Misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic

False information about the COVID-19 pandemic and SARS-CoV-2 , sometimes referred to as "Corona myths" or "Corona lies", has been spread mainly on social media since the outbreak of the COVID-19 disease . They include hoax, fake news , pseudoscientific health tips , disinformation, and conspiracy theories on all aspects of the disease. Her widening include various conspiracy theories oriented groups and individuals, anti-Semites , right-wing extremists , esoteric , opposing vaccination , religious leaders, Wheeler, some state governments and state media, but also insecure individuals. Some of them also rely on legitimate scientific minority opinions; However, it was also fueled by a relative lack of scientific knowledge of a new, previously unknown virus.

Because of its life-threatening, possibly fatal consequences, the World Health Organization (WHO), national medical institutions, reputable media, network operators, non-profit associations and political bodies counter such misinformation with clarification and fact checks . In some cases, law enforcement authorities are also taking action.

Alleged properties of the virus

Lifespan and Symptoms

On January 23, 2020, when Wuhan was placed under mass quarantine because of the risk of infection , a stranger claimed in a YouTube video that was widely distributed on WhatsApp : "The corona pandemic is far worse than you would have been led to believe." Then he stated :

• The incubation period of the virus, within which no symptoms occur, is 14 days, so that an infection is detected late.
• Liquids extended and strengthened its lifespan.
• It causes a certain skin rash ("red spots with black spots in the middle, hard and very itchy").
• It can only be "defeated with your own physical strength". There is no medical cure.
• As early as January 12th, doctors recommended that Wuhan be cordoned off "because the situation was completely out of control."
• People would "simply tip over" on the street. In addition, pictures of unclear origin showed people lying on the ground, sometimes bleeding.
• Ordinary German media did not report about it, or not enough, and withheld "the real danger", such as the situation in Hubei province .
• One should avoid crowds. All people entering from Asia could be carriers.
• The channel "Odysseus", on which the video appeared, has secret, exclusive information about the danger.

According to the WHO, the incubation period can last up to 14 days, but usually lasts five days. According to Hartmut Hengel , President of the Society for Virology , liquids can not increase the infectivity of the virus. It is transmitted by droplet infection but cannot reproduce outside of a host. The stated rash was nowhere proven until the fact check and was atypical for coronaviruses, as was an upset without warning. German media reported promptly on the quarantine in Wuhan and the development of the number of infections. The lack of a medical cure was rated "mostly correct," and symptoms can be treated. The fact checker Correctiv rated the video as “partly wrong”, partly as unfounded and misleading. The Tagesschau.de called it because of dramatizing clay as "panic Video".

High infectivity

At the end of January 2020, a video spread online with English subtitles depicting a woman with a face mask and protective clothing in an unknown location as a nurse from Wuhan and a whistleblower . The video has been viewed millions of times on social media. She only gave her name and said that 90,000 people in China were infected with the new virus. Without immediate quarantine , an infected person could pass the virus on to at least 14 other people. She asked the Chinese not to go outside and not visit anyone. She warned of a second mutation in the virus and an even faster spread. - By January 26, the WHO had registered 1,985 infected people in China. China's government said the virus was contagious even during the incubation period. From then on, experts and health authorities warned of the rapid spread of the epidemic.

Fact checks refer to the base reproduction number (R0) of the virus, which the WHO estimated at an average of 1.4 to 2.5 people at the end of January 2020. For an infection rate of 90,000, R0 should have been around 14–15. The woman's clothes did not match the work wear in Hubei Province. Because she made a number of unfounded statements about the virus, experts believe she is Chinese with no specialist knowledge. The Chinese government's non-transparent information policy favored the distribution of the video.

Flu comparisons

See also : COVID-19 pandemic # comparison with influenza (flu)  and COVID-19 # mortality

The term “ flu ” is colloquially understood as two fundamentally different diseases. The so-called “flu-like infections” ( colds ) are caused by bacteria, but mostly by a wide variety of viruses (also from the Coronaviridae family ). Because of the high level of mutual adaptation between humans and pathogens, colds are widespread, but usually harmless in their course. The “real flu” ( influenza ), on the other hand, is an infection caused by viruses of the influenza genus, which is often much more severe and sometimes fatal. Mutations of influenza viruses cause influenza epidemics (influenza waves) of different severity each season. In the case of individual strains of influenza pathogens, particularly severe epidemics or pandemics (e.g. Spanish flu ) can occur, otherwise it is referred to as seasonal flu.

In April 2020, official sources in the USA claimed that the COVID-19 pandemic could only be classified as the usual seasonal flu, even though hospital resources were being used to an unprecedented extent.

This article or paragraph presents the situation in Germany . Help us to describe the situation in other countries.

The mortality of COVID-19 infections in Germany was assumed by the Robert Koch Institute on February 28, 2020 to be 1–2% and compared with that of a mild flu season of 0.1–0.2%. Previously, at the end of January 2020, the German Minister of Health Jens Spahn and the President of the Robert Koch Institute Lothar H. Wieler had expressed the opinion in interviews that Germany could be reassured because the COVID-19 infection rate was milder than with the flu.

The former SPD health politician and doctor Wolfgang Wodarg has been of the opinion since March 13, 2020 that COVID-19 is neither new nor worse than previous flu waves. The influenza has recently caused up to 30,000 deaths annually, a tenth of them from known, constantly mutating corona viruses . It is a long way from this death rate; it would hardly be noticed on an annual average. The allegedly new virus only became known through a new test. This was only developed at the Charité on the basis of the known corona viruses and was not sufficiently validated. The government measures against the pandemic are scare tactics out of political and financial interests. Certain scientists started the scare tactics “because they need money for their institutes. They want to become important. ”In Wuhan there are“ security laboratories ”for viruses, which is why the virus was discovered there. In doing so, he denied the dramatic outbreak of the pandemic in Wuhan and indirectly claimed that COVID-19, like the flu, occurs everywhere at the same time. He called for an end to the "corona panic". - In 2010, Wodarg rejected the WHO initiative in the Council of Europe to declare swine flu a pandemic and suspected the interests of the pharmaceutical industry as a motive. Now he spoke again of "companies that invent epidemics in order to make a profit out of fear". - According to the WHO, 180,000 people worldwide had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 by then, and 7,426 had died from it. According to various fact checkers, Wodarg does not take into account the current case numbers, the exponential increase in infections, the lack of immunity in the population, the lack of a vaccine or the limited capacity of the health system to treat seriously ill COVID-19 cases. The virologist Christian Drosten contradicted Wodarg and explained his assessment of the reliability of the new test on March 18, 2020: It was developed on the basis of SARS coronaviruses, which are genetically completely different from common flu viruses, and is at two universities, the British health authority and the Charité has been validated. Hundreds of comparative clinical samples and samples of an enormous amount of the closely related bat coronavirus would not have given a false positive reaction once. Ultimately, his institute earns “not a cent” from the test. Wodarg upheld his theses and represented them on KenFM , Rubikon , Geolitica and in an interview with the former daily TV host Eva Herman .

Urologist Michael Spitzbart claimed COVID-19 had the same death rate of around 1% as influenza in late March 2020. However, according to the ECDC, an average of around 0.1 percent of those infected with seasonal flu die each year in Europe. On the other hand, according to the RKI, the average proportion of deaths among all those suffering from COVID-19 (the " infectious mortality ") had not yet been determined, as only tested cases were registered so far. Of these, 0.8 to 7.7 percent died by April 2020, depending on the region and the time of measurement. Correctiv therefore assessed this and other information from Pointed Beard as partly false, partly unfounded and misleading. Correctiv named goatee as an example of medical professionals who pretend to be corona experts, keep quiet about their specialist area and give questionable health tips. In an interview with the right-wing populist newspaper Compact , Spitzbart claimed that the virus was "practically harmless" for healthy people and advised the immune system to be occupied. The virologist Hendrik Streeck determined an infected / deceased proportion of 0.36 percent for the community of Gangelt , although children were underrepresented in the study and people over 65 years of age were overrepresented, Streeck rejects the comparison with the flu because it is different every year .

The specialist in microbiology and infection epidemiology Sucharit Bhakdi claimed in a video from March 18, 2020 that SARS-CoV-2 is no more dangerous than other coronaviruses. 99 percent of those infected in Germany only had mild symptoms. He therefore rejected the state measures as "grotesque, excessive and directly dangerous". A fact check team from the German Press Agency , on the other hand, referred to the 20% more severe and life-threatening course of COVID-19, according to the RKI. Bhakdi mentioned a far too low proportion, disregarded the exponential increase in infections, extrapolated the number of registered deaths for the wrong period and assumed a false maximum number of one million infected people against the RKI. The RKI had warned of ten million infections nationwide in the next few months if the federal government's measures were not followed.

An article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung describes Wodarg, Bhakdi and other medical professionals who share their theses as "Corona opinion makers" whose videos "have nothing to do with science". Research by Correctiv and established media into their claims had unanimously shown: "What Wodarg and Bhakdi say is not completely wrong, but they mix facts with speculation and disinformation." Their videos are "dangerous misleading" in a "jungle." of half-truths ”, which numerous supposed experts from completely different fields emulated on YouTube and thus influenced millions of viewers. The special evaluation by the Federal Statistical Office showed that 410,085 people died in the first five months of 2020, slightly fewer than the average for the same period of 2016–2019, in which 411,787.75 people died.

Limitation to certain population groups

In the first few months of 2020, speculation arose that Asians were particularly susceptible to the virus due to certain receptors. However, these hypotheses were not confirmed.

From the observation that the elderly and previously ill belong to COVID-19 risk groups, some generalized that younger people without previous illnesses are not at risk, which is not the case, however. There were also claims that the virus would kill almost only those who did not have long to live anyway. A statistical analysis by NDR of the data relating to Germany, however, showed that by May 2020 every person who died in Germany in whom the virus was detected had statistically lost more than nine years of life: nationwide, the deceased men would have an average of 10.7 without the disease Lived years longer, the deceased women an average of 9.3 years. A study by the University of Glasgow on Italy and Great Britain found that men who died without the disease would have lived an average of 14 years and women who died an average of 12 years longer if they had not contracted the virus. The head of Hamburg forensic medicine, Klaus Püschel, sees no particular dangers for most people. The average age of the "corona deaths" examined in Hamburg is 80 years, around 80 percent of them suffered from cardiovascular diseases, he personally would not care for his grandchildren keep away.

Warnings about NSAIDs

In March 2020, anonymous warnings circulated via WhatsApp and social media: Researchers at the Vienna University Hospital had found that ibuprofen and other anti-inflammatory drugs such as acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) worsen COVID-19 disease. The Medical University of Vienna denied this. Experts advised not to stop taking medication because of rumors, but rather to consult your doctor.

The rumors fueled an expert debate about the impact of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) on the course of COVID-19. France's Minister of Health Olivier Véran advised paracetamol instead of ibuprofen if he had a fever . Health director Jérôme Salomon advised COVID-19 patients against NSAIDs in general. In contrast, the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health sees no evidence of their negative impact on COVID-19. According to the virologist Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit, there is a lack of clinical data for such a connection. According to Christian Drosten, this would have been discovered in older corona viruses if it had existed. The WHO withdrew a warning not to take ibuprofen without medical advice after 24 hours because there was no evidence of the negative impact on COVID-19.

Holding your breath as a quick test

Since March 2020, a chain letter has been spreading en masse, claiming a quick test as alleged advice from experts from Taiwan : To determine whether you are infected with SARS-CoV-2, all you have to do is take a deep breath and hold your breath for ten seconds. Anyone who succeeds in doing this has no fibrosis in the lungs and therefore could not have become infected. In fact, holding your breath is totally unsuitable for this test because the virus initially multiplies in the throat, not the lungs. Fibrosis is not a symptom of COVID-19. Whether or not someone can hold their breath for ten seconds without any problems depends on many different individual factors. Diseases like asthma can make it difficult to hold your breath.

The German Federal Ministry of Health pointed out that there is currently no personal rapid test for COVID-19. According to Christian Drosten, a mere examination of the lungs does not provide a definitive statement about infection with it. The test is usually carried out as a throat swab, which is then checked in the laboratory. Neither the WHO nor the RKI nor the Federal Center for Health Education or other competent authorities named fibrosis as a symptom of COVID-19, but rather fever, dry cough, runny nose, shortness of breath, muscle, joint, sore throat and headache.

Allegedly implausible science

At the end of May 2020, the German newspaper Bild published a report on a preliminary publication by Christian Drosten's team, which suggested a similarly high virus concentration of SARS-CoV-2 in children and adults in the throat area . The image claimed that the study was "grossly misrepresented" and have served wrongly as a basis for the closure of schools and kindergartens. Other scientists were quoted as critical of the study. However, a critical discourse of scientific publications is a normal process that does not allow the conclusion that the study is grossly wrong. The quoted scientists later explicitly distanced themselves from the reporting of the tabloid. The claim that Drosten's study served as the basis for the closure of schools and kindergartens contrasts with the fact that the virologists did not publish their findings until the end of April, while schools and kindergartens in Germany were closed in mid-March.

In the United States, conservative actors attacked the scientific basis of the epidemiological modeling of the coronavirus pandemic and described it as completely unreliable. Some actors drew parallels with a model of global warming that they also classified as unreliable . Several scientists, including Harvard University's Aaron Bernstein, contradicted this account, suggesting that the models worked as expected and helped to take the right steps to slow the pandemic. Although it then looks as if the predicted widespread spread of the virus did not occur, this must be assessed as a success of the countermeasures taken and not due to the unreliability of the modeling.

Alleged protection and remedies

Alcohol and methanol

A tabloid article circulated on the Internet claimed that several people with COVID-19 healed themselves by taking whiskey and honey . Many linked this rumor to the official advice to use alcohol-based hand sanitisers, mistakenly concluding that alcohol could kill viruses in the body. In Iran , where the pandemic affects tens of thousands of people, alcohol consumption is prohibited. The false report there resulted in many Iranians drinking self-made ethanol or methanol or giving it to their relatives. As a result, according to information from the Ministry of Health, 480 people had died of alcohol poisoning or organ damage caused by methanol by the end of March 2020 . 2,850 others are said to have it. The official ban on alcohol, a lack of education and the downplaying of the pandemic by the government favored recourse to mostly self-distilled and uncontrolled alcohol in Iran. In mid-April 2020, the governor of Nairobi County in Kenya had cognac loaded into aid packages with food, publicly justifying this by saying that alcohol played a greater role in killing the virus, according to WHO research. He then talked about the alcohol content of disinfectants. The health organization Amref Health Africa condemned the action.

Arsenic, globules, nosodes

The German Homeopathy Union , the Association of Classic Homeopaths in Germany (BKHD) and the User Alliance for the Preservation of Homeopathic Medicines did not recommend any homeopathic remedies for COVID-19 on their websites. The German Central Association of Homeopathic Doctors (DZVhÄ) declared that the recommendations of the Robert Koch Institute also had priority for homeopathic doctors, and on March 5, 2020 advised its members to “restrain with regard to any kind of homeopathic preventive and therapeutic recommendations in connection with the Coronavirus ".

In a pharmacy in Vienna , however, interested parties could order nosodes against the coronavirus. Another pharmacy advertised lucrative globules against the virus, and a pharmacist offered "informed vibration globules ". After the critical blog “Stiftung Gurutest” drew attention to this, the advertisements disappeared. The Austrian Chamber of Pharmacists threatened to report to the Disciplinary Council if they advertised and sold homeopathic remedies against the coronavirus.

In India , the Ayush Ministry, responsible for naturopathy and homeopathy , recommended, among other things, highly diluted Arsenicum album C30 ( arsenic ) in 2020 to prevent infection with the virus . German homeopaths administer the remedy for upset stomach or anxiety. Cornelia Bajic, former chairwoman of the DZVhÄ, however, also recommended it online against COVID-19. The DZVhÄ distanced itself from this and stated that in order to contain the pandemic, the recommendations of the Robert Koch Institute “take precedence over possible homeopathic measures”. Science journalists Hinnerk Feldwisch-Drentrup and Nicola Kuhrt ( MedWatch ) reported Cornelia Bajic to the Medical Association. Bajic stated that she had recommended the homeopathic Arsenicum album 30C to her patients to support the known hygiene measures, not as a substitute for them or as a cure. At the same time, she urgently advised to contact a doctor if symptoms occurred.

Bleaches and disinfectants

When the pandemic hit Europe, posts on Facebook recommended drinking bleach to kill the virus in the body. On YouTube, some influencers had often claimed that chlorine dioxide was a cure for cancer . The pharmaceutical lobby has banned these "miracle mineral supplements" (MMS) for even more profits. Facebook deleted the wrong and life-threatening advice from its pages.

As of January 2020, supporters of the QAnon scene in the USA in particular promoted MMS as an alleged cure, including Jordan Sather and Jim Humble , a self-proclaimed “Archbishop” who claims he had discovered MMS in South America . He sold it as a "20-20-20" spray for $ 45 a bottle through a sect in Mexico called the Genesis II Church of Health and Healing . The user “Chief Police 2” also recommended it to his almost 18,000 followers, as did new Twitter accounts. A tweet combined MMS and Colloidal Silver . The profiteers linked their advertising for a proven harmful to deadly agent with common conspiracy theories for the artificial production of the virus.

The sect Genesis II , headquartered in Florida, is the largest manufacturer and distributor of the highly toxic human bleaching agent MMS in the USA. Even before the pandemic, it claimed it could cure 99% of all diseases such as AIDS , autism , cancer and malaria . By April 20, 2020, a US court banned the cult from selling MMS as an "unproven and potentially harmful agent against COVID-19" and ordered that advertising for it be removed from websites. In the following days, about 30 followers of the sect wrote to US President Donald J. Trump and called on him to protect their sect and its alleged cures and thus to take action against COVID-19. The cult leader ("Archbishop") Mark Grenon called MMS a "wonderful detox that could kill 99% of pathogens in the body" and "rid the body of COVID-19". On April 19, Grenon read his sales letter on his weekly radio show calling on Trump to use MMS to tackle the pandemic. On the evening of April 23, Grenon claimed that he had sent MMS to the White House , that Trump had received it and was now able to "see the truth". Also Alan Keyes , one against Barack Obama inferior Senate candidate and how Trump leading propagandist of the "birther" movement that Obama's US citizenship was trying to deny, MMS competed at Trump and his online channels Let's Talk America as a miracle cure for COVID-19th Bob Sisson, the far-right owner of the associated web channel, also promoted the drug and announced that it was only a matter of time before Trump would invite the MMS supporters and discover the effects of the drug. It was believed that this campaign influenced Trump's public false statements about disinfectants of April 23, 2020.

On April 23, 2020, at a press conference at the White House, Trump suggested to experts in attendance that they inject disinfectant into the bodies of infected people, or expose the virus to ultraviolet or strong light in the body to kill it, and test this as treatment methods. Numerous experts immediately contradicted this: The injection of cleaning agents and disinfectants of any kind into the body is a common suicide method. To advise something like this is irresponsible and dangerous. British microbiologist Paul Hunter ( University of East Anglia ) said Trump's statements were "one of the most dangerous and stupid proposals to treat Covid-19 so far". Law professor Robert B. Reich advised that Trump's press conferences should be boycotted as they threatened public health. The British manufacturer of Lysol (Sagrotan) issued a worldwide warning not to inject or ingest disinfectants. The US Environmental Protection Agency and the Washington State Disaster Management Agency also urgently advised against it. Maryland Civil Protection sent a nationwide warning against ingestion of disinfectants after receiving more than 100 calls with questions about it. The medical doctor Sanjay Gupta called Trump's proposal to study the injection of such agents "crazy". Without such studies, everyone knows that these drugs are dangerous and that taking them definitely hurts people. In Illinois , the number of emergency calls to the poison control center rose significantly, according to Trump, for example because people gargled with bleach and disinfectants to kill the virus. The director of the health department issued an urgent warning of the potentially fatal consequences of using household cleaners. Trump subsequently declared his statements to be sarcasm to the press and did not allow any further questions at the following press conference.

From January to the end of March 2020, the authorities in the USA registered 17,392 poisonings with disinfectants (35% more than in the same period last year), 28,158 with cleaning agents (12% more).

Chloroquine and azithromycin

Since March 21, 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump has been promoting a combination of chloroquine and azithromycin as a treatment for COVID-19 patients. He also suggested, contrary to the facts, that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved these agents for therapy. His own health advisor, immunologist Anthony Fauci , publicly contradicted this . In the United States, as in Nigeria , several people died after taking chloroquine, so Nigeria's health authorities warned against it. It has been proven that patients with previous illnesses are exposed to severe side effects and risk. Other studies that indicate a certain chance of success for the combined means are based on a very small database and, according to experts such as Christian Drosten, are methodologically unreliable.

Due to Trump's promotion of chloroquine a couple in took Arizona to prevention before a Corona infection an ornamental fish - an antiparasitic agent to himself, which contained chloroquine. The man died of it, the woman survived. She then publicly called not to believe Trump's statements. U.S. government lead vaccine developer Rick Bright was transferred from the United States Department of Homeland Security , saying the reason was because he did not want to recommend chloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19.

In late July, a group called America's Frontline Doctors, affiliated with the tea party movement , posted a video about treating COVID-19 . In it, the Texan doctor Stella Immanuel, based on anecdotal claims, presented the combination of hydroxychloroquine, zinc and azithromycin as effective and preventive. She also declared the face masks recommended by the CDC to be unnecessary. The current state of scientific knowledge at the time, which offers no proof of effectiveness for either treatment or prevention, was not shown in the video. The video was widely distributed and was distributed, among others, by US President Donald Trump via Twitter. The video was eventually removed from their platforms as misinformation by Facebook, Youtube and Twitter.

Vinegar and water

Instilling vinegar solutions into the nostrils, drinking water regularly or gargling with warm water, vinegar or salt water protect against the virus: These false claims assume that viruses that have already been inhaled could be flushed out or killed in one's own body. The WHO has been contradicting this since the beginning of February 2020: as soon as the virus comes into contact with the mucous membrane, it spreads.

Hot air

In February 2020, controversial New York City Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi posted a YouTube video claiming the only cure for COVID-19 was to use a hairdryer to blow hot air through your mouth and into your throat. A visit to a hospital, however, does not promise success.

In March 2020, a Dr. Dan Lee Dimke in a widespread video that the virus can be killed by inhaling hot air through your nose, be it with a hairdryer held against your face or by going to the sauna. The video was based on a fundamental lack of knowledge of how viruses work: They neither collect primarily in the nasal cavity, nor can hot air stop them from multiplying, as they multiply on a cellular level. - Dimke claimed on his website that he was a futurologist and had a doctorate in education, but showed no qualifications as a medical advisor. After three months of global spreading of the pandemic with thousands of deaths, he ignored all serious information about the virus. Although YouTube deleted the original after media inquiries, copies of the video remained. Many of them bore the CDC logo and thus gave the impression of official information. Doctors in the USA therefore classified the video as dangerous to the public and took action against it with criminal charges and submissions to Internet companies.

Bryant Culpepper, head of administration of the Okeechobee County ( Florida ), claimed on March 20, 2020, the infection can be defeated with a directed to the nose hair dryers. Three days later, he publicly apologized and said he heard the misstatement from a doctor on the One America News Network (OAN). He just wanted to reassure uninsured families in his district. He will no longer make therapy suggestions unless they have been tested and proven.

Garlic and onions

In the People's Republic of China , where the pandemic began, rumors lingered that garlic would help fight the virus. Traditional doctors there should also advise people to drink hot garlic water. According to reports from China, some Chinese ate kilos of garlic and suffered throat discomfort as a result. The WHO therefore emphasized that food is generally not an effective antidote to SARS-CoV-2.

In February 2020, a chain letter was circulating on the Internet promoting onions as a means that kills the novel coronavirus. The fitness trainer Carmen Geiss referred to the letter and recommended placing cut onions in the living room. This would "suck" viruses and bacteria out of the body and the air. The thesis that onions have a kind of sponge ability against germs had long been refuted. The Mimikama association published a fact check on February 28, 2020.

Traditional medicine

Because cows are sacred in Hinduism in India , some traditional Hindus conclude that cow dung and cow urine are therapeutically valuable, for example for the treatment of cancer. Since spring 2020, the politician Suman Haripriya of the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has been claiming that cow dung or cow urine can help against COVID-19. Hindu leader Chakrapani Maharaj announced a celebration with cow dung cakes and incense sticks that would kill the virus immediately.

In early February 2020, China's government directed its own doctors to consider a cocktail of Western antiviral drugs, supplemented by traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), as a cure for COVID-19. The recommendations followed the line of President Xi Jinping , who promotes TCM as part of the national identity of China. After the SARS pandemic of 2002/2003 , the WHO had tested the effectiveness of some TCM plant extracts and found that they were safe and that some, if used specifically, could alleviate symptoms such as exhaustion and short breath. However, there is no evidence of its effectiveness against COVID-19. Science journalist Laurie Garrett and Nature magazine warned that TCM without scientific standards and dosage rules could put patients at risk, citing cases of kidney failure.

Two government-backed research institutes claimed the traditional herbal extract, Shuanghuanglian, was effective against COVID-19, according to Chinese media reports. As a result, there was a rush with long queues for this product in many Chinese cities due to the unsettled citizens. Chen Xi, assistant professor at Yale University , urged the Chinese media to cover such topics more carefully so that incidents like this would not be repeated. This could undermine efforts to avoid crowds.

Food supplements

Whether vitamin C , vitamin D or zinc are suitable for combating COVID-19 is currently still being researched (as of May 2020). There are scientific assumptions about various possible mechanisms of action in COVID-19, which are currently being investigated in numerous clinical studies worldwide.

The uncertain data situation at the beginning of the pandemic led to the spread of imprecise and unsubstantiated information about the effectiveness of dietary supplements for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19. Such reports spread quickly via social media and sometimes via news portals. Since many of these dietary supplements are available over the counter, there is a risk of self-medication resulting in an unsuitable dosage for the patient.

In internet videos u. a. Reference is made to a BBC article dated April 23, 2020. The BBC reports on the recommendation of the National Health Service because of the strict exit restrictions for its citizens on vitamin D supplements if there is a risk of deficiency. Due to UK exit restrictions, some citizens may not get enough vitamin D from the sun.

Allegedly ineffective or dangerous measures

Masks

By the end of April 2020, all German federal states had introduced an everyday mask requirement to reduce the risk of infection. Facebook users claimed that mouth and nose protective masks (MNS) were inhaling too much carbon dioxide (CO ₂ ) and too little oxygen . A 2004 study showed that surgical masks increased the CO ₂ content in the blood of the wearer and recommended products that are more permeable to CO ₂ . The test objects of the study were two commercially available type II masks that corresponded to the standard EN 14683, filtering half masks (FFP) or self- sewn face masks were not tested. The former serve to protect the wearer against particles, droplets and aerosols , while the latter protect others by reducing the wearer's ejection of droplets. Medical MNS and FFP masks are subject to European standards . The RKI admitted that multilayered, impermeable and tight-fitting MNS in particular obstruct breathing.

It was also claimed that wet masks feed dangerous germs and multiply them in the lungs, the RKI confirmed that wet masks can contaminate the oropharynx flora with bacteria, but not with viruses. This would also prevent the bacteria from getting into the lungs. The RKI recommended changing masks regularly, washing them and wearing them for a limited period of time. The Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices recommended that self-sewn masks should be kept airtight and that they should be washed immediately at at least 60 degrees.

Some posts warned that self-made masks lead to respiratory paralysis in small children. According to the manufacturers, this only applies to FFP masks, which small children and infants are therefore not allowed to wear. In any case, the federal states have not imposed a mask requirement on children under seven or six years of age. The professional association of paediatricians advises that children under two years of age should not wear self-sewn face masks, especially because they often touch their faces. For older children, parents should ensure that the mask fits properly. The fact checker Correctiv therefore largely rated the warnings from Facebook users about oxygen loss and bacterial infection as false.

Alleged causes and purposes

Chinese eating habits

As the pandemic spread from China to other countries and continents, much speculation emerged as to its origin. For example, a video that was circulated millions of times showed a prominent Chinese woman who was gleefully eating a fried bat in a soup, allegedly during the start of the pandemic in Wuhan. The accompanying text blames Chinese eating habits for the outbreak of the pandemic. But the scene was not filmed in Wuhan or China in 2019, but in 2016 in Palau on a vacation trip. The woman depicted said she only wanted to portray the life of local residents.

The video was distributed by the British tabloid Daily Mail , Russian state media and right-wing extremist YouTuber Paul Joseph Watson , among others . The Chinese said she received death threats as a result.

The bat soup thesis was based on assumptions that the virus came from an animal market in Wuhan, where live bats were also traded. Some infected people were there, but not the first COVID-19 sufferers according to a new study. Although viruses are the closest relatives of the new virus in bats, their path to humans remains unclear. It is unlikely that bat consumption will contribute to this. According to the journal Foreign Policy , the background of the thesis is a racist narrative that allegedly alleges disgusting eating habits, poor hygiene and disease transmission of Asians and especially the Chinese. An American newspaper wrote in 1854 that the Chinese were “uncivilized, unclean, filthy beyond all imagination”. In this tradition, there are today's pictures and comments that abuse the "dirty" Chinese as the originators of the pandemic. Such prejudices increase the threat to Asian minorities in other states, especially those where they have already suffered violent attacks. The cultural diversity in China and the relevant factors for hygienic food, such as working conditions and reliable inspections, are ignored. The causes of food scandals are comparable in China and the USA.

Theses Related to Bill Gates

According to Deutschlandfunk , a distinction must be made between legitimate criticism of Gates and conspiracy theories that go far beyond that.

After the first COVID-19 case in the US (January 21, 2020), documents appeared on Twitter and Facebook suggesting that experts had known the new virus for years and bred it themselves. The conspiracy theorists Jordan Sather spread a thousand times shared link on a patent of the Pirbright Institute in Surrey ( UK ), which discusses the development of a weak version of a coronavirus for a vaccine against respiratory diseases. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation sponsors the institute and the development of vaccines. With reference to this, Sather claimed the virus was man-made and the current pandemic was created intentionally to force more public funding into vaccine development. He linked the Gates Foundation's investment in vaccination programs to the rhetorical question of whether "the release of this disease was planned" and whether the media was being used to create fear. Sather also claims the virus was deliberately released in parallel with the impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump .

The patent text is circulating on Facebook pages of conspiracy theorists and anti-vaccination campaigners. They suppress the fact that the patent was granted for a vaccine against infectious bronchitis in poultry, which is caused by another virus of the coronavirus family. The Gates Foundation said it did not finance the specific development of this vaccine. Pirbright issued a correction, pointing out that the patented vaccine was made from a virus that does not attack humans.

In a March 2020 Instagram video, a user (@thefallbackup) claimed that billionaire and major donor Bill Gates created the virus and planned or predicted the outbreak of the pandemic. He also showed parts of a lecture from 2015, where Gates had warned of an epidemic and compared it to a war, and interpreted this as foreknowledge. The video was also shared by celebrities, commented on (for example with “Watch out for Big Pharma”) and viewed millions of times. In 2015, Gates actually referred to the Ebola fever outbreak in 2014 and asked how one would react comparatively to attacks with biological weapons. A future virus could spread through the air and initially go unnoticed by infected people, i.e. it could spread unhindered. The world must prepare for this as if for a war, with hospitals, test laboratories and infrastructure multiplying, especially in underdeveloped areas. He did not speak of coronavirus or a global pandemic, nor did COVID-19 break out in an underdeveloped region. However, his warning regarding the lack of preparation and deficits in the health care system also and especially in the USA proved to be accurate. The simulation game Event 201 , organized for practice purposes on October 18, 2019 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum and Johns Hopkins University was also a crisis scenario with an invented coronavirus pandemic, not a prediction or prognosis of actual events.

The bundle of conspiracy theses related to Bill Gates ties in with his years of warnings of a global pandemic, his commitment to vaccines, their timely mass production and fair distribution, the expansion of global health systems, the fight against poverty and his large donations to the WHO. All of this is construed as a perfidious plan for an alleged pursuit of world domination, surveillance and control of humanity and private profits. The AfD, for example, claims that Gates wants to “digitally certify” people with COVID-19. In fact, when asked, he only suspected that nation states would at some point digitally register "who has recovered, who was recently tested or [...] when was vaccinated" in order to secure vital supplies in the pandemic. On the website Watergate.tv it was claimed that “comprehensive compulsory vaccinations” were ideally suited “ to give eugenicists like Bill Gates the power over us humans, over our health, our mortality and fertility”. Gates wants people to use microchips in such mass vaccinations in order to guide and control humanity. For this purpose, individual statements are isolated and misinterpreted, contacts between the Gates Foundation and other institutions are presented as a mysterious network and at the same time an individual is stylized as an overpowering enemy. The Gates myths, which mostly come from the right-wing scene in the USA, are similar to the conspiracy theses on migration related to the Jewish billionaire George Soros . Both circulate worldwide and reinforce each other. The ideological conspiracy scene made Bill Gates the global scapegoat for the pandemic. According to research by the NYT, ten of the most popular YouTube videos with disinformation about him had been viewed nearly five million times by April 2020. 16,000 Facebook posts about Gates and the virus received nearly 900,000 reactions and comments.

On May 4, 2020, the former radio presenter Ken Jebsen published a video "Gates kapert Deutschland", which was viewed more than three million times after a week. In it he combined the following false allegations into a conspiracy myth: Bill and Melinda Gates had bought the WHO, ruled the world dictatorially over it, wanted to microchip and digitally enslave all people during corona forced vaccinations, reduce the world population and make a profit in the process. All corona advisors to the federal government are "on the Gates payroll". This introduced a forced vaccination, which should be used to secretly sterilize women. Arrests at the “hygiene demo” in Berlin proved a Gates conspiracy against the Basic Law. It is about a "world conspiracy" that poisons people out of a "religious madness". That is reminiscent of the euthanasia that " ended in Auschwitz ". The Gates couple have more power than " Roosevelt , Churchill , Stalin and Hitler combined". - According to fact checks, every partial claim by Jebsen is false: In 2017, the Gates Foundation donated only around 12.46% (not 80%, as claimed) of its total budget to the WHO, and in 2019 it donated 13.09% of Gavi to the Gavi vaccine alliance represented on the WHO supervisory board their total budget. Serious criticism is directed against the low mandatory contributions of the WHO member states, not private donors. Donations from the Gates Foundation to the Robert Koch Institute were used to research smallpox vaccination. Donations to the virology team at the Berlin Charité were only made from March 2020, because the foundation considers its ongoing corona research to be promising (not controlled). The federal government deleted proof of immunity from a bill and is not planning any compulsory vaccinations or sterilization. The claim that the WHO and Gates Foundation carried out clandestine sterilizations in Kenya had been refuted several times. The Gates Foundation does not conduct research on microchips and does not plan to track the movements of individuals using digital means. At the unannounced hygiene demo, Jebsen himself, like most of the participants, was able to demonstrate undisturbed; the police only punished violations of corona requirements, bodily harm and insult. Jebsen's theses are therefore classified by Jonas Mueller-Töwe as agitation for the cross-front of left and right-wing radicals he is striving for, which contains anti-Semitic motives and relativizes the Holocaust .

A poll in late May 2020 found that 50% of people in the US who primarily studied Fox News believe the conspiracy theory that Bill Gates created the virus to vaccinate people and thus microchip them Implant monitoring. Belief in Gates' supposed vaccination conspiracy and the mind control chip was widespread among people who described themselves as Republicans : 44 percent believed the conspiracy story to be true, only 26 percent rated it as clearly false. Among supporters of the Democrats , it found 19 percent approval.

Biological weapon

People had produced the virus in a secret laboratory as a biological weapon : this conspiracy thesis was suggested by a former officer of the Israeli military intelligence service in the Washington Times , then the tabloid Daily Star . Others suspected a Chinese virologist couple, who fired Canada's national microbiology laboratory in 2019 because of political differences, as spies who sent pathogens to the Wuhan laboratory. The broadcaster CBC / Radio Canada , which reported on the dismissal, denied the allegations as baseless.

In February 2020, the sociologist Steven W. Mosher suspected : The National Chinese Laboratory for Biosecurity in Wuhan had collected the virus from bats at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in order to develop a bioweapon from it. It accidentally escaped. Mosher referred to laboratory leaks of the SARS coronavirus in China in 2002, visits by bioweapons expert General Chen Wei to the Wuhan Institute and its proximity to the local animal market where the pandemic is said to have broken out.

The popular financial blog Zero Hedge portrayed a virologist from Wuhan with name and photo as the originator of the pandemic. Twitter blocked the blog in January 2020. The US Senator Tom Cotton , a Republican , tweeted the laboratory orthosis from February and confirmed it Broadcaster Fox News : Because of China's "duplicity and dishonesty" since the beginning of the pandemic, one has to check whether the virus is a Chinese bio-weapon from a government laboratory. In response to the opposition of geneticists, he called the assumption a hypothesis and asked the Chinese government to provide evidence. The CCP has to prove the origin of the virus and now open up to international experts. - The Washington Post , on the other hand, referred to the relative openness of the Wuhan Institute and its close contacts with similar institutes in the USA. According to Hu Xijin, editor of the Chinese state newspaper Global Times , the reverse suspicion is circulating in China that the United States created the virus. According to Vipin Narang of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , it is illogical and highly irresponsible to portray the virus as an intentionally made but unintentionally escaped bio-weapon without any evidence. A bio-weapon would be far more deadly and at the same time less contagious.

According to a representative poll by the Pew Research Center in March 2020, 29 percent of US citizens surveyed believed the virus was deliberately made in a laboratory. In Europe, the sect preacher Ivo Sasek spread the bioweapon thesis on his online channel klagemauer.tv . Also RT German , Sputnik , Pravda TV , magazine Compact , blogs Philosophia Perennis and Unzensuriert.at spread biological weapons thesis, as the former AFD politician Wolfgang Gedeon .

Numerous virologists, geneticists, biochemists and other scientists have analyzed the internationally known genome of SARS-CoV-2 since January 7, 2020 : It is 96 percent identical to coronaviruses in bats and 99.8 percent to their variant in larval rollers , which 2002 skipped to humans. It does not show any characteristics of artificial manufacture. The differences to older corona viruses are explained by the known rate of mutation of this type of virus. On February 13, 2020, the internationally recognized geneticist Trevor Bedford closed , after which other scientists definitely ruled out an artificial production of the virus with extensive genetic analyzes.

According to a report by Josh Rogin (Washington Post) on April 14, 2020, US diplomats visited the WIV on March 27, 2018 and then reported to the US government about security risks there that favored the transmission of coronaviruses to humans and a SARS- could trigger a similar pandemic. They called for US aid to support WIV's research into preventing such pandemics. Human rights activist Xiao Qiang saw no evidence in the 2018 warnings that the new virus was produced through laboratory experiments. However, at that time there was already concern that the viruses researched at the WIV could more easily spread to humans if tests were carried out incorrectly. As part of its censorship line on the origin of the virus, the Chinese government also had the WIV's report on the diplomatic visit deleted in April 2020. This reinforced assumptions that the new virus could have entered the environment through a laboratory accident.

Chanel Rion, an employee of right-wing radio station One America News (OAN), claims without evidence that the coronavirus was created in a laboratory in North Carolina . Rion and her colleague Jack Posobiec have been spreading various conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic cartoons about George Soros via the OAN and other network media for years.

5G radiation

The 5G - mobile network is blamed as its predecessors for years for possible health hazard. Rumors were spread early that 5G radiation was damaging human cells and rendering them defenseless against COVID-19. The pandemic should cover up health damage caused by 5G radiation. The 5G network was started on November 1, 2019 in the Wuhan region, after which people there "fell dead" and the pandemic broke out. According to research by the Swedish Earhart Business Protection Agency , dozens of videos linked the coronavirus with 5G since the beginning of 2020 and showed dead birds, dead fish and falling passers-by as alleged 5G consequences. 35 of the videos had been viewed almost 13 million times by February 2020. Celebrities like Woody Harrelson , Piers Corbyn (brother of Jeremy Corbyn ) and Eamonn Holmes defended the 5G opponents on British radio and television stations like London Live and This Morning as critics of a “state narrative”. According to the company Yonder in Texas and the NGO Meedan , which track down false information on the Internet, it is mainly vaccination opponents and supporters of the QAnon theory that spread the 5G theses and link them with other conspiracy theories such as that of a global " deep state ". According to disinformation experts from Yonder , the Russian state media in particular are spreading the 5G theses and have been smuggling them into the USA since 2019.

The American doctor Thomas Cowan represented the 5G thesis at a conference of vaccination opponents and science deniers in Arizona . Cowan's professional license was limited by the authorities to five years, he is not allowed to treat cancer or supervise medical personnel. In his widespread video lecture on March 12, 2020, he claimed the pandemic began with and because of the 5G satellites installed in Wuhan. There are no such deaths in Africa because the continent does not have 5G networks. However, on March 19, 2020, the WHO reported 640 infections in several African countries. Cowans details were immediately refuted, such as a detailed counter-video on the YouTube channel TechMagnet . 5G opponents saw it as a concerted government propaganda and called for the long-term evolution of mobile communications to be completely discontinued and for cell phones to be abandoned. Georges C. Benjamin, director of the American Public Health Association , publicly stated, "COVID-19 is caused by a virus that comes from a natural animal source and is unrelated to 5G or any technology-related radiation."

Ali Erhan, an esoteric spiritual healing provider , also claimed on his blog: Wuhan has over 30,000 5G transmission masts, 5G is also known as a military weapon and the pandemic should distract from the deadly consequences of the 5G industry.

Since April 2020, mobile operator employees, engineers and construction workers have been assaulted by 5G cell phone masts, first in the UK. By the end of April 2020, 5G opponents attacked 80 Telecom employees on duty there, set fire to at least 50 telephone poles and 16 poles in the Netherlands , others in Belgium , Ireland , Sweden and Cyprus . These included masts for emergency services that had nothing to do with 5G and masts that supply hospitals. David Icke justified the attacks in an interview on the conspiracy theoretic website London Real : If 5G is continued, human life in the known form is over, so a decision has to be made. In his video "Is there a virus?" He claimed "they" were tracing those who died of flu and 5G back to Covid-19 in order to "destroy independent income" and establish "massive Orwellian fascist global control". “You”, that is one percent of the world's population, specifically an “ultra-Zionist billionaire”. The US and Israel used Covid-19 as a bio-weapon against Iran and planned to infect people with a "flood of toxic shit". Scientists from King's College London showed that Icke's theses endanger public health because his followers reject protective measures as a gigantic lie. The British Office of Communications assessed the Icke interview as potentially hazardous to health and prohibited the television broadcaster London Live from broadcasting it. After an interview with Eamonn Holmes, a court threatened the broadcaster with fines if it continued to spread the 5G thesis without critical classification. However, Icke's original video remained available on YouTube and reached around six million viewers by April 20, 2020.

Videos of the arson attacks were shared on social media and linked to hashtags such as #coronavirus and # 5gtowerchallenge . For example, 5G opponents encouraged imitation and used the pandemic to increase resistance to network expansion. The 5G frequencies auctioned so far were considered to have been well researched in terms of their radiation. British network operators therefore called on the British population to prevent attacks on the infrastructure and to object to disinformation. The GSM Association has called on internet companies and social media platforms to remove false information about 5G and the virus. Representatives of the British government stated that the 5G thesis was "absolute nonsense" and that there was not a single indication of a causal link between the new mobile communications standard and the virus disease. Many telephone companies publicly warned that, especially during the pandemic, millions of people are dependent on a functioning Internet and good telecommunications infrastructure. The WHO denied any link between the pandemic and 5G. The International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection said 5G signals are harmless to human health.

The 5G theses stand in a long tradition of fears and rejection of invisible " electrosmog ", which has also been said to increase the risk of cancer. Research does not confirm this, even if there are still arguments about radiation limits. With every new infrastructure, similar worries flared up again. The link between 5G and the corona pandemic is an example of how conspiracy-based thinking works: It is linked to legitimate concerns, but deduces from them absurd and highly improbable connections. According to analyzes, this jeopardizes the measures taken to prevent the spread of infections, assumes a simple solution, while the complex solution has to be found, and promotes distrust in new technologies.

Jewish conspiracy

It is claimed that Israel or "the Jews " created the pandemic in order to bring other countries under control or to earn money with a vaccine worldwide. Paul Nehlen, a representative of the White Supremacy , claimed in January 2020 that Jews attacked China with a bio-weapon in order to gain control of the country. Posts appeared on the Gab network in March 2020 that portrayed the Jewish investor George Soros and the Rothschild family as the producers, spreaders or beneficiaries of the virus. They came from, among others, the US Sheriff David A. Clarke . Others claim Jews control the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and used the crisis in their alleged plan to put Americans in concentration camps under the pretext of quarantine .

The bioweapon thesis is also linked to anti-Semitism. On February 26, 2020, Muhammad Sadeq Al-Hashemi claimed on the Iraqi television channel Al Ayam that the novel corona virus was part of a Jewish-American plan to decimate the world's population. This is proven by the novel The Eyes of Darkness by Dean Koontz from 1981, which described a fictional pandemic caused by a virus called Wuhan-400 , which was immediately fatal for anyone infected . According to this "prophecy", two virus strains with the name "Corona" have been patented in the USA over the past ten years. Behind it stand the Rothschild family, which has a monopoly on laboratories for biological weapons and nuclear weapons . The Rothschilds had decided on the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Likewise, American Jews exterminated 86 percent of Indians deliberately infected with anthrax in order to take possession of the United States as their homeland. In the same way, the “Zionist lobby” exterminated a third of Scotland's population . The Rothschilds would have paid for these genocides . American policy is based entirely on such conspiracies.

The anti-Semitic cliché image of the Jewish merchant who enriches himself from the misfortunes of others is also widespread . Since December 2019, such memes on the messenger service Telegram presented the pandemic as a hoax to enforce mass vaccinations for greedy Jews. These would specifically make the vaccine more scarce and expensive the more it is needed. They would manipulate stock exchanges and benefit from falling share prices in the course of the pandemic. In anti-Semitic caricatures, Jews are portrayed not only as spreading the virus, but themselves as a virus from which the world must be cured. Some portray Israel as a military power exposing defenseless Palestinians to the virus. Christian anti-Semites like Rick Wiles interpreted infections of Israelis, for example after going to synagogues, as God's punishment for their alleged rejection of Jesus Christ . Right-wing extremist David Duke speculated that Israel and “the global Zionist elite” had infected US President Donald Trump with the virus. From a report that Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu tested negative, some concluded that he created the virus.

A collage by Uwe Ostertag on vk.com showed George Soros as a pilot who bombed people sitting relaxed on a meadow with corona viruses. The picture was entitled "Globalization of Covid 19". The Holocaust denier Henry Hafenmayer portrayed a public prayer by Orthodox Jews in a video as an alleged praise for the pandemic and commented: “Of course just coincidence ... finally wake up!” Tobias Steiger , head of the Basel section of the right-wing extremist party, the Nationally Oriented Swiss (PNOS ) in Switzerland, called Corona “a Zionist virus”. The PNOS homepage asked whether Corona was not “a planned reduction in the world's population to protect the climate”. The party supporters were advised under the title of the National Socialist organization Kraft durch Freude to send each other pictures of their own vegetable garden.

All of these myths make use of old anti-Semitic clichés and enemy images, such as the Jewish parasite , the well poisoner or the Jewish world conspiracy , similar to the persecution of the Jews at the time of the Black Death .

Felix Klein , Federal Government Commissioner for Anti-Semitism , repeatedly warned of the considerable increase in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in the pandemic: This provides an ideal breeding ground for accusations of individual groups of people. In view of the historically known consequences of this hatred of Jews, each individual must do something about it and report anti-Semitic agitation to the platform operator. The anti-Semitism commissioner of Baden-Württemberg, Michael Blume , referred to anti-Semitic-anti-American videos by the German Youtuber Mazdak and to the quick combination of conspiracy theses: “It was just three steps to say: There is a bio-laboratory in Wuhan, Bill Gates and Melinda Gates , they develop vaccines and so earn money, and they are Jews. None of that is true. ” Juliane Wetzel from the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University of Berlin said:“ Images with the old, long-nosed grimaces are circulating on the Internet, as you know them from the ' Stürmer '. ”Only the virus is still in the picture today .

Globalization and migration

Right-wing extremists in particular attributed the pandemic to globalization and immigrants . As Miro Dittrich from the Amadeu Antonio Foundation observed, some claim, referring to Wolfgang Wodarg, that the pandemic was fueled scare tactics for secret political goals, for example to abolish cash or to distract from the refugee crisis in Europe from 2015 . The right-wing YouTuber Henryk Stöckl claims that the panic caused should distract from the impending stock market crash , which would have occurred anyway and can now be blamed on the virus. The Identitarian Movement sees foreign infiltration as the cause of the pandemic and tries to link infections with migrants. In addition, her boss Martin Sellner disseminates reports of alleged immigration of asylum seekers and their quarantine. The leading NPD ideologist Karl Richter described an overthrow scenario on the NPD Facebook page as the imminent consequence of the pandemic: With curfews the panic “cannot be held down for long”: “From here it will be bloody. (…) In the end there is the fall of the regime and its European and transatlantic backers to hell ”. Richter accused Chancellor Angela Merkel , the Jewish investor George Soros, the President of the European Central Bank Christine Lagarde and Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble as responsible .

The NPD warned of a "globalization epidemic". The NPD functionary Jürgen Gansel commented on cases of infection in a refugee shelter with the sentence "Immigration makes you sick". The right-wing extremist Nikolai Nerling , who appears as a “people's teacher”, claimed in his video “Corona Conto Holocaust” that the Infection Protection Act serves the government to imprison unwelcome citizens. If border controls are tightened, Germans are not allowed to leave the country, "others" are still allowed to "come in". He questioned the existence of the virus. Citizens of the Reich claim that the state wants to "chip" microchips into the bloodstream of people with forced vaccinations in order to be able to monitor them completely.

According to Michael Klarmann ( look to the right ) right-wing extremists described the state measures against COVID-19 as an “ enabling law ”, “state of emergency” or “martial law” against their own population. Some claimed that government politicians had long since had their own vaccine and that refugees were secretly distributed in Germany by buses at night in order to accelerate the pandemic. Henryk Stöckl mixed bioweapons and world order theses with downplaying statements from doctors. Billy Six showed an empty emergency room for corona sufferers in Berlin and concluded that there was no dangerous pandemic. Former news anchor Eva Herman called on all doubters to hang a towel visibly on the window. AfD man Theo Gottschalk wrote on Facebook that Germans would be locked in "camps" if they violated exit restrictions, while "invaders" (immigrants, refugees) would remain free. The AfD parliamentary groups in Thuringia and North Rhine-Westphalia made the assertion that the relaxation of the ban on worship was deliberately made at the beginning of Ramadan on April 23, 2020, whereas shortly before that, services for Easter and the celebration of White Sunday with first communions were still prohibited have been. At the beginning of April 2020, the message also circulated on social networks that, according to the “Crisis Center for Berlin and Brandenburg”, special relaxation regulations are planned for Muslims if the exit restrictions would still apply at the beginning of Ramadan. The cited joint crisis center for Berlin and Brandenburg does not exist, however, but in Brandenburg there is a corona crisis center in Potsdam and in Berlin a crisis team of the Senate Administration for Health, Care and Equality. On the other hand, the Bild-Zeitung claimed a week before the start of Ramadan that the general restrictions on the practice of religion “out of concern” about an alleged “Ramadan chaos” would be upheld for longer and that the Christian churches would therefore remain closed accordingly longer.

In videos, AfD politician Hansjörg Müller doubted the lethality of the virus and claimed that the vast majority of corona deaths had died of other causes. The AfD country chief Corinna Miazga spoke of "police patrols", "passes", warned of "compulsory vaccinations" and an "impending currency reform" that threatened the livelihood of the German economy. Political scientist Ursula Münch named such AfD videos as examples of deliberately spread misinformation that use conspiracy theories to spread panic and empirically unproven doubts about the entire political system. Other AfD MPs affirmed the government measures as necessary protection of citizens.

The Viennese FPÖ boss Dominik Nepp blamed asylum seekers for an increase in infections in Vienna in connection with an evacuation of an asylum seekers home after positive Covid tests and spoke of an “asylum seeker virus” and “virus spreaders”. At the same time, however, Nepp campaigned with FPÖ club boss Herbert Kickl and general secretary Michael Schnedlitz for the FPÖ petition against “Corona madness”. Nepp called the prescribed mouth and nose covering the "government burqa ".

Initially, the magazine Compact praised emergency measures in Italy against the attitude of the Chancellor, but then spoke of a "Corona dictatorship" in Germany, as did the Politically Incorrect blog . According to Thuringia's Interior Minister Georg Maier and Stephan J. Kramer ( Office for the Protection of the Constitution of Thuringia ) right-wing extremists are trying to exploit the corona crisis in theory. According to Kramer, they claim an alleged state failure, refugees spread the virus or the crisis was used to set up a police state. Some considered worsening the crisis with attacks, while others offered to help citizens.

In India , Muslims were blamed for the outbreak of the disease, with the expression "corona jihad " spreading. Previously, an event organized by a Muslim sect had become a source of contagion. As a result, Muslims were no longer allowed into markets and the police took action against them. Leading politicians spread rumors that Muslim traders spat on their wares in an attempt to spread the virus.

According to the Counter Extremism Project (CEP) and the Southern Poverty Law Center , right-wing extremists in the US are using the situation to create chaos. They also call on sick people to go outside, for example to disrupt the National Guard, create panic with small self-made explosive devices or actively infect police officers and Jews with the virus. With this they want to accelerate the expected collapse of Western society in accordance with accelerationism in order to create a white ethno state. They hope that the government will lose control in order to use it to recruit new followers. They blame the Chinese, Americans of Asian origin, Jews or Israel for the pandemic. In around 100 right-wing extremist Telegram channels, some interpret the exit restrictions as a Jewish plot to enforce voluntary house arrest of whites. An attempted bomb attack on a hospital in the state of Missouri, in which the police shot the perpetrator, is said to be based on such motives.

New world order or world government

From March 11, 2020 a text with the title “Don't let yourselves be kidding” appeared on the Internet, which claimed: The “Corona hysteria” should only restrict civil rights or abolish them entirely. It moves people to voluntarily go into custody (nothing else is quarantine), to get used to the police and military presence on the streets and to be banned from freedom of assembly . Now people could be “vaccinated and at the same time chiped” against their will, cash abolished, total surveillance made possible. Corona is "the perfect alibi for the collapse of the financial system" and conceals "the real reasons and real causers in the background". It distracts from 5G radiation as a cause of illness and death in Wuhan. It creates fear that is more contagious than the virus. “And that seems intentional! Because if a person is afraid at first, then he lets everything happen to him and everything into himself. "

According to the fact checker Mimikama , the text comes from an article on the esoteric website “Lichtweltverlag” from March 11th. This explained the pandemic out of the "panic of the NWO elites". It is becoming more and more difficult for them to “enforce the New World Order and the absolute control of humanity”. It is no coincidence that the virus appears during the refugee crisis in Europe and a financial crisis that is worsening every day. So "an enormous amount of pressure is built up" because "this system is in abort mode."

Thus, the author (s) interpret the new virus as a means for alleged world order plans of unnamed "elites" in whom they believe. According to Mimikama, this conspiracy theory reflects the need to bring order into the misunderstood chaos of complexity, also in order to no longer have any responsibility oneself.

On May 9, 2020, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò's appeal appeared in several languages , describing the measures to contain the pandemic as “the prelude to the creation of a world government beyond control”. There are reasons to assume "that there are forces who are interested in creating panic in the population" and have "doubts about the actual risk of infection" of the coronavirus. The Cardinals Gerhard Ludwig Müller and Joseph Zen Ze-kiun as well as other Catholic clergy, journalists, doctors and lawyers signed the appeal. The Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, Cardinal Robert Sarah , shared his "concerns". He and Müller had previously criticized bans on worship services in the fight against the corona virus as an inappropriate interference with religious freedom . The German Bishops' Conference, on the other hand, stated through its chairman Georg Bätzing that it assessed the pandemic fundamentally differently. Klaus Pfeffer , Vicar General of the Diocese of Essen, criticized the appeal for spreading “crude conspiracy theories without facts and evidence, combined with right-wing populist fighting rhetoric”, as well as “confused theses that stir up fears, pursue black-and-white thinking, draw bad images of the enemy and togetherness poison in our societies ”. That has nothing to do with Jesus Christ . The International Auschwitz Committee declared that it would be a fatal signal for the democratic cohesion of European societies if the bishops of the Catholic Church were to approach the right-wing extremist and anti-democratic conspiracy hysteria. The Taz also pointed out that when it came to formulations in the appeal such as “interference by foreign powers” ​​and “unclear intentions of supranational units”, experts in anti-Semitism research would “be quick to quit”.

Esoteric theses

The Bavarian cult representative Matthias Pöhlmann referred to some typical esoteric theses on the pandemic. The Swiss Nancy Holten claims that she had received a message from the “White Brotherhood” to humanity: The virus should usher in a new era and open human awareness to inner healing powers instead of outer security. Those who died of COVID-19 would have declared themselves ready to die beforehand. Dieter Potzel, representative of the new religion Universal Life in the wake of Gabriele Wittek , quoted a report from the community blog Rubikon News , according to which the coronavirus might be transmitted through pig fattening , and wrote that in Europe too, “the lobby of the pig fatteners in connection with the churchmen is the policy and has massively influenced science, so that it is not so complicated to guess possible answers to the question asked at rubikon.news ”. The physiotherapist Jörg Loskant, who appears as spiritual healer “Natara”, distributes the code 537354 “for protection, healing and the cured form of the corona virus” through his institute “Kamasha” in Fulda . This “magic formula” was “obtained from beings from the invisible world”. He called for this “information” to be spread everywhere in public space, “so that we stay healthy!” An “energetic” sent a corresponding appeal to politicians in Austria. According to Pöhlmann, such “messages of a supposedly exclusive overknowledge” are a common expression of fear and distraction from the currently necessary protection for others and oneself in times of crisis.

The Shas party in Israel was sentenced to a fine by electoral officials after handing out candles and lucky charms alleged to offer protection from the coronavirus. Similarly, the NGO Kupat Ha'ir from Bnei Berak promised an amulet for a donation of 850 US dollars and an assurance from Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky that one would not get the virus.

Alleged predictions

In the course of the pandemic, End of Days: Predictions and Prophecies About the End of the World , a book published in 2008 by the American author Sylvia Browne (1936–2013), who described herself as a medium , became a bestseller. In it, the author claims that she has received and recorded messages since childhood, including the prediction: Around 2020 a serious disease similar to pneumonia will spread around the globe, defy all therapy attempts, suddenly stop, reappear ten years later and then disappear completely. The fact check site Snopes judged this to be vague, referred to many of the author's refuted predictions and suspected that she had luckily picked up on the SARS epidemic. Browne's book had n't seen a reprint after the Mayan calendar ended in 2012. The British tabloid Daily Star presented it on January 20, 2020 as a description and prediction of the pandemic, although COVID-19 by no means opposes "all known treatments".

Dean Koontz's novel, Die Augen der Dunkelheit (1981) mentions a laboratory-created virus as a test on a prisoner, but only in chapter 39. The author described it as being nearly 100 percent fatal in 24 hours and first called it "Gorki- 400 ", only since 1991" Wuhan400 ".

An alleged forecast of the pandemic by Nostradamus on social media is fictitious. Its texts from 1551 almost never give concrete annual dates and were written as poetic quatrains, so that the alleged quote would have been much too long. The terms supposedly related to the epidemic sometimes do not appear in his work, sometimes in a different context.

State misrepresentation

China

In December 2019, the Chinese government silenced the doctors from Wuhan who first reported on the outbreak of the pandemic (including Li Wenliang ). Only after three weeks did she begin to seal off the affected region. During this time the crisis was reported relatively openly on the Internet and the government was criticized. This launched a massive counter-offensive at the end of February 2020. Chinese statistics claimed a sharp drop in new infections outside Wuhan. The propaganda campaign followed the guideline: foreign countries are coping less well with the pandemic than China, foreigners bring infections to China and the virus may come from abroad. The conspiracy thesis was circulating on Chinese social media that the US military brought the virus to Wuhan as a secret bio-weapon. In the state media, heroic stories of selfless helpers, doctors and nurses and a nationwide mobilization dominate. They should also represent the superiority of one's own dictatorship. The shortcomings and mistakes of Western governments are also pointed out, especially those of Donald Trump.

As of March 12, 2020, a spokesman for China's State Department also claimed on Twitter that the US Army could have brought the coronavirus to Wuhan. He referred to the "Military World Games" in Wuhan in October 2019, in which a US team also took part. This thesis comes from Michel Chossudovsky's website "Global Research", which also represents conspiracy theories as of September 11, 2001 and is often quoted by Russian state media. This disinformation is compared with the “Operation Infection” of the KGB from the 1980s, which presented the disease AIDS as a biological weapon from a US laboratory and also cited supposedly independent foreign sources. The Stanford University showed China's Corona targeted propaganda in a study.

In January 2020, Wuhan police arrested at least eight doctors who reportedly spread rumors about the virus via the popular WeChat app . Against 40 other Chinese are said to have been investigated. In fact, a lot of false information and private videos with unchecked information had been shared via WeChat. Western media, however, viewed the arrests as an excuse to censor social media in China. Government officials and state media had also spread fake news, such as a video from the construction of an alleged hospital in Wuhan, which actually showed an apartment building in another city. Several journalists and bloggers, including human rights lawyer Chen Qiushi and journalist Li Zehua, went missing in China in February 2020 after posting critical reports, videos and photographs of conditions in hospitals in Wuhan and Hubei Province .

Since April 10, 2020, China's scientists have had to obtain prior approval from the government for all medical publications on COVID-19, especially with information on the origin of the virus. Their internal service instructions for this were discovered in the network and then deleted, but are still in the cache of search engines. In March, Chinese researchers published articles on the origin of the virus in Western magazines without any problems. Now it was feared that the government would suppress objective research and strengthen the theory of foreign imports of the virus.

See also : COVID-19 pandemic in the People's Republic of China

Russia

Russian state media such as Russia Today and Sputnik as well as platforms such as SouthFront.org have been distributing hundreds of false reports about the pandemic since January 2020. This was determined by the “Strategic Communication” task force of the European External Action Service (EEAS). The Russian disinformation campaign claims above all that the virus is artificially manufactured by secret elites, the USA or the pharmaceutical industry for a base political purpose. According to EAD and Thomas Rid ( Johns Hopkins University ), as in previous cases, the campaign is intended to create confusion, undermine trust in the Western social system, its governments, media and authorities, and sow distrust and discord in the EU and between it and the USA. The methods and goals have hardly changed since the Cold War and only adapted to the respective technical possibilities.

Some of the false reports or conspiracy theses of this disinformation campaign identified by the EAD task force are for example: The coronavirus was developed in NATO bio-laboratories (Sputnik). It is a bioweapon (Sputnik, transmitter of the Russian Defense Ministry TV Zvezda, transmitter of the oligarchs Malofejew Tsargrad TV u. A.) Or provocation of the United States ( RIA Novosti ). Bill Gates and George Soros would have funded its manufacture in Wuhan; this is only directed against Asians. It was developed for the extermination of Mongolids and Asians ( Komsomolskaya Pravda et al.). It was an invention from Great Britain (News Front) or France (Russia Today) or it came to earth from space (Sputnik). The pandemic is being exaggerated by Western media in order to transform states into fascist sanitary dictatorships (Sputnik) or to strengthen capitalism (Geopolitica.ru). Liberalism made it easier for the virus to spread. Freedom and democracy in Europe prevented it from being effectively combated ( Perwy kanal ). Dictatorships are more successful in fighting the pandemic (Russia Today). In addition, there were direct attacks on WHO recommendations and harmful false health tips, such as that hand washing does not protect against infection (Russia Today), hydroxychloroquine can be tried safely as a remedy (Russia Today), an isotonic saline solution cures an infection (Antikor) or zinc Coronaviruses kill (Russia Today et al.).

RT Deutsch deliberately spread such fake news and distributed a video “The Epidemic That Never Was” online. The Federal Ministry of the Interior saw this as a threat to public safety and announced on March 24, 2020 that the station had been monitored for some time.

Sputnik Armenia and Ren TV spread the bioweapon thesis and demanded that the US should open the bio-laboratories they funded in Georgia and Armenia to international observers. Both laboratories had them, and Russian journalists had also visited the Georgian laboratory several times without finding any evidence that the laboratories spread diseases. Analogous to this campaign, the KGB had already spread the claim around 1985 that a US military research laboratory in Maryland had developed the HI virus . The Russian platforms Southfront or Katehon are deliberately spreading unsettling reports about a coming "tyranny" and are publishing corresponding texts by authors such as the stockbroker Dirk Müller , the Russian Eurasianist Alexander Dugin and the right-wing extremist Manuel Ochsenreiter .

The thesis is also circulating in Russia that the virus was developed in Latvia or in a British military laboratory. According to the Japanese IT security provider Trend Micro , a group that has been known for attacks on Ukrainian facilities since 2013 is using disinformation about the coronavirus from Russian servers as a means for advanced persistent threats .

The theory that Bill Gates is behind the virus is spreading right and left extremists in Russia , according to historian Ilya Yablokov . There, conspiracy theories are more popular than in the rest of Europe, because society has been “brainwashed” against alleged external enemies for 15 years. He expected the pandemic to feed these theories across Europe and thus influence election results.

See also : Propaganda in the Russian Federation

Brazil

Since the pandemic spilled over to Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro has played down the risk and refused to order protective measures. Two members were tested as infected on March 13, 2020 following a visit to the US by a delegation from Brazil. In the following days, at least 23 members of the delegation were tested as infected. Bolsonaro did nothing. From March 18, thousands of Brazilians protested against his behavior in more than twelve large cities by hitting the pots. After individual governors and mayors ordered curfews in their area, he spoke in a speech to the nation on March 25 of "corona hysteria," accused the media of spreading fear and called for a return to normalcy. Those responsible for curfews should abandon the “scorched earth concept”: “The risk group is people over 60 years of age. Why close schools? ”He claimed that infected people only got a“ little flu ” (gripezinha) or“ little cold ” (resfriadinho) . By then, 2000 Brazilians had officially been reported infected and 46 people had died.

By March 25, there were more than 25,000 corona deaths worldwide and hundreds of thousands infected. Since then, Bolsonaro has been the leader of the corona denial movement, which takes no account of scientific knowledge. Trump shook his hand on March 7th. Until the end of March, even when his own cabinet members fell ill, Bolsonaro ignored his health minister's advice to isolate himself for two weeks, avoid large gatherings and advise against it. He turned the handshake into a ritual of defiance and made appearances with hundreds of followers, with whom he took selfies. He claimed that 90 percent of infected Brazilians had no symptoms. At the age of 65, he was not at risk because he used to be an athlete. He suggested isolating only the elderly and the sick. He claimed that Brazilians would "never catch anything" even if they went into sewage. They already have antibodies to stop the virus. He accused the governors who ordered curfews of “destroying” Brazil and actively tried to block their actions. This increased protests and opposition. The governor of Rio de Janeiro won a legal battle with Bolsonaro and is still allowed to close his district's airports and highways. The governor of São Paulo threatened criminal charges against the federal government if it undermined his measures against the pandemic. The reason for this was the increase in the rate of infections, not the absolute number of those infected up to that point. Therefore, the health minister warned that the country's health system would collapse by the end of April 2020. Bolsonaro, on the other hand, feared the economic consequences of the closings and warned of chaos, mass unemployment and hunger. Political scientists interpret his stance as an attempt to hold others responsible for the consequences of the lockdown . The hostile defense against science, media and a sense of reality is also ideologically based on his populism .

After his health minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta demanded exit restrictions , Bolsonaro fired him. Thomas Fischermann ( Die Zeit ) described the expulsion, denial and downplaying of the dangers of COVID-19 as a cold power calculation against better judgment. Bolsonaro knows that he cannot effectively protect the population without endangering the economy, especially the poor in the favelas. Therefore, he does everything to maintain power so that he can shift responsibility to others. His middle-class voters, on the other hand, would take appropriate measures to protect themselves.

Brazil's state government was hesitant to react to the pandemic, closing state borders late and exempting the US from entry bans for visitors from risk areas. Only a few states imposed partially stricter measures, but their containment effect was doubted because of Bolsonaro's stance. Therefore, according to Tagesschau.de, until at least March 26, 2020 , Brazil was the only country in South America whose government did not impose any domestic measures against the pandemic. Experts therefore expected the most serious consequences and high death rates at the time, especially among the poor in the densely populated urban favelas (slums) and the indigenous peoples in the Amazon region .

Mexico

The pandemic reached Mexico in February 2020 . President Andrés Manuel López Obrador constantly refused to provide the population with correct information about it. After the first COVID-19 case in the country, he claimed, against all known facts, “According to the information available, it [the virus] is not terrible or fatal. It's not even as bad as the flu. "At the beginning of March, when Mexico's health authorities recommended physical distancing , he publicly contradicted them directly:" There are those who say that we should stop hugging because of the coronavirus. But we should hug. Nothing will happen. ”He himself blatantly disregarded the advice of his own health experts and continued his mass appearances across the country, hugging, kissing and shaking hands with devotees.

On March 24, 2020, many regions and municipalities in Mexico imposed assembly bans, closed bars, restaurants and cinemas and urgently advised people to stay at home if possible. Obrador then posted a video on Twitter encouraging Mexicans: “If you have the means, go out to eat with your family in restaurants. That will strengthen the economy. "

Because of Obrador's attitude, his government failed to take adequate measures to prevent and detect infection. In mid-March, workers at the National Institute for Respiratory Diseases protested the lack of clear procedures against COVID-19 and the Minister of Health's belated response to the pandemic. Doctors complained that the government's refusal to accept tests has so limited that the actual number of people infected is impossible to determine. This is almost certainly well above the official statistics, which showed 475 COVID-19 cases and six deaths by March 26, 2020.

When asked about his behavior and the concerns of medical staff, Obrador said that journalists are taking advantage of the pandemic to distort, alert and attack the government on behalf of the opposition. The conservatives would be happy if he got infected "so that they can accuse us of everything."

As of March 23, 2020, Mexican non-governmental organizations had reached three court rulings finding Obrador's government failed over the pandemic and instructing them to provide testing and treatment. On March 24, the government first admitted that the virus was spreading in Mexico. Because many Mexicans suffer from obesity and diabetes mellitus and thus belong to the risk groups particularly at risk according to the WHO, the Pan American Health Organization expects up to 700,000 seriously ill people in Mexico who need ventilation. Since there are currently only 2,500 intensive care beds and 5,500 ventilators there, high death rates are feared. Migrants in camps along national borders and prisoners are also among the most severely affected risk groups in Mexico.

The WHO and human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch therefore sharply criticized Obrador and warned that his government must fulfill its obligation to provide accurate information and protection of the population. Anything else only leads to avoidable death.

United States

US President Donald Trump made 16,241 false or misleading public statements in the three-year term ending January 20, 2020, according to the Washington Post accounting records . Even after the first deaths in the US (from January 21, 2020) and the national emergency declared on March 14, 2020, he came out almost daily with dying down, false statements, lies, wishful thinking and biases regarding the pandemic.

date	statement	classification
22nd of January	After the first death in the US, a reporter asks whether Trump is concerned: “No, not at all. We are totally in control. It is a person who came from China and we have it under control. It will be alright."
January 30th	Trump bans entry from China and says during an election campaign: “We have very few problems in this country at the moment - only five [corona deaths]. We think it will turn out very well. "	The WHO declares a global health emergency.
February 2nd	"We pretty much ruled out that it [the virus] came from China."	In the next 48 hours, 40 passengers on the Diamond Princess , including eight US citizens, contracted COVID-19. On February 4, Japan quarantined the cruise ship with 3,600 people on board.
February 7th	The virus will weaken from April, in warm weather, which has a "very negative effect" on this type of virus.	According to the WHO, the virus can spread in all climates and weather conditions. Seasonal decline can only be determined later.
14th of February	“We have a very small number of infected people in the country. About 12. Many of them are doing better, some are fully recovered. It looks pretty good for us. "	By February 20, the WHO reports 77,000 infected people worldwide.
February 24th	The virus "is very much under control." The stock market "is starting to look very good to me!"	The Dow Jones Industrial Average crashes by more than 1000 points. Trump calls for $ 1.25 billion in emergency aid from Congress.
February 26th	"If you have 15 people [COVID-19 cases] and those 15 go down to almost zero in a few days, then we've done a pretty good job."	Health Minister Alex Azar recently agreed with the experts who had been predicting for more than a month: "We will see more cases in the US". The first cases of infection without a clear origin appear in the USA.
27th of February	It will one day "miraculously" disappear.	Shortly thereafter, chief virologist Anthony Fauci warned of a rapid increase in infections, which then occurred.
2nd March	Pharmaceutical companies "will have vaccine, I think relatively soon."	Earlier, at a meeting with pharmaceutical representatives, Trump advisers said it could take 12 to 18 months to develop a vaccine. He replied that he preferred a duration of a few months.
4th of March	Barack Obama and Joe Biden "did nothing about it" (on swine flu). Obama made a decision through tests that has now turned out to be "very harmful".	Obama's government wanted to make private laboratory tests dependent on FDA approval, but did not do so. The United States House of Representatives, ruled by the Democrats , grants 8.3 billion emergency aid against the virus, far more than Trump requested.
4th of March	“I think the 3.4% figure is really a wrong number. Now that's just my feeling, but it's based on a lot of conversations ... because a lot of people have that, and it's very mild, they get better very quickly, they don't even go to the doctor, they don't even call him. You never hear about these people, so you can't count them as Corona flu. Personally, I would say the number is well under one percent. "	The WHO previously announced that the global death rate from the pandemic was 3.4 percent on that day, according to all available figures. She again pointed out the enormous difference in the death rate from flu (0.1 percent).
6th March	“Anyone who needs a test gets a test. They are there. They have the tests. And they are beautiful. "	Testing capacities are lacking nationwide and in many states. The day before, Vice President Mike Pence had admitted that there are currently not enough tests for the expected needs.
8th of March	"I have not the slightest concern."	By then, 729 US citizens had been reported infected and 26 had died from it. The WHO had named the global risk of infection.
9th March	"So much fake news!" "We have it very well under control."	March 9th saw the worst stock market crash on Wall Street since the 2008 financial crisis .
March 10th	“It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away. "	By then, ~ 4000 people had died of Covid-19 worldwide. More than 1,200 US citizens were infected the following day. Up to 100 million US citizens were expected to be infected. Trump said on the same day: “All different numbers. Very large numbers, and also a few small ones, by the way. "
March 11	The private insurance companies have promised to waive all co-payments for corona treatments, to extend insurance coverage to these, and to prevent unexpected medical bills.	The insurers just wanted to forego co-payments for virus tests and grant discounts. It was not until the second corona law of the US Congress forced them to assume the test costs. The federal government did not force them to cover follow-up treatments and exempt COVID-19 patients from the cost of other tests and diagnoses.
March 11	The US would "suspend all travel from Europe, except the UK, for the next 30 days". The ban concerns "not only the huge amount of trade and freight, but various other things, if we get approval."	US citizens, legal permanent guests, their families and citizens from EU countries outside the Schengen area can continue to enter. The following day, Trump tweeted that trade and freight were not affected. He later extends the entry ban to Great Britain and Ireland .
March 12th	All incoming US citizens would be screened for COVID-19. Infected people would not be allowed on domestic flights and kept in quarantine.	There is a lack of test capacities everywhere in the country. Neither are all US citizens entering the country tested, nor are infected people obliged to quarantine.
March 13th	Obama's response to the H1N1 virus in 2009 "was a complete disaster, with thousands of deaths, and no action of any importance to solve the testing problem until now."	Testing wasn't a problem in 2009, it was delayed vaccine production. Obama declared a health emergency 14 days after the first H1N1 case. Trump declared a state of emergency more than 60 days after the first COVID-19 case in the US.
March 13th	Google is building a website to help US citizens find test needs and the nearest test site.	Google didn't know about it. Verily wanted to set up the triage website in question , but only for the San Francisco area . Google subsequently promised to create a separate website for Trump's expectation.
17. March	“I've always known this was a real pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called that. I've always considered it very serious. "	See February 7th and 27th and more often. Trump was still comparing the pandemic to common flu weeks after arriving in the United States.
17. March	Trump claims the WHO did not offer infection tests and that their tests are "bad".	According to the WHO, three independent laboratories had rated their test as valid. The Corona coordinator of the White House assumes the reliability of the WHO tests.
19th March	The FDA approved the use of chloroquine against COVID-19 very quickly.	FDA representatives quickly disagreed: The drug must first be clinically tested. It is not approved for COVID-19. Doctors would have to prescribe it individually for this purpose. Fauci said on the same day: There is no “magic cure” for COVID-19 and currently no therapy that has been proven to be safe and effective.
March, 20th	He activated the Defense Production Act (DPA). Already "a lot of people were working very hard on ventilators" and other things.	An order from Trump under the law to companies to manufacture certain products was not issued. When asked about it, Trump rowed back. When FEMA Director Pete Gaynor announced on March 24th that they wanted to use the law to request 60,000 test equipment, Trump tweeted that he would not do that.
March 21st	Automobile manufacturers have promised to build medical ventilators. You are already at it.	Ford and General Motors had stopped production in North America, saying they were months away from making ventilators. General Motors only began planning these after Trump's claim. Elon Musk said his company, Tesla, could make ventilators, but not immediately.
March 23, 24 and 29	If the economy continued to shut down, suicides would "definitely occur in far greater numbers" than with COVID-19.	There were around 47,000 suicides in the United States in 2017. At the end of March 2020, the US government estimated the expected corona deaths in the US at 100,000 to 240,000. Others estimated it to be 1.1 to 1.2 million.
March 24th	New York Governor Andrew Cuomo missed an opportunity in 2015 to buy 16,000 ventilators cheaply.	In 2015, the New York Ministry of Health calculated a need for around 16,000 additional ventilators for an influenza pandemic similar to that in 1918, but did not derive a purchase recommendation from this. Trump hadn't read the source of the number.
March 24th	Cuomo has set up death panels and lotteries for New York in the event of a pandemic.	According to the 2015 guidelines, hospitals should call a triage committee if necessary , which would then decide on the allocation of ventilators. Cuomo never set up a lottery.
March 24th	Trump wants to open the country by Easter : "We cannot let the cure get worse than the problem itself."	Chief Virologist Anthony Fauci: “The President's ambitious goal is that we can lift the measures soon by a certain date. We talked to him about it and told him we have to be flexible. He understands and accepts that. "
24./25. March	The USA overtook South Korea when testing for COVID-19: "We are moving upwards very rapidly proportionally".	On March 25, five times as many South Koreans were tested for COVID-19 as US citizens.
26th of March	"Nobody ever thought that a thing like this [the pandemic] could have happened."	There have been numerous warnings of a global pandemic and its consequences from experts outside and within the government since 2010. In 2018, an expert analyzed how prepared the USA was for a pandemic like Ebola and found: almost not at all.
26./27. March	State governors have "requested a lot of equipment that I don't think they need." "I told them to be grateful ... We did a great job."
March 29	He had the [from 26./27. March] "not said".
29./30. March	Hospitals would request an "artificially inflated amount" of face masks and equipment that might "go through the back door". He thinks "it's worse than hamsters".	Evidence is missing. At the beginning of March, Cuomo reported only anecdotally about isolated thefts in hospitals.
March 30	"We inherited a broken test."	There couldn't be a test for the virus before it appeared. China confirmed its existence on December 31, 2019 and announced the genome on January 7. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) first delivered contaminated tests to states and bureaucratically delayed delivery. That cost the US weeks of testing.
March 31	“We stopped all of Europe. We started with certain parts of Italy, then all of Italy. Then we saw Spain. Then I said: stop Europe. We have to stop them coming here. "	The entry ban only ever affected part of Europe and was not gradually imposed on individual states.

The long disinformation resulted in the US taking protective measures much later than other states, leaving curfews on the states and not resolving bottlenecks in tests. From around March 10th, experts considered an uncontrollable rapid increase in infections in the USA to be unstoppable.

By March 11, 2020 at the latest, it was noticed that just then, just as some Republicans were gradually realizing the seriousness of the situation, Trump reinforced his strategy: spreading false statements, contradicting experts, shifting responsibility to others and pretending to bluff his way out of the crisis .

Trump had largely dissolved the pandemic task force established by Obama in the CDC in 2018 and not renewed it. Since December 2019, he had shared fake news from QAnon followers on Twitter, giving them huge reach. Like them, he constantly attacks administrative officials as a “deep state”. On March 14, the operator of the 8chan platform , on which some right-wing extremist mass murderers announced their terrorist attacks, founded an election campaign association for QAnon supporters. According to Media Matters, this includes at least 30 Republicans running for US Congress. The FBI has identified QAnon as a potential terrorist threat. Trump's behavior towards the Covid 19 pandemic is also explained by his proximity to this scene, for which empirical reality is "optional, usually annoying". According to Christian Stöcker ( Der Spiegel ), his reaction patterns (dissuading, blaming others, inconsistently imposing selective entry bans, praising himself, causing confusion) have contributed significantly to the escalation of the crisis. The exponentially growing death toll from the pandemic would have exposed both the continued denial of reality by Trump and his supporters as well as the blatant weaknesses of the US health system: 28 million US citizens have no health insurance, as are eleven million non-naturalized immigrants, an unknown number has no entitlement on sick pay.

On April 11, 2020, the New York Times (NYT) reported that Trump had received detailed information about the risk of the pandemic and necessary countermeasures since December 2019, but had ignored it for months. At a press conference that was supposed to provide information about administrative measures for the pandemic, Trump then showed a promotional video that presented his reactions to it as flawless and far-sighted and accused the media of lying and concealing the risks. As a result, the TV station MSNBC switched off the live broadcast of the press conference and announced that it would only broadcast government press conferences if they fulfilled their intended task. Former NYT editor Howell Raines said the promotional video was in his experience one of the most amazing acts of disinformation since the Vietnam War era .

On April 21, 2020, Trump suspended green card approvals for six weeks and justified this with false claims: Immigrants would spread the virus in the US, put strain on the US health system and take away remaining or future jobs from unemployed US citizens. Statistically, however, the domestic US population had by far the largest proportion of infected people and deaths, about 40 times more than Mexico. According to the Cato Institute, there is no correlation between immigration and infection rates in the United States. Immigrants have been shown to create more jobs for US citizens in the US. The decree was therefore classified as an election campaign with which Trump, as he did in 2016, demonized immigrants in order to mobilize his voters and pretended to act to distract from missing, wrong and failed measures against the pandemic.

At his press conferences on the pandemic, Trump often favors journalists from OAN, as their questions represent him positively, and praises OAN to other broadcasters on Twitter. OAN had broadcast Trump's appearances as a presidential candidate live, supported the Pizzagate thesis against Hillary Clinton and spread false reports favorable to Trump. The media researcher Phil Napoli ( Duke University ) and the historian Julian Zelizer ( Princeton University ) consider Trump's advertising for a dubious broadcaster with simultaneous attacks on reputable broadcasters in the midst of a pandemic as historically unprecedented. Despite all the usual conflicts with the press, none of his predecessors had so openly supported disinformation. This is physically endangering the population because they need accurate and reliable information about the virus and its treatment. Trump is weakening the media that could bring this information, making it difficult to return to a kind of normality.

Serbia

Between March 19 and June 1, 2020, 632 people who tested positive for the coronavirus died in Serbia. This emerges from internal documents of the local state COVID-19 information system, which were published by Balkan Insight . Only the number of 244 deaths was officially announced. There were also at least 300 new infections per day between June 17 and 20, 2020, but only a maximum of 97 new infections per day were announced for this period, which was immediately before the Serbian parliamentary elections . The state of emergency imposed on March 15 was lifted on May 6; The media and the public were then referred to the official coronavirus website. The Batut Institute, which coordinates the publications on the pandemic in Serbia, as well as other official bodies refused to provide information when asked by BalkanInsight about the difference between published and internal figures.

Iran

In Iran , according to Reporters Without Borders , the authorities are following any coverage of the pandemic, detaining and interrogating journalists and citizens who question official figures and the government's crisis management. The regime suspects the US as the originator of the virus; it is perhaps the result of an "American biological warfare" in which Israel also participates. The Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had relief supplies from the United States as a "method, the virus further spread" back strictly. It was "specially developed for Iran, using the genetic data of Iranians". In his New Year's sermon on March 22, 2020, he initially thought the pandemic was due to the work of evil spirits ( jinns ). His website later stated that there was “no doubt” that “Jews and especially Zionists” had a special “relationship with the devil and spirits”.

Other states

The dictatorships of North Korea , Turkmenistan and Tajikistan did not report a single COVID-19 case until April 10, 2020. The Turkmen authorities must avoid the word "coronavirus" so that as little information as possible about the pandemic is spread in the country. President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow ordered his ministers to burn rue, whose smoke is supposed to kill viruses. At the end of March, the Tajik President celebrated the traditional Nouruz spring festival with 12,000 schoolchildren and students . He praised his people for adhering to strict hygiene without warning of the risk of infection.

The Defense Minister of Zimbabwe , to the applause of her supporters, declared the pandemic a “work of God punishing countries that have sanctioned us”.

In Austria , the State Medical Directorate of Tyrol claimed against experts on March 5, 2020 that infection with the virus in ski areas was "very unlikely from a medical point of view". The Austrian government did not pass on warnings from several European countries to the Tyrolean authorities, so that other holidaymakers arrived and became infected. It was not until March 13, 2020 that Chancellor Sebastian Kurz declared under international pressure that the Tyrolean Paznaun Valley with the towns of Ischgl and St. Anton am Arlberg would be isolated. Many holidaymakers left the places on their own way on the same day and thus spread the virus in many parts of Europe. Consumer protection organizations accused the Tyrolean authorities of having closed restaurants and ski lifts in Ischgl too late out of business interests and were planning class action lawsuits against them.

Scientific classification

A team of researchers from Oxford University examined 225 individual theses on COVID-19 that were circulated from January 1 to March 31, 2020 and found to be false or misleading by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) and Google Fact Checking Tools . The main results were:

• The total amount of false reports grew by more than 900% in this period, corresponding to the amount of independent English-language fact checks.
• 59% of the 225 examples distorted, bent, recontextualized and revised existing, often accurate information. 38% were completely invented, mostly by simple means (“cheap fakes”).
• The reconfigured fake news accounted for 87% and the free inventions 12% of the interactions on social media.
• 80% of the false statements came from ordinary people (“from below”) and were little shared. 20% came from politicians and celebrities ("from above"), but made up 69% of the interactions.
• Some false statements made "from below" received a large reach in the network, probably even greater through private chats and SMS messages.
• 39% of the statements relate to measures by governments, WHO and UNO .
• 88% of the examples appeared on social media, 9% also on television, 8% were published by news channels, and 7% by other websites.
• Twitter left 59 % , YouTube 27 % , Facebook 24% of all content flagged as incorrect by fact checks.

Cristina Tardáguila , IFCN co-director, called COVID-19 "the greatest challenge fact checks have ever faced".

In a survey by the Pew Research Center in the United States, around 29% of respondents assumed that COVID-19 was grown in the laboratory. 43% believed it had a natural origin, 25% said they did not know, 1% said the virus did not even exist. According to the poll, 37% of supporters of conspiracy myths voted for Republicans and 21% for Democrats .

The cognitive scientist John Cook compares the reactions and rhetoric of government Donald Trumps pandemic with science denial , especially with the denial of man-made global warming : Both ran in the same five stages of "It does not happen" to "it's not our fault", "it is not that bad ”,“ Solutions are too expensive ”to“ It's too late ”. The psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky also refers to similar reaction patterns and the partly identical operators. They see the virus, like climate change, as a threat to the economy and its basic functioning.

Social psychologist Pia Lamberty described the pandemic as a "prototype of loss of control" to which many people responded with conspiracy theories. The seeing of possibly non-existent explanatory patterns is an expected reaction to the feeling of having no influence on the events in order to regain control for oneself.

Michael Butter , a recognized German researcher on conspiracy theories, stated in an interview:

• Since the pandemic, as in every uncertain time, there have been a great many such theories, but hardly anything new, but recourse to familiar patterns.
• The enemy images are interchangeable: People influenced by anti - Americanism see the USA, people influenced by racism against Asians see China as the originator of the virus, others the pharmaceutical industry, international finance capital or the "deep state". The virus always serves "as a new block of an existing construction kit".
• Claims by supposed experts are problematic scientific opinion, but not yet conspiracy theories. Wolfgang Wodarg, for example, typically leaves out opposing opinions from established scientists or presents them as absurd, but does not claim that the government is consciously stirring up the alleged hysteria for a larger goal and deliberately twisting scientific facts.
• Only when platforms such as Rubikon , KenFM or Russia Today take up such opinions and incorporate them into their own narrative will it become a conspiracy theory. Almost half of the texts published there ask who is behind the corona crisis, who is using it to identify the supposed "real masterminds".
• State authorities must therefore communicate openly from the start, point out the constantly changing facts and not pretend that the future is certain. Politicians should avoid the impression of self-profiling.
• Anyone who takes controversial positions on the pandemic with a wide range should bear in mind that it is a matter of life or death. The fact that the virologist Karin Mölling presented her legitimate scientific position on KenFM is irresponsible: she must know that her opinion is used there for purposes of conspiracy theory and is made part of these conspiracy theories herself.
• Conspiracy theorists also see scientists from completely unrelated fields as highly welcome key witnesses and therefore constantly mention them with their academic titles. It is therefore important: "Do not believe everyone who has a doctorate."
• Despite the crisis, the proportion of the population who believe in conspiracy theories about the virus has apparently hardly increased in Germany. Wodarg's theses were quickly contradicted on the Internet, and his influence was immediately suppressed.
• Internet companies took action against false news more consistently than before and offer the WHO free advertising space. Therefore, a lot of fake news would be spread via other channels, such as WhatsApp.
• Serious media would have a good standing with the current consensus in science and politics about the pandemic.
• Despite its logic of presenting the new first, the media should always present the known scientific consensus first and only then mention the nonsense that is circulating. Facts presented early could better immunize insecure people against fake news. With staunch conspiracy theorists, conclusive counter-evidence would tend to strengthen their convictions. Vaccination opponents would probably fight an upcoming vaccination against COVID-19.

The IT communication researchers Katharina Bader and Martin Steinbach explained the rapid spread of disinformation about COVID-19 from the basic human need to assess dangers. The Social distancing magnify the potential danger of such theories because many spend more time on the net. Educational work, cooperation with Internet platforms and greater personal responsibility on the part of users to ask for evidence before they send a message on could counteract this.

Countermeasures

WHO and UN

On February 2, 2020, the WHO identified a "massive infodemic" (information glut) on the COVID-19 pandemic, in which accurate and false reports were mixed. This makes it difficult for many people to find reliable sources and the advice they need. Because of the high demand for timely and trustworthy information, the WHO created a direct, round the clock hotline and corresponding websites for myth-busting ( debunking myths).

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on February 3, 2020 that WHO employees were constantly searching the Internet for rumors and misinformation in order to correct them and prevent damage to health through incorrect recommendations, medication or preventive measures. He announced the collaboration with Google so that the WHO information would be the first result of search queries about COVID-19. Facebook, Twitter, WeChat and TikTok have also taken similar measures to contain false information.

On February 15, 2020, Ghebreyesus affirmed at the Munich Security Conference that the WHO is fighting not only the pandemic but also the equally dangerous “infodemic”. Fake news spread faster and easier than the virus and is just as dangerous. In contrast, the WHO is working with major search engine providers and media groups. He called on all governments, corporations and news organizations to raise the alarm appropriately without inciting hysteria. At the beginning of February 2020, Facebook, Twitter and Google confirmed their cooperation with the WHO against false information about the pandemic.

On April 15, 2020, UN Secretary General António Guterres warned of a dangerous “infodemia” of disinformation about Covid-19, which is spreading virally and stigmatizing people and groups. He urged the internet companies to do more about it. The world must also act together against the disease of hatred.

Scientists and Medicines

On February 18, 2020, 27 leading health scientists from eight states published a statement of solidarity to all scientists in China involved with the virus in The Lancet . The authors unreservedly acknowledge that the addressees are working intensively on research into the virus, the development of antidotes and information for the global public in order to save lives and help protect health worldwide. Everyone is united in the face of this new viral threat. The rapid, open and transparent transfer of data on the outbreak of the pandemic is now threatened by rumors and false information about its origin. That's why they all condemned conspiracy theories that deny the virus' natural origin. They referred to numerous scientific publications on the genome of the virus, which unanimously came to the conclusion that, like many viruses before it, it originated from animals. Conspiracy theories only engendered fear, rumors and prejudices that put global cooperation against the virus at risk. They therefore supported the call by the WHO Director-General to allow only scientific evidence and unity instead of disinformation and guesswork. They stand on the side of scientists and health professionals in China in the fight against the virus and invite them to support them. You speak with one voice and have no competing interests.

In an open letter initiated by the campaign organization Avaaz and printed by The New York Times on May 7, 2020, more than 100 medical professionals from around the world called on Facebook, Twitter and Google to “the lies, perversions and fantasies that threaten us all ", Not" to fan further ". Among them are four prominent German doctors and emergency doctors who must treat patients every day who believed in Fakenews and as disinfectants drank, the pandemic as "vertigo" ( hoax ) or looked the virus to be safe and did not keep distance rules or ausschlugen outreach. Misinformation has led to many people arriving late at the hospital and dying unnecessarily. That is why "the fight against medical misinformation on the Internet is just as important as exit restrictions and keeping your distance". The “tidal wave of false and misleading content” about the coronavirus is “not an isolated outbreak of disinformation”, but part of a “global problem”. Diseases such as measles , which were already considered to be eradicated, revived "thanks to anti-vaccination propaganda". The staff in hospitals and health departments around the world are "only too familiar with the real effects of this infodemia". Misinformation worsened the morale “of a profession that was already under great pressure”, while the treatment costs “put an even more strain on the budget, which was already overburdened”. The measures taken so far by Internet companies are "nowhere near enough", as they "both facilitate the dissemination of ideas and benefit from them". Because of their "incomparable position of power" they are responsible for "counteracting the deadly spread of misinformation in order to prevent social media from making our society sicker". It is about "saving lives and restoring trust in scientifically based health care." That is why the signatories demanded:

• Send corrections to any person who came into contact with health misinformation on a platform and notify them of "a well-designed and independently verified correction",
• Downgrade lies, websites and groups that spread them in user feeds,
• Remove harmful misinformation as well as pages and channels of the "repeat offenders" from the content-recommending algorithms.

The signatories praised previous markings and the removal of incorrect information, but criticized the fact that they are often only checked after they have been accessed millions of times instead of before. Therefore, users should also be notified of retrospective corrections.

Portals for education and fact checks

The rapid spread of the new virus created enormous time pressure and scientific uncertainty. The constantly changing news situation made it difficult to get an overview of reliable information about COVID-19, favored rumors and false reports. Fact checkers and public media countered this with corrections and clear explanations. According to Netzpolitik.org, the following are particularly reliable in German-speaking countries:

• The non-profit association Correctiv undertakes its own as well as cooperative research on daily inquiries to him. Qualified teams examine minority positions point by point and categorize them as correct, misleading, unfounded or incorrect. In addition, citizens can report in a crowd newsroom where and when they encounter which false statements.
• The Austrian association Mimikama focuses on countering false and fraudulent reports in social media and clarifying the facts, such as chain letters with health tips that are circulating.
• The ARD fact finder counters false statements on the net with its own background research, which is more detailed and detailed than daily news.
• The "#Faktenfuchs" of the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation offers national and regional fact checks.

There are also contact points for scientific corona studies:

• The Science Media Center Germany evaluates research results by scientists and makes them available to journalists and laypeople as fact sheets. It is countering the tendency of many researchers to publish articles on COVID-19 as preprints without peer review outside of established specialist journals because of the time pressure .
• In addition to the WHO, the RKI and the Federal Ministry of Health have opened large portals for COVID-19.

Internet companies

On January 30, 2020, Google and the WHO launched an 'SOS Alert', which immediately puts WHO information pages and the most important health tips at the top of searches about COVID-19. This gives priority to reliable information to help reduce disinformation. Twitter also wanted to adjust its search function accordingly. The change was interpreted as an indication that the large Internet companies are very adaptable if the situation requires it.

At the end of February 2020, the Amazon company removed more than a million alleged protective or cures against the virus infection from its range.

Facebook, Google, YouTube, Linkedin , Microsoft , Reddit and Twitter first agreed to work together in March 2020 to remove dangerous rumors about the virus and stop their spread. Facebook had previously promised to remove content flagged as "physically dangerous" by leading health authorities. At the beginning of March 2020, Facebook granted WHO free web space for information on the pandemic.

Despite their promises, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube barely deleted false statements from top politicians by April 2020 and continued to barely intervene in content in order to present themselves as politically neutral. It was only after Donald Trump's adviser Rudy Giuliani , Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro and Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro presented chloroquine as a reliable cure for COVID-19 that they erased this false statement. However, they left almost identical and many other false statements by Donald Trump. Twitter left Trump's tweet about a “corona flu” and Elon Musk's false statement that children are “practically immune” to COVID-19. Facebook and Twitter did not want to delete conspiracy theories against Anthony Fauci or a manipulated video of the Trump campaign about Joe Biden. They are continuing their line of allowing manifestly untrue canvassing. In contrast, Facebook erroneously removed thousands of posts from reputable media such as Politico and the Sydney Morning Herald for a day in March .

According to a data search by IT expert Philip Kreißel and ARD-Medien, 19 disinformation videos on YouTube had around twelve million clicks by April 11, 2020 and were shared 300,000 times on Facebook. Sucharit Bhakdi's video message to Angela Merkel on March 29, 2020 was viewed around 2.2 million times, rated more than 100,000 times and received many positive responses. Journalistic fact checks on these videos were shared 20 times less often. Corona videos on websites that otherwise spread conspiracy theories were viewed by 45 million. According to a university study presented by Thorsten Quandt , “alternative media” spread mostly diffuse mixtures of true and fabricated facts and distort the facts through rumors and individual conspiracy theories. The measures taken by internet companies are therefore considered inadequate.

According to Facebook, 40 million posts were marked with false positives warnings in March 2020. However, the campaign organization Avaaz found in random samples that the warnings were only displayed up to 22 days after fact checks and that 40% of them were incorrect. As a result, Facebook wanted to tighten its measures from April 16, 2020. A Facebook banner refers all users who interacted with potentially harmful incorrect information to the WHO website against corona myths. Two billion users are said to have already seen the banner, 350 million of them have clicked so far. Facebook continued to exclude conspiracy theories and political fake news.

On May 11, 2020, Twitter announced that it would delete tweets containing incorrect information about the coronavirus that was harmful to health and that it would add a reference to trustworthy sources to less dangerous information. Particular attention should be paid to information that could lead to more infections.

European Union

After a meeting on March 15, 2020 with Věra Jourová , currently Vice President of the EU Commission , representatives from Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft promised to make reliable news sources more prominent, to remove prohibited or harmful content and to protect them from “misleading advertising” . On March 31, 2020, the head of the Commission Ursula von der Leyen urged the corporations to do more against disinformation about COVID-19. Twitter promised to act more strictly against false statements about treatment methods or allegedly not affected, but not to delete such false statements from Donald Trump and European right-wing populists in the future. Google and Facebook did not agree to this either when asked by Netzpolitik.org .

The European External Action Service (EEAS) published a short report on April 1, 2020, highlighting: “Some state and state-supported actors are trying to exploit the crisis to advance geopolitical interests, often by questioning the credibility of the European Union and its partners will. ”This has“ potentially harmful consequences for public health and effective crisis communication ”. Global claims that the EU is falling apart are trending, as is misinformation about the origin of the virus. In the EU, among other things, “online platforms would continue to monetize disinformation and conspiracy theories in connection with the coronavirus”, while China was promoting “unsubstantiated theories about the origin of the coronavirus”. In this context, the EEAS addressed not only misinformation but also the weighting and interpretation of facts: In China, Chinese aid to some European and African countries is emphasized, in Russia Russian aid to Italy. A lack of support within the EU is sometimes highlighted. In the Middle East, Turkey and the Western Balkans, the EU is criticized or portrayed as incapable of mutual aid.

Germany

In Germany , Health Minister Jens Spahn warned on March 14, 2020 on Twitter under the title “! Attention Fake News!” Of the rumor that the federal government would soon “announce massive further restrictions on public life. That's NOT true! ”On March 16, the federal government announced exactly such measures. In the evening, Spahn said that, in the face of many false reports, he wanted to show that basic services would remain secure. He knew that restrictions would come, just not when. Spahn's tweet was therefore sharply criticized from many sides: It had severely damaged trust in the government and made the fight against real corona fake news more difficult. The tweet was a prime example of fake news and indirectly questioned the sense of the new measures because a risk of infection that had increased so greatly in 48 hours did not appear plausible.

Various politicians have called for further steps to curb disinformation. Lower Saxony's Interior Minister Boris Pistorius called for untrue claims about the medical and other care of the population, the cause, routes of infection, diagnosis and therapy of COVID-19 to be prohibited and their spread to be punished with fines. - Others consider the existing laws against fraud and defamation, also applicable on the Internet, to be sufficient. Federal Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht said that "facts and a healthy mistrust" as well as reliable news sources help against fake news and rumors best.

Offers from the federal and state governments for immediate coronavirus aid were quickly misused for fraudulent activities online. In mid-April 2020 , the State Criminal Police Office of North Rhine-Westphalia found more than 90 fake websites that presented themselves as application pages for such emergency aid, in order to fish for data and then to submit applications with other account data. Below that was the full copy of the Ministry of Economics' website. State politicians called for no more applications to be submitted over the Internet as long as the website creator could not be clearly identified.

Judiciary

On April 2, 2020, the Folketing of Denmark passed a law by a large majority that provides for stricter penalties against theft and attempted fraud in relation to COVID-19 aid. According to this, the Danish police can have websites blocked in the event of falsification of documents, fraud and intent to defraud, trade in supposed drugs (“miracle cures”) against Covid-19, fake shops and sites with calls for violence without a prior court decision. You must then have the blocking checked by the court within 24 hours. The legislative resolution was misinterpreted as comprehensive censorship of all information that violates government “requirements”, but is not directed against information, but against business with false hygiene and therapeutic products. The misinterpretation comes from a Danish nutritionist who continues to spread anti-Semitic conspiracy legends online.

literature

• Svenja Boberg, Thorsten Quandt, Tim Schatto-Eckrodt, Lena Frischlich: Pandemic Populism: Facebook Pages of Alternative News Media and the Corona Crisis - A Computational Content Analysis. Cornell University, April 9, 2020 ( full text online )
• Thorsten Quandt, Svenja Boberg, Tim Schatto-Eckrodt, Lena Frischlich: Pandemic News: Facebook Pages of Mainstream News Media and the Coronavirus Crisis - A Computational Content Analysis . Cornell University, May 27, 2020 ( full text online )

Web links

Authorities' portals

• WHO: Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) advice for the public: Myth busters
• East StratCom Task Force in the European External Action Service: EU vs Disinformation: The Campaign.
• EU Commission: Combating disinformation.
• Federal Ministry of Health: Up-to-date information on the coronavirus
• Federal Center for Health Education: How can I find reliable information about the coronavirus?

Fact check portals

• Correctiv: Coronavirus fact checks: CORRECTIV has checked these allegations. April 9, 2020
• Mimikama: Coronavirus: An overview of all claims and fact checks. April 2, 2020
• ARD fact finder: fact checks on the corona pandemic
• Fact fox:

Fake ticker BR24 (constantly updated)

Archive: The collected fakes about Corona. BR24, April 2, 2020

• Full Fact.org: Facts on Coronavirus: Latest Fact Checks. (GB, continuously updated)
• Factcheck.org (USA)
• Tracking center for false information about the coronavirus. Newsguardtech.com, 2020
• Corona myths A – Z on the website of the Society for the Scientific Investigation of Parasciences

Videos

• Mirko Drotschmann ("MrWissen2Go"): The Corona Conspiracy? Well-founded criticism vs. Fake news. April 4, 2020

Audio

• Podcast collection of the ARD - Audiothek : Boom for conspiracy theories.Retrieved on May 23, 2020.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Alice Echtermann, Till Eckert: Coronavirus: Misleading YouTube video spreads via Whatsapp. Corrective, January 28, 2020
2. ↑ Natalia Frumkina: Rumors and Fakes: Coronavirus as an alleged conspiracy. Tagesschau, January 28, 2020
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} China coronavirus: Misinformation spreads online about origin and scale. BBC, January 30, 2020
4. ↑ Bridget Johnson: More US Cases of New Virus as Deadly Outbreak Becomes More Dire in China. Homeland Security Today, January 27, 2020
5. ↑ Prabhash K. Dutta: Conspiracy theories abound on how Wuhan coronavirus outbreak happened. India Today, January 29, 2020
6. ↑ Prof. Dr. Thomas Löscher: Flu: Definition & Differences to the Common Cold. In: Internists in the Nez. August 18, 2017, accessed July 19, 2020 . 
7. ↑ Assessment of Deaths From COVID-19 and From Seasonal Influenza. In: JAMA Internal Medicine . April 14, 2020, accessed February 28, 2020 . 
8. ↑ Coronavirus in Germany: the number of infections skyrocketed. In: tagesschau.de . February 28, 2020, accessed February 28, 2020 . 
9. ↑ Manuel Bewarder , Anette Dowideit, Ibrahim Naber: The lost weeks. Die WELT , May 17th. 2020, p. 16.
10. ↑ Frederik Richter, Bianca Hoffmann: Coronavirus: Why Wolfgang Wodarg's statements have little to do with science. Correctiv, March 18, 2020; Selina Bettendorf, Nina Breher, Richard Friebe, Sascha Karberg: Fact check: Wolfgang Wodarg spreads theses that ignore important facts. Tagesspiegel, March 20, 2020; Julia Merlot: Fact check: Wolfgang Wodarg's dangerous misinformation. Spiegel Online, March 20, 2020
11. ↑ Korinna Hennig, Christian Drosten: (16) Coronavirus update: Need abbreviations for vaccine approval. NDR, March 18, 2020
12. ^ Malte Kreutzfeldt : Transparency membership is suspended. taz, March 25, 2020
13. ↑ Lea Weinmann: Michael Spitzbart is wrong - the coronavirus is currently not comparable to the flu virus. Corrective, April 3, 2020
14. ↑ Cristina Helberg: Coronavirus: The hour of the questionable YouTube doctors. Corrective, April 9, 2020
15. ↑ https://www.tagesspiegel.de/wissen/schlussbericht-der-heinsberg-studie-sterblichkeits-rate-nach-covid-19-in-deutschland-weiter-fraglich/25798680.html
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17. ↑ dpa fact check: Medical practitioner Bhakdi underestimates the danger of the corona virus. dpa, March 24, 2020
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19. ↑ https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Bevoelkerung/Sterbefaelle-Lebenserwartung/Tabellen/sonderauswert-sterbefaelle.html
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28. ↑ Scott Waldman, E&E News: Climate Science Deniers Turn to Attacking Coronavirus Models. Retrieved on May 29, 2020 (English). 
29. ↑ Alleged Corona agent kills hundreds of people. AP / Stuttgarter Nachrichten, March 27, 2020
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32. ↑ How pseudomedicine is being advertised against the new corona virus. MedWatch, March 2, 2020
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34. ↑ Will Sommer: QAnon-ers' Magic Cure for Coronavirus: Just Drink Bleach! Daily Beast, Jan. 28, 2020
35. ↑ Ed Pilkington: Revealed: leader of group peddling bleach as coronavirus 'cure' wrote to Trump this week. Guardian, April 24, 2020
36. ↑ ^{a b} Dartunorro Clark: Trump suggests 'injection' of disinfectant to beat coronavirus and 'clean' the lungs. NBC, April 24, 2020
37. ↑ Julia Merlot, Marius Mestermann: Trump's disinfectant push: "One of the stupidest proposals for the treatment of Covid-19". Spiegel Online, April 24, 2020
38. ↑ Ted Johnson: “It Is A Matter Of Life And Death”: Donald Trump's Disinfectant Comments Still Trigger Alarm Even After He Claimed He Was Being Sarcastic. Deadline, April 24, 2020
39. ↑ Trump's proposal is having an effect: More poison emergency calls are being received in Illinois. N-tv, April 26, 2020
40. ↑ ^{a b} After Trump's call: man drinks aquarium cleaner and dies. RND, April 26, 2020
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42. ↑ Erika Edwards, Vaughn Hillyard: Man dies after taking chloroquine in an attempt to prevent coronavirus. NBC, March 23, 2020
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47. ↑ "Controversial rabbi says 'hot hair-blower' into throat can cure virus" jewishnews.timesofisrael.com of April 28, 2020
48. ↑ Bethania Palma: No, a Hair Dryer Won't Stop Coronavirus. Snopes, March 17, 2020
49. ↑ Michael Vlessides: COVID-19 'Infodemic': Researchers Step Up to Stop the Spread. Medscape, March 27, 2020 (paid)
50. ↑ Melanie Payne: Fact check: Did Florida county commissioner propose a blow dryer cure for coronavirus? Retrieved on May 16, 2020 (English). 
51. ↑ Ralf Nowotny: Fact check on the chain letter "Onion kills all bacteria, including corona". Mimikama.at, February 28, 2020
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61. ↑ Deutschlandfunk: Bill Gates has become the target of conspiracy theorists. June 14, 2020.
62. ↑ Brandy Zadrozny: Coronavirus conspiracy video spreads on Instagram among black celebrities. NBC, March 14, 2020
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74. ^ ^{A b} Emily Makowski: Theory that Coronavirus Escaped from a Lab Lacks Evidence. The Scientist, March 5, 2020
75. ↑ Bill Bostock: A GOP senator keeps pushing a thoroughly debunked theory that the Wuhan coronavirus is a leaked Chinese biological weapon gone wrong. Business Insider, February 17, 2020
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103. ↑ Frank Jansen: Hope for the collapse of democracy. Tagesspiegel, March 25, 2020
104. ↑ Maria Fiedler: How the AfD is trying to get out of the Corona low www.tagesspiegel.de, May 8, 2020
105. ↑ ^{a b} Stefan Lauer: Ramadan and Coronavirus: How right-wing extremists stir up fear of Muslims Belltower.News , April 23, 2020
106. ↑ No special rules in Ramadan www.tagesschau.de, April 9, 2020
107. ↑ Ramadan under Corona: The fasting month only in the narrowest circle www.br.de, April 23, 2020
108. ↑ AfD spreads fake news about Corona. BR, April 4, 2020
109. ↑ Racist Sager: Nepp takes complaint calmly. wien.orf.at, May 6, 2020
110. ↑ FPÖ wants to stop “Corona madness” wien.orf.at, May 20, 2020
111. ↑ Maier: Right-wing extremists are trying to take advantage of the corona crisis. www.sueddeutsche.de (DPA), April 8, 2020
112. ↑ Alexander Sarovic: Covid-19 in the USA: How America's right-wing extremists are exploiting the corona crisis. Spiegel Online, April 12, 2020
113. ^ ^{A b c} Ralf Nowotny: "Corona hysteria" to restrict civil rights? (Fact check). Mimikama.at, March 26, 2020
114. ↑ Corona measures: Bishops spread conspiracy theories. In: tagesschau.de. May 9, 2020, accessed May 9, 2020 . 
115. ↑ Auschwitz Committee criticizes appeal by Catholic bishops www.juedische-allgemeine.de, May 11, 2020
116. ↑ Philipp Gessler: Arrived in the brown milieu. taz.de, May 10, 2020
117. ↑ Mimikama: The newspaper article "Warnings of Virus in 1981". (detailed fact checks ibid.)
118. ↑ Nostradamus did not predict the corona pandemic. dpa / SZ, March 30, 2020; Sebastian Leber: The shabby, the deadly and the suckers. Tagesspiegel, April 7, 2020
119. ↑ Benedikt Voigt: China wants to get out of the Corona low with concentrated propaganda. Tagesspiegel, March 7, 2020.
120. ↑ Claudia von Salzen: How disinformation works in times of Corona. Tagesspiegel, March 16, 2020
121. ↑ Vanessa Molter: Pandemics & Propaganda: How Chinese State Media Shapes Conversations on The Coronavirus. Stanford Internet Observatory / Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, March 19, 2020
122. ↑ Ryan Broderick: China Is Using Fears Of Online Misinformation About The Coronavirus To Arrest People. Buzzfeed, January 29, 2020
123. ↑ ^{a b c} Ivana Drmić: Remaining critical as a pillar of democracy. Deutsche Welle, April 15, 2020
124. ↑ Nectar Gan, Caitlin Hu, Ivan Watson: Beijing tightens grip over coronavirus research, amid US-China row on virus origin. CNN, April 13, 2020
125. ↑ Christopher Nehring: Corona disinformation: always the same pattern. Deutsche Welle, March 21, 2020
126. ↑ Disinfo: A new Chinese coronavirus was likely elaborated in NATO biolabs. East Stratcom Task Force
127. ↑ Disinfo: The new coronavirus is a US biological weapon ; Disinfo: Coronavirus is definitely an act of American warfare. East Stratcom Task Force
128. ↑ Disinfo: The Chinese coronavirus is a US provocation. East Stratcom Task Force
129. ↑ Disinfo: Coronavirus: A Wuhan laboratory sponsored by Soros, virus affects only Mongoloid race ; Disinfo: Bill Gates is sponsoring the coronavirus ; Disinfo: Bill Gates and George Soros are to blame for the artificially created coronavirus. East Stratcom Task Force
130. ↑ Disinfo: Coronavirus targets exclusively one race ; Disinfo: Coronavirus specially manufactured to target Asians ; Disinfo: The coronavirus is man-made and tailored to Chinese DNA. East Stratcom Task Force
131. ↑ Disinfo: COVID-19 is an act by the British as part of operation Coronavirus. East Stratcom Task Force
132. ↑ Disinfo: France is behind the creation of the Coronavirus. East Stratcom Task Force
133. ↑ Disinfo: Coronavirus got on Earth out of space through a meteorite and spreads through the wind. East Stratcom Task Force
134. ↑ Disinfo: Coronavirus pandemic is exaggerated in order to turn countries into fascist hygiene dictatorships. East Stratcom Task Force
135. ↑ Disinfo: Western Governments exaggerate coronavirus pandemic to strengthen capitalism. East Stratcom Task Force
136. ↑ Disinfo: Liberalism has facilitated the spread of the coronavirus. East Stratcom Task Force
137. ↑ Disinfo: Democracy and freedom prevent Europe from fighting the Virus effectively. East Stratcom Task Force
138. ↑ Disinfo: Dictatorships are better at curbing Coronavirus. East Stratcom Task Force
139. ↑ Disinfo: Frequent hand washing does not protect you from COVID-19. East Stratcom Task Force
140. ↑ Disinfo: We have nothing to lose by using hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19. East Stratcom Task Force
141. ↑ Disinfo: Coronavirus can be cured with saline in 4 days. East Stratcom Task Force
142. ↑ Disinfo: Zinc could help kill coronavirus. East Stratcom Task Force
143. ↑ RT German: German authorities are keeping an eye on Russian stations because of corona disinformation. Tagesspiegel, March 25, 2020
144. ↑ Silvia Stöber: Corona pandemic: disinformation instead of global answers. Tagesschau.de, March 25, 2020
145. ↑ Gamaredon APT Group Use Covid-19 Lure in Campaigns. Trend Micro April 17, 2020.
146. ↑ “I'm afraid we will have a global pandemic of conspiracy theories.” Novaya Gazeta, April 24, 2020
147. ↑ After contact with the sick: Trump not infected with coronavirus. Tagesschau.de, March 15, 2020
148. ↑ Coronavirus in Brazil: Bolsonaro wants to return to normal. Tagesschau.de, March 25, 2020
149. ↑ Uri Friedman: The Coronavirus Denial Movement Now Has a Leader. The Atlantic, March 27, 2020
150. ↑ Thomas Fischermann: Brazil: Bolsonaro is not a madman. Time, April 17, 2020
151. ↑ Christoph Heuser, Hannes Alpen, Julia Bläsius: The ignorant and the helpless. IPG-Journal, March 27, 2020
152. ↑ Ivo Marusczyk: Coronavirus in Brazil: Bolsonaro's conspiracy theories. Tagesschau.de, March 26, 2020
153. ↑ Mexico: Mexicans Need Accurate COVID-19 Information. López Obrador Misinforms Public on the Health Risks of the Pandemic. HRW.org, March 26, 2020
154. ↑ President Trump made 16,241 false or misleading claims in three years. Washington Post, January 20, 2020 (paid)
155. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w} Christian Paz: Politics: All the President's Lies About the Coronavirus. The Atlantic, March 24, 2020
156. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Jon Greenberg: Timeline: How Donald Trump responded to the coronavirus pandemic. PolitiFact, April 1, 2020
157. ↑ Steve Benen: A line on the coronavirus outbreak Trump may come to regret. MSNBC, Feb 28, 2020
158. ↑ Joanna Walters, Lauren Aratani, Peter Beaumont: Trump calls WHO's global death rate from coronavirus 'a false number'. Guardian, March 5, 2020
159. ↑ Global Mortality Rate Reaches 3.4 Percent. NYT, March 4, 2020
160. ↑ ^{a b c} Marc Pitzke: Trump in the corona crisis: The virus denier. Spiegel Online, March 10, 2020
161. ↑ March 10 coronavirus news. CNN, March 11, 2020
162. ↑ March 11 coronavirus news. CNN, March 12, 2020
163. ↑ ^{a b} Steve Benen: 'It will go away': Trump's coronavirus rhetoric isn't getting better. MSNBC, March 11, 2020
164. ↑ Dan Mangan: Trump dismissed coronavirus pandemic worry in January - now claims he long warned about it. CNBC, 17./18. March 2020
165. ↑ Christian Stöcker: Corona and right-wing populism: madness collides with virus. Spiegel Online, March 15, 2020
166. ↑ Michael D. Shear: Five Takeaways on What Trump Knew as the Virus Spread. NYT April 11, 2020
167. ↑ Joe DePaolo: MSNBC Cuts Off Briefing, Fmr. NY Times Boss Calls it 'One of the Most Astonishing Acts of Disinformation' Since Vietnam. Mediaite. April 13, 2020; Ian Schwartz: Fmr. NYT Exec Editor: Trump Briefing "One Of The Most Astonishing Acts Of Disinformation" Since Vietnam. Realclearpolitics, April 13, 2020
168. ↑ Marc Pitzke: Green Card Stop for the USA: Trump closes. Spiegel Online, April 22, 2020
169. ↑ Serbia Under-Reported COVID-19 Deaths and Infections, Data Shows , Natalija Jovanovic, BalkanInsight, June 22, 2020
170. ↑ ^{a b c} Dietmar Pieper: Deniers, liars and conspiracy theorists: Hocus pocus against Corona. Spiegel Online, April 10, 2020
171. ↑ Stephan Grigat : Of Djinns and Jews. In: taz of August 24, 2020, p. 15.
172. ↑ Steffen Arora, Birgit Baumann, Laurin Lorenz, Anne Rentzsch, Fabian Sommavilla: Coronavirus: Après-Ski with a rude awakening in the Tyrolean mountains. Standard.at, March 21, 2020
173. ↑ Pia Dangelmayer et al .: Coronavirus spread: From Ischgl to all of Germany. Tagesschau.de / BR, April 1, 2020; Stephan Ozsváth: Coronavirus class action? Refurbishment in the "Hotspot Ischgl". Tagesschau.de, March 28, 2020
174. ↑ J. Scott Brennen, Felix Simon, Philip N. Howard, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen: Types, sources, and claims of COVID-19 misinformation. Reuters Institute, April 7, 2020
175. ↑ Survey shows: a third of Americans think Corona is a laboratory virus. RND, April 14, 2020
176. ↑ Trump's parallel messages on coronavirus and climate . In: E&E News , March 6, 2020.
177. ↑ 'Misinformation kills': The link between coronavirus conspiracies and climate denial. Grist.org, March 28, 2020.
178. ↑ Axel Schröder: False reports on COVID-19: The boom in corona conspiracy theories. Deutschlandfunk (DLF), April 16, 2020
179. ↑ Martin Spiewak: Coronavirus: "Do not believe everyone who has a doctorate". Time, April 1, 2020
180. ↑ Sarah Kolberg: Dissemination of disinformation in the Corona crisis: Situation report on the threat posed by fake news and conspiracy theories. VdZ.org, April 7, 2020
181. ↑ Coronavirus: UN health agency moves fast to tackle 'infodemic'; Guterres warns against stigmatization. UN News, February 4, 2020
182. ↑ WHO seeks cooperation with Google on coronavirus. MDR, February 3, 2020
183. ↑ Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: Munich Security Conference. WHO.int, February 15, 2020
184. ↑ Matt Richtel: WHO Fights a Pandemic Besides Coronavirus: an 'Infodemic'. NYT, February 6, 2020
185. ↑ UN Secretary General Guterres warns of the "false news epidemic". BR, April 15, 2020
186. ↑ Charles Calisher and others: Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19. The Lancet, February 18, 2020
187. ↑ Sonja Álvarez: Fake news about the coronavirus: Drosten and over 100 doctors warn of a pandemic of lies. Tagesspiegel, May 7, 2020
188. ↑ Dominic Lammar: COVID-19: Rumors, fake news and hasty science in Corona times. Netzpolitik.org, March 20, 2020. - The websites of all the portals mentioned can be found under web links .
189. ↑ Jack Morse: Google launches 'SOS Alert' with WHO in response to the coronavirus. Mashable.com, January 30, 2020
190. ↑ Amazon culls one million fake coronavirus products. BBC News, February 28, 2020
191. ↑ ^{a b} Simon Hurtz, Klaus Ott: Dissemination of false reports: There have long been rules against infodemia. Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), March 18, 2020
192. ↑ As coronavirus misinformation spreads on social media, Facebook removes posts. Reuters, February 1, 2020
193. ↑ Facebook announces how it plans to help fight the coronavirus. Inverse.com, March 5, 2020
194. ↑ Christian Basl, Svea Eckert, Peter Hornung: Fake News on the Pandemic: The Dangerous Power of Corona Myths. Tagesschau.de, April 11, 2020
195. ↑ Gustav Theile: Facebook intensifies the fight against corona fake news. FAZ, April 16, 2020
196. ↑ Fake news in the corona pandemic: Twitter announces drastic innovation. dpa / FR, May 11, 2020
197. ↑ Alexander Fanta: Disinformation about Corona: Politician lies put platforms under pressure. Netzpolitik.org, April 2, 2020
198. ↑ Report: Disinformation about the coronavirus is spread in a targeted manner. In: europa.eu. European External Action Service (EEAS), April 1, 2020, accessed on April 22, 2020 . 
199. ↑ Katja Belousova: Unsuccessful coronavirus tweet - The Minister and the fake news. ZDF, March 17, 2020
200. ^ Andrej Reisin: Corona crisis: reasons of state as first media obligation? Übermedien, March 17, 2020
201. ↑ Corona help: Over 90 fake pages on the Internet. WDR, April 13, 2020
202. ↑ Patrick Gensing: Corona crisis: Censorship introduced in Denmark? Tagesschau.de, April 8, 2020