President Donald Trump said on March 17, “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” While it’s not possible to know what Trump “felt,” there’s no doubt that Trump had minimized the threat of the new coronavirus for weeks in statement after statement.
We answer some key questions about what is known so far about the outbreak and the virus.
We launched a new Coronavirus Coverage page to help readers navigate our website and more easily find the articles they want to read.
President Donald Trump and other officials misleadingly suggested that tech behemoth Google was working on a screening website that large numbers of Americans could use to see if they should be tested for the new coronavirus. The website, however, is actually a project of Google’s sister company Verily and is initially limited to the San Francisco Bay Area.
The National Security Council is warning Americans of a “FAKE” rumor circulating on social media that falsely claims President Donald Trump will impose a nationwide “mandatory quarantine.”
A viral image circulating online is falsely advising social media users that gargling water with salt or vinegar “eliminates” the coronavirus. There is currently “no specific medicine recommended to prevent or treat the new coronavirus,” according to the World Health Organization.
A misleading chart being spread on Facebook, erroneously dubbing the new coronavirus the “least deadly virus,” contains outdated information about the coronavirus and erroneous information about the death rate of the 2009 pandemic of H1N1.
In tweets and other appearances, President Donald Trump has repeatedly compared his response to the new coronavirus with President Barack Obama’s handling of the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic. But Trump’s information is frequently incorrect or misleading — and the two viruses are very different.
In a short primetime address, President Donald Trump provided false, misleading and incomplete information about the new coronavirus and actions his administration has taken or will take to staunch its spread.
Posts are circulating false and misleading tips on social media — in some cases wrongly attributed to Stanford University — about how people can monitor and avoid the coronavirus.