COVID-19 which is caused by the novel coronavirus has been plaguing the world with fear with a current death toll reaching more than 3,000, with majority of this in mainland China were the virus first emerged and the rest from 67 other countries. The virus also continues to spread with more than 88,000 global cases across all continents except Antarctica.
However, it is not only the disease that continues to spread like wildfire but also hoaxes and conspiracy theories about the virus that adds even more fuel to the already raging terror that the disease has brought. This misleading information has caused unwarranted fright, harmful stigmatization and even fueled racism. Hence, we have identified and debunked some of the most insidious hoaxes about COVID-19.
Hoax No. 1 : China plotted to "exterminate" people infected with COVID-19
Social media was flooded with a disturbing news that China has sought the permission of its Supreme Court to conduct a mass killing of all people infected with the virus in order to put a stop to the outbreak. This, however, was debunked by several fact-checkers saying there is no truth to the allegations. One of the biggest red flags of the claim is that the website it was initially published on is disreputable and has published a lot of fake news in the past years.
Hoax No. 2 : It was already predicted by scientists that 65million people will die of COVID-19.
In October of 2019, an exercise that aimed to simulate the global response to a potential pandemic was ran by John Hopkins Research Center. During the peak of the coronavirus outbreak, people were able to come across the said exercise and erroneously linked its predictions to what is currently happening with the worldwide spread of the virus. The research center, however, said that the allegations are not true and that they only modeled a fictional pandemic and are not predicting the death of 65 million people from COVID-19.
Hoax No. 3 : Novel Coronavirus is a man-made biological weapon that leaked from a bio-safety level 4 laboratory in Wuhan.
As of the moment, the origin of the 2019 ncov is still unknown. Officials have early on speculated that it is linked to the wet market in Wuhan, but there is no proof yet of how it developed. However, there have been conspiracy theories that the virus is an upgraded version of the bat virus RatG13 that is being studied in a laboratory in Wuhan which leaked and caused the outbreak. A Taiwanese professor even claimed that the amino acid growth in the novel coronavirus is not natural and that it was developed in a laboratory. This theory has created a stigma and has caused racism against the Chinese, which is the last thing they need during the outbreak. These claims remain unverified and will remain that way unless further substantiated with proof.
Hoax No. 4 : A coronavirus hospital was built in China overnight.
This was one of the biggest hoaxes to blow up and that is due to the fact that the Chinese state media was the one who spread the news. Chinese media outlets, Global Times and People's Daily posted photos of a newly constructed building claiming that it was a hospital that was built in a very fast pace in order to accommodate the growing number of COVID-19 patients. However, it was found out the picture was of an apartment complex. This hoax shows that the Chinese government has tried to portray that the whole coronavirus situation was under control.
These are only a few of the fabricated stories and conspiracy theories that surround the spread of coronavirus. With the disease still bringing fright and causing panic around the world, these kinds of false information are the last thing that is needed. What we all need to remember is that the one thing far deadlier than a pandemic is the anxiety and terror that these false claims bring.
