There’s been a disturbing rise of coronavirus “trutherism” from the Federalist, Rush Limbaugh, Brit Hume, various Fox News personalities, and other right-wing media figures. While I’d normally be content to mock conspiracy theorists — I set up a Twitter account to make fun of bad COVID-19 takes — spreading false information about the pandemic is dangerous, and merits rebuttal.
To be clear: legitimate policy disagreements about the coronavirus exist, and these are not my target. Some pundits forthrightly admit that their preferred approach to dealing with COVID-19 would likely lead to tens of thousands of additional deaths. Some argue that the economic damage of a prolonged shutdown would be greater than from the virus itself, and debate about the real trade-offs is important.
But coronavirus trutherism is different from debating policy or highlighting good news; it simply rewrites facts in service of politicized conspiracy theories.
The main truther theory is that COVID-19 deaths are fake news. Truthers believe that a high percentage of recorded coronavirus deaths are really due to other causes, which the media and health officials conceal to hurt President Trump or advance some hidden agenda.
There are two major themes running through coronavirus trutherism:
- Deaths attributed to COVID-19 are basically ordinary flu and pneumonia deaths, but miscategorized for sinister reasons.
- Very few of the people who died — nearly 13,000 in the United States as of April 8, and growing rapidly — actually died of COVID-19.
Both of these are false, as are other, less prominent coronavirus conspiracy theories.
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Article URL : https://arcdigital.media/debunking-coronavirus-trutherism-c290fc660a12