Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic

Misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic and SARS-CoV-2, in parts referred to as "Corona myths" or "Corona lies," have been spread since the COVID-19 outbreak. They include false reports, fake news, pseudoscientific health advice, simplifications, disinformation, and conspiracy theories about all aspects of the disease. The relative scientific ignorance in the face of a new, hitherto unknown viral disease favours speculation and the spread of misinformation.

Some of their disseminators also refer to legitimate minority scientific opinions. Sometimes the misinformation was spread for political motives. The origin of the virus and conspiracy theories based on it are the focus of attention, particularly among anti-Semites and right-wing extremists, but also among some state governments and their state media. In part, however, they also come from circles of people who were already hostile to medicine or science before the pandemic, such as anti-vaccinationists or esotericists. A small number of doctors have also played down Corona; some have deliberately issued false mask certificates.

The World Health Organization (WHO), governments, political bodies, national medical institutions, reputable media, network operators, non-profit associations and physicians counter such misinformation with education and fact-checks, among other things because misinformation can have potentially life-threatening consequences. In some cases, law enforcement agencies also become active.

Expressed hypotheses become misinformation only after they have been falsified. False information should not be confused with critical discourse due to lack of consensus (normal scientific dissent) and lack of unity in science.

Alleged pseudo-pandemic

Pandemic sceptics claimed that the increasing number of cases (e.g. in November 2020 in Germany) could only be explained by increasing testing capacities and not by a real increase in the number of cases; the COVID pandemic was a pseudopandemic (cf. pseudoepidemic). An article on Bayerischer Rundfunk refuted this with figures: Test capacities and the course of infection in Germany developed independently of each other on the basis of past statistics, the rising case numbers were due to a real increase in spread, which could also be seen in the rising positive rate (proportion of positive tests).

Figures and charts provided online by the World Health Organization also show that the COVID pandemic is indeed a pandemic.

PCR tests

PCR testing is considered the "gold standard" diagnostic test for direct pathogen detection of SARS-CoV-2. However, some scientists dispute that area-wide PCR testing is the appropriate "gold standard" for public health assessment of SARS-CoV-2.

Due to the high sensitivity of the PCR test, Sucharit Bhakdi (in an interview with hr-info in October 2020), for example, stated that a positive test result cannot indicate whether an active infection is actually present, as the test is not standardised and is positive even if only a few hereditary molecules are present. Thus, one test alone should not be used for the diagnosis. The virologist Uwe Gerd Liebert and the editorial staff of the ARD-Faktenfinder, however, pointed out that the infectivity can basically be estimated by means of the Ct-value belonging to the test result. This value indicates how often the genetic traces had to be duplicated in order to exceed the detection limit of the underlying photometric determination, whereby a positive detection of the genetic traces could be detected. The lower this value, the more viral load (or residues) were present in the sample. If the Ct values were correspondingly low, it could be concluded that the infection was actually active. Since different tests and different laboratories do not provide uniform results (the test kits of different manufacturers are not standardised), there are differences in the results of the Ct values. The interpretation of these results is difficult, especially from which Ct-value an infection is given or whether too high Ct-values provide false positive results.

The former SPD health politician and physician Wolfgang Wodarg has been of the opinion since 13 March 2020 that the alleged new virus only became known through a new test. This had been developed at the Charité only on the basis of the known coronaviruses and had not been validated enough. The government measures against the pandemic were, as with the vaccination against swine flu, scaremongering for political and financial interests, which Wodarg accused the WHO of at the time in a hearing he initiated in the Council of Europe, but which was later rejected by independent experts, as the WHO had not allowed itself to be misled by the pharmaceutical industry into unnecessarily boosting vaccine production. Certain scientists had started the scaremongering "because they need money for their institutes. They want to become important." In Wuhan, he said, there were "safety laboratories" for viruses, which was why the virus had been discovered there. With this, he denied the dramatic outbreak of the pandemic in Wuhan and indirectly claimed that COVID-19 was occurring everywhere at once, like the flu. He called for an end to the "Corona panic". In 2010, Wodarg had rejected the WHO's move to declare swine flu a pandemic in the Council of Europe, suspecting pharmaceutical industry interests as the motive. After the previous pandemic had been weaker than expected, he now spoke again of "companies that invent epidemics in order to profit from fear". According to the WHO, 180,000 people worldwide had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 by then, and 7426 had died. Virologist Christian Drosten disagreed with Wodarg and explained his assessment of the reliability of the new test on 18 March 2020: it had been developed using SARS coronaviruses that were genetically completely different from ordinary flu viruses, and had been validated at two universities, the UK Department of Health and the Charité hospital. Hundreds of clinical comparative samples and samples of an enormous amount of the closely related bat coronaviruses had never once given a false positive reaction, he said. In the end, his institute earned "not a cent" with the test. Wodarg maintained his theses and advocated them on KenFM, Rubikon, Geolitica, and in an interview with former daytime talk show host Eva Herman.

Cause of death Corona vs. next of kin premium

In May 2020, a video went viral on social media in which a physiotherapist employed at a rehabilitation clinic in Baden-Württemberg claimed that a patient at the clinic had told him that the person next to him in bed had died and that the relatives had been offered 5,000 euros to have COVID-19 entered as the cause of death. He himself later retracted other claims, such as that he was being shortchanged because the clinic was freeing up beds for Corona patients, but that only seven such beds were occupied. The seven beds were in fact occupied by recovering COVID patients who were undergoing rehabilitation, and a rehabilitation clinic is not set up to provide acute treatment for COVID sufferers anyway. Concerning the alleged premium the therapist said on inquiry now, his alleged Gewährsmann had been patient in a house of the responsible hospital group, the "bed neighbour" had been however in another hospital unknown to him again. It is very unlikely that the Corona figures will be inflated, since the Corona crisis, for example due to postponed operations, results in considerable losses of turnover for clinics. The spokeswoman for the clinic where the therapist was employed also stated that she was not aware of any forms that relatives had to sign.

Unchanged occupancy of intensive care units

In the brochure published by the "Freiheitsbote" at the beginning of 2021, "Hospital deaths despite pandemic? published by the "Freiheitsboten" at the beginning of 2021, it was stated that the closures of various hospitals in 2020 would prove that the "remaining bed capacity [...] had been sufficient at all times" and that there had been no shortage. In addition, data from the Intensive Care Register were cited, according to which the occupancy of intensive care units remained largely the same in the pandemic year 2020. No mention was made, however, of the fact that scheduled as well as non-essential surgeries were postponed to free up capacity for Covid 19 patients. Fewer sick patients were transferred to other wards. The Intensive Care Register page linked in the flyer also clearly showed that invasive ventilation capacity, which was important for Covid patients, fell dramatically, for example from around 8000 spare capacity at the beginning of October 2020 to around 3000 by the end of the year. Isolation of infected patients generated further staffing and space requirements. According to the brochure, the reference to a blog post on the website of the "Deutsches Ärzteblatt" was intended to prove that staff in Germany had been put on short-time working or made redundant as a result of the clinic closures. However, the text cited as evidence referred exclusively to hospitals in the USA. Moreover, for the majority of the clinics closed in Germany in 2020, this had already been decided for some time, and many of them also did not have an intensive care unit.

Multiple testing counted as new cases

In a video entitled "RKI admits fraud - when will the pyramid collapse? ", the doctor Katrin Kessler claimed that the Robert Koch Institute records positive coronatests of people who are tested several times as a new infection each time. The right-wing blog Journalistenwatch also picked up on this statement. In response, the RKI said that a case would not be retransmitted to the RKI "in the event of further tests in the course of case management", meaning that double counting would not take place in the event of retesting of the same patient. Health authorities contacted by CORRECTIV.Faktencheck confirmed this procedure. The tests are assigned to an existing case or person. The Dortmund health department said that with the help of the software used, it was possible to detect renewed testing of the same person "in the context of an infection that has not yet healed". However, the same person could be recorded as another case in the event of a (very rare) re-infection with SARS-CoV-2. In a video entitled "Important addendum to the RKI video", Kessler has since retracted her statement.

Allegedly implausible science

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

In the United States, conservative actors attacked the scientific basis of epidemiological modeling of the coronavirus pandemic, calling it wholly unreliable. Some actors drew parallels with global warming modeling that they also considered unreliable. Several scientists, such as Aaron Bernstein of Harvard University, disagreed with this narrative, pointing out that the models worked as expected and helped to ensure that the right actions were taken, thereby slowing the pandemic. Although it then appears that the predicted increased spread of the virus did not occur, this should be seen as a success of the countermeasures taken and not due to an unreliability of the modelling.