Scientists consider polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, tests a highly reliable tool for diagnosing COVID-19. But social media posts are misrepresenting a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announcement regarding the eventual discontinuation of its own test, falsely claiming the government has conceded that PCR tests aren’t reliable.
Participants in the 2020 Olympic Games will be subject to many COVID-19 rules. But social media posts and a news report falsely claim athletes will be sleeping on specially made, flimsy “anti-sex beds” to prevent intimacy and COVID-19 infection. The beds were designed before the pandemic and can bear more than 400 pounds, the mattress company said.
In a prime-time town hall aired on CNN, President Joe Biden overstated some facts and misled on others.
At a July 20 Senate hearing, Republican Sen. Rand Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, once again had a testy exchange over whether the U.S. funded gain-of-function research in China, with each man accusing the other of “lying.”
A satire site a month ago published a joke about the Biden administration creating “quarantine camps” for the unvaccinated. Now that fabricated story is circulating online, presented as if it’s real.
After a contractor hired by state Senate Republicans to look into the results of the 2020 Arizona election provided an update on its findings at a legislative hearing on July 15, former President Donald Trump issued a series of false and misleading statements about what it has uncovered.
A businessman’s post on Instagram and Facebook wrongly claims that the U.S. government “changed the definition of pandemic” in 2004, suggesting that COVID-19 would not have qualified under the old definition. There’s no evidence for those claims — and COVID-19 is by all means a pandemic.
Actress and neuroscientist Mayim Bialik has expressed skepticism about vaccines in the past, but she says she and her two teenage children have received the COVID-19 vaccine. A Facebook post says Bialik “refuses to vaccinate,” leaving the false impression that she opposes COVID-19 vaccines.
Cases of COVID-19 are increasing in Texas, but it doesn’t have the “highest COVID positivity rate and case count in the nation” — contrary to what Democrat Julián Castro recently tweeted.
Social media posts are misrepresenting an old photo from France by suggesting the sea of people in the streets shows “[p]eople are waking up against vaccine tyranny.” The photo actually shows a celebration in Paris after France won the 2018 World Cup.