ASSOCIATED PRESS
Steve, right, and Chris Brophy, husband and wife of Brickley’s Ice Cream, looked at the store they closed after the teens were harassed by consumers who refused to wear a mask or distance themselves socially, in Wakefield, Rhode Island, today.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
On July 22, people covered a physical care employee at a cell coronavirus test site at Charles Drew Medical and Science University in Los Angeles. As the world struggles to find a vaccine and cure for COVID-19, it is said that there is no antidote to sight against the fledgling epidemic of coronavirus conspiracy theories, deception, anti-masking myths and fake treatments.
PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island – While the global fight for a vaccine and a remedy for COVID-19, there is supposedly no antidote to sight of the nascent epidemic of conspiracy theories, deception, anti-masking myths and false remedies.
The phenomenon, which is largely found on social media, intensified this week when President Donald Trump retwed a fake video about a malaria drug that is a cure for the virus and revealed that Russian intelligence agencies were spreading incorrect information about the crisis through English-based websites.
Experts are concerned that the torrent of bad news is dangerously undermining efforts to curb the virus, which has now reached 150,000 deaths in the United States, worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University’s tally. More than a million people have died in the rest of the world.
The hardest-hit Florida reported 216 deaths, breaking the record for one day it set the day before. Texas showed 313 more deaths, raising its total to 6,190, while the death toll in South Carolina exceeded 1,500 this week, more than double last month. In Georgia, hospitalizations have more than doubled since July 1.
“It’s a genuine challenge in terms of trying to get the message to the public about what they can really do to protect themselves and the facts of the problem,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Diseases at the University of Minnesota. Research and politics.
He said the concern was that “people will be put at risk because they don’t have to fight the virus.”
Instead of fading to the new evidence, the claims have flourished, fed through combined messages from officials, transmitted on social media, amplified through leaders like Trump and mutated when faced with contradictory facts.
“You don’t want masks. There’s a cure,” Dr. Stella Immanuel promised in a video that sells hydroxychloroquine. “You don’t want other people locked up.”
The truth: last month, federal regulators revoked their approval of the drug as an emergency remedy amid growing evidence that it is not working and can have fatal side effects. Even if it were effective, it would not negate the need for masks and other measures to involve the epidemic.
None of this has prevented Trump, who has praised the drug, from retweating the video. Twitter and Facebook began deleting the video Monday for violating COVID-19’s misinformation policies, but had already been viewed more than 20 million times.
Many of the claims in Emmanuel’s video are widely questioned through medical experts. She has made even more statements in the past, saying that cysts, fibroids and sure that other situations can be caused through sex with demons, that McDonald’s and Pokémon publicitate witchcraft, that extraterrestrial DNA is used in medical remedies, and that the human part is “reptile”. paintings in the government.
Other unsubstantiated theories and deceptions have claimed that the virus is genuine or that it is a biological weapon created throughout the United States or its adversaries. A hoax in the first few months of the outbreak claimed that the new 5G towers were spreading the virus through the microwave. A folk tale says Microsoft founder Bill Gates planned to use COVID-19 vaccines to implant microchips in the world’s 7 billion people.
Then there are the political theories: that doctors, hounds, and the federal government conspire to lie about the risk of the virus of politically damaging Trump.
Social media amplified demands and helped believers locate each other. The avalanche of incorrect information posed a challenge for Facebook, Twitter and other platforms, who were accused of censorship for getting rid of incorrect virus information.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was asked about Emmanuel’s video during a debatable congressional hearing today.
“We got rid of him because he violated our policies,” Zuckerberg said.
U.S. Rep. David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat who leads the hearing, responded by noting that another 20 million people had noticed the video before Facebook acted.
“Doesn’t that mean that your platform is so big, that even with the right policies in place, it can’t involve fatal content?” Cicillin asked Zuckerberg.
This was not the first video to contain data about the virus, and experts say it’s probably not the last.
A 26-minute video from professionals that states that the government’s top infectious disease specialist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, manufactured the virus and sent it to China seen more than 8 million times before the platforms acted. The video, titled “Plandemic”, also warned that the mask may cause health problems, the false claim That Facebook quoted when removing the video from its site.
Judy Mikovits, the discredited physician “Plandemic”, was scheduled to appear on Sinclair Broadcast Group’s “America This Week”. But the company, which operates television channels in 81 U.S. markets, has retained the segment, saying it was “not appropriate” to broadcast it.
This week, U.S. government officials Speaking under anonymity, they cited what they said was a transparent link between Russian intelligence and internet sites with stories designed to spread data about coronavirus in the West. Russian officials have denied the allegations.
Of all the countless claims about the virus, those relating to the mask are among the most tenacious.
Carlos Lopez, a New York City resident, said he wore a mask if necessary, but he didn’t think it necessary.
“They politicize it as a tool,” he said. “I think it’s more about making Trump lose. It’s more of a scare tactic.”
He’s in the minority. A recent AP/NORC vote said that 3 out of four Americans, Democrats and Republicans, have a national mask mandate.
However, the sceptics of the mask are a vocal minority and have combined to create social media pages where many false statements about the protection of the mask are shared. Facebook has removed some pages, such as the Unmasking America !organization, which had nearly 10,000 members, but others remain.
At the beginning of the pandemic, the medical government itself caused a great deal of confusion about the masks. In February, officials like the U.S. surgeon general suggested americans not buy masks because they were mandatory for the workers’ medical corps and possibly would not be effective in situations.
Public fitness officials changed their minds when it became clear that the virus could spread among other people without symptoms.
Still, Trump has been reluctant to wear a mask, mocked his rival Joe Biden for dressing up with one, and warned that other people can simply cover their faces just to hurt him politically. He made a brutal 180-degree turn this month, claiming he had supported the mask, and then retwed Emmanuel’s opposite video to the mask.
Mixed signals hurt, Fauci said in an interview with NPR this month.
“The message at first is confusing,” he said.
Many claims about masks claim to have destructive effects, such as blocked oxygen or even a superior threat of infection. Doctors broadly rejected the claims.
Dr. Maitiu O Tuathail, from Ireland, so involved with the incorrect information about the mask, that he posted an online video of himself dressed comfortably in a mask while meddizing his oxygen levels. The video has been viewed more than 20 million times.
“The mask does not lower oxygen levels. COVID does it for good,” he warns.
However, trusted medical governments are rejected by those who say that forcing others to wear masks is a step toward authoritarianism.
“Unless he takes a stance, he’ll wear a mask for the rest of his life,” tweeted Simon Dolan, a British businessman who sued the United States for its COVID-19 restrictions.
Trump’s reluctant, ambivalent and belated adoption of the mask has not convinced some of his most staunch collaborators, who have invented increasingly elaborate theories for his change. Some say he actually spoke in code and doesn’t literally help the mask.
Or Tuathail witnessed how unwavering the incorrect information about COVID-19 may be when, after posting his video, he won emails from others who said they had cheated or hadn’t used the mask long enough to feel the negative effects.
This is not surprising, according to the professor of psychology at the University of Florida Central Chrysalis Wright, who studies misinformation. She said conspiracy theorists have interaction in intellectual gymnastics to align their ideals with reality.
“People just listen to what they think they already know,” he says.
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