On December 29, The Gateway Pundit, a far-right website that often spread conspiracy theories, published an article falsely alleging that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had authorized all PCR tests to detect was withdrawn. COVID-19, This article garnered 22,000 likes, comments and shares Facebook and Twitter.
On TikTok and Instagram, videos of at-home COVID-19 tests displaying positive results after being soaked in drinking water and juice have gone viral in recent weeks, and were used to further the false narrative that coronavirus Rapid tests don’t work. Health experts say some household liquids can cause a test to show a positive result, but the tests remain accurate when used as directed. A TikTok video showing a home test turned positive after being placed under running water was shared at least 140,000 times.
And on YouTube, a video titled “Rapid Antigen Test Debunked” was posted by Canadian far-right website Rebel News on January 1. It garnered over 40,000 views, and its comments section was a hotbed of misinformation. “The direct aim of this trial is to keep the case as high as possible in order to maintain fear and encouragement for more sanctions,” said a comment with more than 200 likes. “And of course the benefits.”
Researchers say misinformation about COVID-19 tests has spread on social media in recent weeks, as coronavirus cases around the world due to the highly contagious virus have spiked again. omicron Type.
A burst of misinformation threatens to further hinder public efforts to keep the health crisis under control. Past spikes in pandemic-related lies focused on vaccines, masks and the severity of the virus. Health experts say the lies help undermine best practices to control the spread of the coronavirus, noting that misinformation is a major factor in vaccine hesitation.
Categories include lies that PCR tests don’t work for; that the number of flu and COVID-19 cases have been combined; that PCR tests are vaccines in disguise; And that an at-home rapid test has a predetermined result or is unreliable because different fluids can make them positive.
According to Jignal Labs, which tracks mentions in social media, cable television and print and online, these topics jumped in thousands of mentions in the last three months of 2021, compared to only a few dozen in the same time period in 2020. in comparison. Outlet
The additional demand for testing due to Omicron and the high prevalence of success cases has given advocates of misinformation an “opportune moment” to take advantage, said Collina Koltai, a researcher at the University of Washington who studies conspiracy theories online. Huh. The false narrative “supports the whole idea of not trusting infection numbers or relying on death numbers,” she said.
A health worker collects a swab sample from a person at a COVID-19 testing site during mass testing on January 8, 2021. (Reuters)
Gateway Pundit did not respond to a request for comment. TikTok pointed to its policies that prohibit misinformation that can harm people’s physical health. YouTube said it was reviewing a video shared by The New York Times in line with its COVID-19 misinformation policies on testing and diagnosis. Twitter said in December it had implemented a warning on The Gateway Pundit article for violating its coronavirus misinformation policy and that tweets containing misinformation about widely accepted testing methods would also violate its policy. But the company said it does not act on personal anecdotes.
Facebook said it has worked with its fact-checking partners to label several posts with warnings, directing people to fact-check false claims, and reduce their prominence on its users’ feeds. does.
“The challenges of the pandemic are constantly changing, and we are constantly monitoring the emerging false claims on our platform,” Facebook spokesman Aaron Simpson said in an email.
No medical test is perfect, and legitimate questions about the accuracy of COVID-19 tests abound throughout the pandemic. There has always been a risk of a false positive or false negative result. The Food and Drug Administration states that antigen tests are likely to give false positive results when users do not follow directions. Those tests are generally accurate when used correctly but can show positive results in some cases when exposed to other liquids, said Dr. Glenn Patriquin, who wrote in a publication in the American Journal of Different Liquids. published a study about false positives in antigen tests using . Society for Microbiology.
“Using fluids with a different chemical makeup than what was designed means that result lines can appear unexpectedly,” said Patricin, assistant professor of pathology at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia.
Complicated matters, there have been some defective products. Last year, Australian company Elume recalled nearly 2 million home test products that it shipped to the United States.
But when used properly, coronavirus tests are known to be reliable in detecting people with high levels of the virus. Experts say our evolving knowledge of the tests should be a separate issue from the lies about the test widely spread on social media – though it does make those lies all the more challenging.
“Science is inherently uncertain and tends to change, which makes it extremely difficult to deal with misinformation,” Koltai said.
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