHospital videos were uploaded to YouTube and posted tens of thousands of times on Twitter and Facebook.

Nearly two weeks and more than 10,000 deaths later, Fox News featured a guest who opened a new misinformation assault on hospitals.

Dr. Scott Jensen, a Minnesota physician and Republican state senator, told Ingraham that, because hospitals were receiving more money for COVID-19 patients on Medicare — a result of a coronavirus stimulus bill — they were overcounting COVID-19 cases. He had no proof of fraud, but the cynical story took off.

Trump used the false report on the campaign trail to continue to minimize the death toll.

“Our doctors get more money if somebody dies from COVID,” Trump told supporters at a rally in Waterford, Michigan, on Oct. 30. “You know that, right? I mean, our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say, ‘I’m sorry, but, you know, everybody dies of COVID.’”

The Real Fake News: The Plandemic

The most viral disinformation of the pandemic was styled to look as if it had the blessing of people Americans trust: scientists and doctors.

In a 26-minute video called “Plandemic: The Hidden Agenda Behind COVID-19,” a former scientist at the National Cancer Institute claimed the virus was manipulated in a lab, hydroxychloroquine is effective against coronaviruses, and face masks make people sick.

Judy Mikovits’ conspiracies received more than 8 million views, partly credited to the online outrage machine — anti-vaccine activists, anti-lockdown groups and QAnon supporters — that push disinformation into the mainstream. The video was circulated in a coordinated effort to promote Mikovits’ book release.

Around the same time, a similar effort propelled another video of fact-averse doctors to millions of people in only a few hours.

On July 27, Breitbart published a clip of a press conference hosted by a group called America’s Frontline Doctors in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. Looking authoritative in white lab coats, these doctors discouraged mask-wearing and falsely said there was already a cure in hydroxychloroquine, a drug used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

Trump, who had been talking up the drug since March and claimed to be taking it himself as a preventive measure in May, retweeted clips of the event before Twitter removed them as misinformation about COVID-19. He defended the “very respected doctors” in a July 28 press conference.

When Olga Lucia Torres, a lecturer at Columbia University, heard Trump touting the drug in March, she knew it didn’t bode well for her own prescription. Sure enough, the misinformation led to a run on hydroxychloroquine, creating a shortage for Americans like her who needed the drug for chronic conditions.

A lupus patient, she went to her local pharmacy to request a 90-day supply of the medication. But she was told they were granting only partial refills. It took her three weeks to get her medication through the mail.

“What about all the people who were silenced and just lost access to their staple medication because people ran to their doctors and begged to take it?” Torres said.

No Sickbed Conversion

On Sept. 26, Trump hosted a Rose Garden ceremony to announce his nominee to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court. More than 150 people attended the event introducing Amy Coney Barrett. Few wore masks, and the chairs weren’t spaced out.

In the weeks afterward, more than two dozen people close to Trump and the White House became infected with COVID-19. Early on Oct. 2, Trump announced his positive test.

Those hoping the experience and Trump’s successful treatment at Walter Reed might inform his view of the coronavirus were disappointed. Trump snapped back into minimizing the threat during his first moments back at the White House. He yanked off his mask and recorded a video.

“Don’t let it dominate you. Don’t be afraid of it,” he said, describing experimental and mostly out-of-reach therapies he received. “You’re going to beat it.”

In Trump’s telling, his hospitalization was not the product of poor judgment about large gatherings like the Rose Garden event, but the consequence of leading with bravery. Plus, now, he claimed, he had immunity to the virus.

On the morning after he returned from Walter Reed, Trump tweeted a seasonal flu death count of 100,000 lives and added that COVID-19 was “far less lethal” for most populations. More false claims at odds with data — the U.S. average for flu deaths over the past decade is 36,000, and experts said COVID-19 is more deadly for each age group over 30.

When Trump left the hospital, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 was more than 200,000. Today it is more than 300,000. Meanwhile, this month the president has gone ahead with a series of indoor holiday parties.

The Vaccine War

The vaccine disinformation campaign started in the spring but is still underway.

In April, blogs and social media users falsely claimed Democrats and powerful figures like Bill Gates wanted to use microchips to track which Americans had been vaccinated for the coronavirus. Now, false claims are taking aim at vaccines developed by Pfizer and BioNTech and other companies.

• A blogger claimed Pfizer’s head of research said the coronavirus vaccine could cause female infertility. That’s false.
• An alternative health website wrote that the vaccine could cause an array of life-threatening side effects, and that the FDA knew about it. The list included all possible — not confirmed— side effects.
• Social media users speculated that the federal government would force Americans to receive the vaccine. Neither Trump nor President-elect Joe Biden has advocated for that, and the federal government doesn’t have the power to mandate vaccines, anyway.

As is often the case with disinformation, the strategy is to deliver it with a charade of certainty.

“People are anxious and scared right now,” said Dr. Seema Yasmin, director of research and education programs at the Stanford Health Communication Initiative. “They’re looking for a whole picture.”

Most polls have shown far from universal acceptance of vaccines, with only 50% to 70% of respondents willing to take the vaccine. Black and Hispanic Americans are even less likely to take it so far.

Meanwhile, the future course of the coronavirus in the U.S. depends on whether Americans take public health guidance to heart. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projected that, without mask mandates or a rapid vaccine rollout, the death toll could rise to more than 500,000 by April 2021.

“How can we come to terms with all that when people are living in separate informational realities?” Starbird said.

PolitiFact staff researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

Note: Readers can find the detailed source list for this story, as well as PolitiFact’s related coverage, or vote in the Lie of the Year Readers’ Choice Poll at PolitiFact.com.

its because he has no real data to back up any of his pathetic claims about masks, etc.

So the alternative is to pretend there is no such thing as the Pandemic. You can see this on alt right wing websites for the fringe lunatics of our society.