{"id":2728,"date":"2020-08-10T18:12:34","date_gmt":"2020-08-10T06:12:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/?p=2728"},"modified":"2020-08-10T18:12:34","modified_gmt":"2020-08-10T06:12:34","slug":"covid-myths-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2020\/08\/covid-myths-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"covid myths &amp; politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This year&#8217;s election campaign in New Zealand has attracted a number of &#8220;fringe&#8221; parties, at least some of whose supporters seem to have a fairly tenuous hold on reality and a highly flexible approach to the truth. I mean, how else could one describe some of those affiliated with the NZPP\/Advance coalition, whose members &amp; supporters regularly share myths about covid-19 (and vaccines, and 5G, and more besides)? (Fortunately, social media seem to react fairly quickly these days in terms of taking down such content once it&#8217;s reported.)<\/p>\n<p>A non-exhaustive compilation of these myths about covid-19 includes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>a meme that spread rapidly last week, before FB &amp; twitter caught up with it, claiming that the nasal swabs used in covid-19 testing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/science\/2020-07-13\/coronavirus-pcr-test-conspiracy-theories-spreading-social-media\/12443324\">penetrate the blood-brain barrier<\/a>. In practice this simply cannot happen, because the brain is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.biokids.umich.edu\/resources\/contributors\/skulls\/homo\/h._sapiens\/ventral\/\">enclosed by the bones of the skull<\/a> &#8211; you&#8217;d need more than a nasal swab to punch through that, and that&#8217;s not including the muscles and other tissues between the space at the back of your throat (the nasopharyngeal cavity) and the cranium. There&#8217;s a good debunking of the claim <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/afs:Content:9084880850\">here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>the claim that families in Australia are offered money if they state that a family member&#8217;s cause of death was covid-19 (there&#8217;s more like this on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/RadioNewZealand\/posts\/10157915749583731?comment_id=10157915783408731&amp;reply_comment_id=10157916430063731\">hyperlinked thread<\/a>).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/RadioNewZealand\/posts\/10157915749583731?comment_id=10157915783408731&amp;reply_comment_id=10157916430063731\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"553\" height=\"381\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2731 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/08\/img_5f30a3bce9bf6.png\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/08\/img_5f30a3bce9bf6.png 553w, https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/08\/img_5f30a3bce9bf6-300x207.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 553px) 100vw, 553px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">I&#8217;m pretty sure that families don&#8217;t get to approve the cause of death on the death certificate. Or that they&#8217;re being offered cash to do so. This one seems to have been imported holus-bolus from the US, where <a href=\"https:\/\/www.snopes.com\/fact-check\/medicare-hospitals-covid-patients\/\">related claims<\/a> been doing the rounds for a while.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">Apparently coroners are in the act as well&#8230; (I did google &lt;coroners + WHO&gt;, as suggested, but &#8211; how strange! &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?rlz=1C1CHBF_enNZ847NZ847&amp;ei=NrAwX_m1K4SQ4-EPwLyX-A4&amp;q=coroners+World+Health+Organisation&amp;oq=coroners+World+Health+Organisation&amp;gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQAzIFCCEQoAE6BAgAEEc6AggAOggILhDHARCvAToCCC46CwguEMcBEK8BEJMCOgYIABAWEB46CAgAEBYQChAeOgQIABANOgYIABANEB46CAgAEA0QBRAeOgcIIRAKEKABOgQIIRAVUJejAVimxwFgwckBaABwAXgAgAHvAYgBxSSSAQYwLjIxLjSYAQCgAQGqAQdnd3Mtd2l6wAEB&amp;sclient=psy-ab&amp;ved=0ahUKEwj5qLvmyo_rAhUEyDgGHUDeBe8Q4dUDCAw&amp;uact=5\">found nothing to support Maroon&#8217;s claim<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p id=\"qMRpvTT\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/RadioNewZealand\/posts\/10157915749583731?comment_id=10157915783408731&amp;reply_comment_id=10157918677388731\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-2734 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/08\/img_5f30afa1e72fd.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"429\" height=\"387\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>a meme stating that the test being used doesn&#8217;t test for covid-19 anyway. This is just so very wrong. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.auckland.ac.nz\/en\/news\/2020\/03\/18\/how-testing-for-covid-19-works.html\">As Siouxsie Wiles explains here<\/a>, the test we use is a highly-specifc test that uses PCR (polymerase-chain-reaction) to detect RNA sequences specific to the virus.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">This doesn&#8217;t stop Maroon (and many others on social media) from sharing the following claim (NB Maroon subsequently deleted this one from the thread, after getting a lot of pushback on it):<\/p>\n<p id=\"VIiqgWV\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-2737 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/08\/img_5f30dcc157778.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"315\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/08\/img_5f30dcc157778.png 440w, https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/08\/img_5f30dcc157778-300x238.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 315px) 100vw, 315px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">Clearly she&#8217;s not into fact-checking (and nor are any of the others flinging memes around <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/U-jXMeo4a4k\">like hippopotamus poo<\/a>). The statement was very definitely not made by Kay Mullis &#8211; but by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.virusmyth.org\/aids\/hiv\/jlprotease.htm\">John Lauritsen, writing about HIV\/AIDS\u00a0<em>back in 1996.<\/em><\/a><i>\u00a0<\/i>There&#8217;s further commentary on this one <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/uk-factcheck-pcr\/fact-check-inventor-of-method-used-to-test-for-covid-19-didnt-say-it-cant-be-used-in-virus-detection-idUSKBN24420X\">at this link<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s so much more of this, and alas, it&#8217;s quite widespread. And this is a problem &#8211; one that&#8217;s set out carefully and with nuance in <a href=\"https:\/\/e-tangata.co.nz\/comment-and-analysis\/the-rise-of-maori-maga\">this excellent post by Tina Ngata<\/a>. Read it carefully, and please don&#8217;t share nonsense like the memes I&#8217;ve mentioned here. Better, push back against them when you see them. Please.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p id=\"CwxPbLg\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This year&#8217;s election campaign in New Zealand has attracted a number of &#8220;fringe&#8221; parties, at least some of whose supporters seem to have a fairly tenuous hold on reality and a highly flexible approach to the truth. I mean, how else could one describe some of those affiliated with the NZPP\/Advance coalition, whose members &amp; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":2243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,71,1],"tags":[58,73,3,30,17,44],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>covid myths &amp; politics : BioBlog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2020\/08\/covid-myths-politics\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"covid myths &amp; politics : BioBlog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This year&#8217;s election campaign in New Zealand has attracted a number of &#8220;fringe&#8221; parties, at least some of whose supporters seem to have a fairly tenuous hold on reality and a highly flexible approach to the truth. 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