we know coronavirus has spawned a whole
new industry of dodgy claims and some of
them have come from leading political
figures is a few that might raise
eyebrows let's start with the world's
most powerful man within a few weeks
President Trump went from playing down
coronavirus to calling it a pandemic
he's also implied that surgical masks
have been stolen in huge numbers from
hospitals in New York as a way of
explaining the rise in their demand
where the mayor's corner they're going
out the back door but there's no
evidence of widespread theft and if
patients are flooding in and intensive
care units are full because of a new
infectious disease with no vaccine then
you are going to need a lot more
protective equipment to have any chance
of being able to cope
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various Chinese officials have been keen
to spread the idea that the virus didn't
originate in China the foreign ministry
spokesman xiaoli Jan has done so
repeatedly chinese state media have
amplified all sorts of false claims that
covert 19 might have been created by the
US military or that it was present in
Italy long before it appeared in China
there's nothing to suggest that any of
this is true and the scientific
consensus is clear the virus first
jumped from animals to humans in Wuhan
in China towards the end of 2019 at the
other end of the spectrum the Italian
nationalist leader Mateo salvini has
been telling his supporters that China
created the corona virus in a laboratory
it's another false claim but it has been
widely shared on social media again
scientists are convinced that this is
not a man-made virus
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the Brazilian President Jaya balsan ro
was censored by Facebook Instagram
Twitter and YouTube for spreading false
information
they removed posts of a video in which
he claimed that the anti malaria drug
hydroxychloroquine was totally effective
in treating kovat 19 in fact there are
lots of trials and it's being used
experimentally but the overall impact of
the drug is really unproven a senior
Indian politician Subramanyam Swami
reported that the kovat 19 strain in
India is a less virulent mutation which
the human body's defense mechanisms are
able to resist more effectively that's
not what the experts are saying all
viruses mutate but scientists have yet
to find any variation in how lethal
kovat 19 can be if a virus mutates
slowly that's good news it means that
when a vaccine comes it should be
effective for longer there's a lot we
still don't know but the emergence of a
corona virus that threatens all of us
hasn't stopped the virus of dodgy claims
from spreading around the world
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