Daily Archives: May 14, 2021

Was this the smoking gun? Chinese military scientists discussed weaponising SARS coronaviruses was the headline of a report in The Australian, which flashed on my WhatsApp one morning this week. Before noon, Id received the report from half a dozen people with the familiar prescription: Must read!

The report said it had unearthed a leaked document written by Chinese military scientists speaking of weaponising coronaviruses, confirming what has for long been suspected by conspiracy theorists ever since the pandemic began in Wuhan, China.

But there was a small catch. The secret document cited in the report was from a not-so-secret book published in China in 2015, which is still available in Chinese bookstores. It also turned out that the authors, including Xu Dezhong, formerly a professor at the Air Force Medical University, were speaking of the first SARS epidemic being weaponised not by China, but by foreign powers unleashing a virus on the Chinese population. Not that these two details made much of a difference as the story continued to go, well, viral.

The belated publicity was not entirely bad news for Mr. Xu. On one online Chinese bookstore, Dangdang, there was a 10-fold increase in the price of the book, observed Pan Chengxin, a professor at Deakin University in Australia. The book, by most accounts, wasnt taken very seriously in China perhaps until this week.

Shortly before The Australian report, another article on the origins of COVID-19 evoked discussion. A 10,000-word essay by Nicholas Wade, previously a science reporter for The New York Times, made a strong case for why a laboratory accident couldnt be ruled out, citing, among other things, the outbreak beginning in Wuhan, home to the premier Chinese lab studying coronaviruses; the absence of a natural bat population there; and the inability to find an intermediate animal host, as was found after the first SARS epidemic, establishing its natural origins. Mr. Wade went a step further, suggesting there were scientific reasons to suggest this virus was not natural. That claim was, however, rebutted by many virologists including Kristian Andersen, who pointed out that his argument of an unusual furin cleavage site being a smoking gun was the only specific argument put forward to support a lab leak and was false.

If you are confused at this point, you are not alone. For news reporters trying to separate fact from fiction, furin cleavage sites and codons might as well be Latin or Greek.

What Mr. Wade did, however, get right is his conclusion that there is no clear evidence either to support or rule out whether the virus came from nature or a lab. Indeed, a lab accident and natural origins are not mutually exclusive possibilities, considering we may never know if the natural source was in a cave or in a cage.

Further muddying the search for origins is the politics. If the Trump administration in the U.S. prematurely wanted to claim the virus was lab-made despite thin evidence, China has spread its own conspiracy theories, with one Foreign Ministry spokesperson claiming that the virus was brought by the U.S. army to Wuhan. China has also been far from forthcoming, delaying access to Wuhan and not providing a WHO team with raw data. And forget about foreign researchers ever getting unrestricted access to the insides of Wuhans labs, all of which will only lead to more doubts.

Ultimately, only science, free from politics, can give us a clear answer. But good science takes time, which is in short supply in an age where we demand immediate answers.

Link:

Fact and fiction in a fake news epidemic - The Hindu

Wow: It now looks like Jeff Bezos and his damage-control team just made up not one but two whole stories to deflect coverage of his affair with a then-married woman: one, a claim that the Saudis had hacked his phone to get telling texts and revealing photos; two, charges that the National Enquirer tried to blackmail him into halting his investigation into how the shots had leaked.

Eventually, the world learned that the guy who sold the info to the Enquirer was Bezos girlfriends brother, a Hollywood press agent no hacking required and nothing to make the Enquirer fear any investigation.

Brad Stones new book, Amazon Unbound, excerpted for Bloomberg News, details how a consulting firm helped the Amazon CEO assemble his false counterstory, which relied on the suggestion that hed been targeted because his Washington Post was so critical of both the Saudi regime and then-President Donald Trump and allowed him to reveal the affair himself while pretending he was being heroic by refusing to be blackmailed.

Pretty masterful while it lasted . . . except that the owner of The Washington Post (Democracy dies in darkness is its self-righteous Bezos-era motto) now stands exposed as a cynical purveyor of fake news who even tried to frame a media outlet to protect his own image.

The rest is here:

Jeff Bezos exposed as the king of fake news - New York Post

Issued on: 11/05/2021 - 16:01

Disinformation online has led to a sluggish vaccine roll-out in Ivory Coast. Ivorian and international health authorities have told FRANCE 24 that they are concerned about the pandemic of fake news. While this problem is not unique to Ivory Coast, the West African state is lagging behind a number of other countries in the region when it comes to vaccination rates.

When you get vaccinated, you become sick, said Anderson Dago, an unemployed 25-year-old standing in a potholed street in Abidjans Yopougon neighborhood. I read on social media that people who are vaccinated get controlled by 5G."His view is typical of people living in the area.

I dont believe Covid-19 exists, said Camara Djaka Sissoko who runs a small boutique. White people cannot even handle a bit of malaria. We are tougher. We can resist Covid-19.

Ivory Coast is facing a pandemic of disinformation. The country has received 504,000 doses of the Astrazeneca vaccine under the Covax scheme an initiative coordinated by the World Health Organization and others, to ensure that less developed countries have access to Covid-19 vaccines.They arrived in Ivory Coast in late February and will expire in September. So far, just over half the vaccines (252,317)have been used. Ivory Coast also has 50,000 vaccines donated by the Indian embassy, which currently lie dormant in a refrigerator these will expire in October. The roll-out here has been slower than in neighbouring countries such as Ghana.

'There is so much fake news'

At the INHP vaccination center in Yopougon, Estelle Yapi cuts a lonely figure.The 47-year-old social worker, retrained as a nurse to help deliver jabs during this crisis, sits under a white tarpaulin as the afternoon sun beats down. Rows of chairs, set up for those waiting to receive inoculation, sit empty.

It is normally busier in the morning, she concedes.

Yapi estimates that at full capacity, this centre could deliver 200-300 doses a day.While demand has been picking up, on one day in March,soon after the vaccination programme had begun, just 14 shots were delivered.

The centres logistic director offered a direct explanation. People inform themselves online. There is so much fake news, said Jean-Baptists Yat Ell.

In April 2020, residents of the area destroyed a Covid-19 testing centre that was being built close by.The protesters were at least in part triggered by a Facebook post from a pro-opposition cyberactivist, known online as Serge Koffi Le Drne, who suggested that the site would be used to house sick Covid-19 patients and was a government conspiracy to kill people in the area.

Yat said the link is clear.There was a communications problem. There was disinformation that made people revolt, he said.

A wave of scepticism

Astudyreleased by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in March surveyed 15 African countries, including Ivory Coast, interviewing close to 16,000 people. It noted that online channels, particularly on social media, tend to be the most trusted source of information among vaccine-sceptic groups.

>> Suspicion mars Ivory Coast's vaccine drive

In fact, 54 per cent of Ivorians surveyed said they had seen disinformation online more than the 41 percent average across the 15 countries. Two-in-three Ivorians believe that the threat of coronavirus is exaggerated; two-in-five believe that Covid-19 is a planned event by foreign actors; and 38 percent believe that Africans are being used as guinea pigs in vaccine trials, according to the study.

Dr Richard Mihigo, coordinator of immunisation and vaccine development for the WHOs Africa arm said that disinformation was higher in countries where there is higher penetration of internet usage.

This is not a phenomenon that is only a problem for Africa. Unfortunately, with Covid-19, weve seen a global scepticism around vaccination for Covid-19 in general, he said.

When you put that in our contexts when we didnt go through the first waves in a severe situation like was witnessed in the West, people started to think about why they [governments and international health authorities] are insisting so much on something which is not really a problem for us.

'We dont give a damn about Corona!'

In 2020, a number of high-profile incidents saw the Ivorian authorities receive backlash online for alleged hypocrisy over Covid-19 policy.

In March that year a number of public figures close to the government were exempted from a stay in a quarantine centre after a personal intervention from the Prime Minister. The banning of public protests in the run up to the presidential election, under the Covid-19-induced state of emergency, was seen as political manipulation of the crisis. This sentiment deepened in August when a clip of President Alassane Ouattara went viral where he was seen saying We dont give a damn about Corona! during his swearing-in as the candidate for the ruling RHDP party.

The influence of French media should also not be understated according to Professor Daniel Ekra, head of the countrys vaccination programme.

This vaccination campaign was preceded by lots of rumours and disinformation.In Africa and especially in Ivory Coast, this was triggered in April or May [2020] by someone during a TV debate in France saying that we should test the vaccine in Africa, he said, referring to thisincident.

In Ivory Coast, the government is scrambling to boost interest in vaccination with social media campaigns and Facebook Live events. Patrick Achi, the current PM, was the first person to get vaccinated in the country in an event covered by the media. But it may be some time before the tide of fake news can be turned.

People make up their own minds. It is a question of communication, said Ekra.

Link:

Covid-19: How fake news is hampering Ivory Coasts vaccination efforts - FRANCE 24 English

Facebook today said that it removed 12 million pieces of misinformation on the Covid-19 pandemic globally from its family of apps, which includes Facebook and Instagram.

The company also said that it put warning labels on over 167 million posts marked as false by third-party fact-checkers. The social media giant said that when people see warning labels, about 95% of the time they do not go on to view the original content.

In addition to this, Facebook said that in the coming weeks it would be rolling out a new campaign in India in a bid to educate and inform its users in India on ways to detect misinformation pertaining to the pandemic. The social media giant said that this endeavour will enable users to make qualified decisions about the information that they get online.

As a part of this campaign, the company will show tips and tricks to users via creative advertisements and link to a dedicated microsite, http://www.fightcovidmisinfo.com/india/ to get verified information. Facebook said that this campaign and the website will be rolled out in English and nine Indian languages, which includes Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Oriya, Malayalam, Marathi, Kannada, Gujarati and Bengali.

Lastly, Facebook said that it has also initiated a campaign in association with some of the leading doctors in the country. This campaign includes a series of 12 videos wherein doctors will address the most commonly asked questions on Covid-19. The video series titled #DoctorKiSuno will be available on https://www.facebook.com/FacebookIndia and it will cover various topics like Covid-19 in children, diabetes and Covid-19, the mental health impacts of Covid-19 among other things.

Read more here:

Facebook says it removed 12 million pieces of fake news on Covid-19 globally - HT Tech

Al-Rawi started his academic journey after first working in media as a communications officer and radio correspondent. He was driven to research by curiosity and the desire to explore controversial issues such as fake news discourses in social media or how bots influence or interfere with elections. He sees research as a foundation from which to engage the wider public on new ideas. He shares his research publicly to inform the public and encourage them to think and reflect yet not to get them to think in a particular way.

This goal aligns well with his primary knowledge mobilization strategy, media engagement. As an academic engaging with the media, Al-Rawi relies on both his previous experience which has taught him to cultivate relationships with members of the media, respond quickly to requests, prepare key points prior to interviews and avoid responding to trolls.

He is also learning as he goes on how best to share research findings through this channel. Currently he is exploring if peer review publication prior to media engagement provides a more solid basis from which to engage a public audience.

Al-Rawi shared that the benefits of doing knowledge mobilization is seeing people engage with ideas in new ways, seeing that he has sometimes inspired critical thinking. He believes we need to use our knowledge in order to be as useful as possible to the public and students. Its good for us, its good for our students, its good for our university and its good for the province.

He also acknowledges that there are many ways to do knowledge mobilization other than through the media. The media is a familiar method for him, but others might be more comfortable using art, sound, dialogue, or video. An interesting challenge in knowledge mobilization is using evidence-informed approaches while also working within ones own skilled sets, values, capacities and available resources.

Al-Rawi in the media:

To learn more about how to strike a good balance in your knowledge mobilization work connect with the SFU Knowledge Mobilization Hub. And to learn more about engaging with the media and responding effectively to the opportunities and challenges reach out to your faculty communicators, SFU media relations, and read this LSE blog post for practical tips.

Read the original:

Knowledge Mobilizers: Dispelling the power of fake news through mainstream media - SFU News - Simon Fraser University News