froggiefactchecker

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Buzzsumo Fact Check

While searching for viral articles ono Buzzsumo, the one with the highest virality rates related to Covid-19 is entitled, “Nipah Virus Outbreak: Mortality Rate 40-70%, 20 Times More Deadly Than COVID,” by NP (News Point) English. The article has around 98,600 engagements on Facebook. 

The first claim made in the article is a paraphrase allegedly from the director of the Indian Council of Medical Research, [Rajiv] Bahl, stating that the Nipah virus has a fatality rate “ranging from 40% to 70%.” 

First, I wanted to confirm the legitimacy of the quoted figure. After searching Bahl’s name and the referenced facility, I did find via an official Indian Government state website that he is indeed the Director General of the ICMR, although the article spells his name incorrectly.

Further, I looked into the article’s claim that Nipah has a fatality rate between forty and seventy percent, allegedly far higher than that of Covid-19. In doing so, I did find several news videos of Bahl stating that “if COVID had a mortality of two to three percent, Nipah has forty to seventy percent, [which is] extremely high.” He elaborates that this is evidenced from reported cases.

According to the World Health Organization, the overall Nipah fatality rate is indeed “between 40% and 100%”  in countries like “Bangladesh, Malaysia, India and Singapore.” The referenced outbreak, which occurred in Kerala, India, resulted in six infections and two deaths according to the WHO. This yields 2/6, or roughly 33%, but this only accounts for a specific outbreak in Kerala; given that the low-end of the average mortality rate  is less than ten percent from this figure, it is safe to assume that Bahl’s estimates are well-researched (and confirmed via the WHO).

That said, diverting to the World Health Organization’s metric for Nipah mortality notes a thirty percent increase in the factor Bahl provided. Both he and the News Point article were correct in stating that there is at least a forty percent mortality rate, but the upper boundary is higher, and unfortunately reaches one hundred percent. 

Furthermore, the News Point article notes that the Government of India plans “to acquire 20 new doses of monoclonal antibody treatment from Australia” in order to help fight infection. I did find confirmation of this fact in several other news outlets, such as The Hindu, a trusted news organization in India.

As this was the last major claim made in the article that was not a direct quote from Bahl, the final action for me to take was to attempt to verify the overall legitimacy of the news site. Despite the fact that this article seems to pass my own fact-checking, it doesn’t hurt to understand the context of the outlet.

Checking ICANN WHOIS, it seems that News Point is registered in Canada, yet has most of its administrative information removed or obstructed from view within the database. However, there seems to be a legitimate registrar and contact information.

Furthermore, searching for mentions of the site with the site itself excluded, I found that News Point is an Indian news outlet, not Canadian. It has its own Linkedin page, and other search results yield what seem to be bot analytics. However, there are no mentions of the site being disreputable.

Although I’m unsure why the domain is registered to Canada, this particular article by News Point kind of passes a fact-check, and there is no significant evidence that the site itself is unreliable. My only note is that the article's mortality rate figure was incorrect, but the author was only reporting on a direct quote from Director Bahl, so despite conflicting information from the WHO, the article did not misquote its (otherwise reliable) source. However, it could also be said that the outlet could have gone further to fact-check Bahl beyond simply quoting his press conference, so my conclusion is that it is a kind-of-pass.

[froggiefactchecker]

Internet Personality Fact Check

In exploring active personalities on my X timeline, I came across Imani Barbarin, a disability rights advocate and internet personality. 

One of her TikTok videos addresses a comment stating “[I}’m not wearing a mask for the rest of my life let me just d[i]e…” Barbarin responded to this with an explanation about disability, her primary talking point online; she explained that “you’re statistically more likely to become disabled [from] COVID…” than to die, going on to list common disabilities associated with post-COVID infection.

I wanted to look into her credentials for making a claim like this and others about disability and immunocompromisation. 

First, I noted that her bio reads “MA Global Comms,” so I ran a search. In return, I was able to confirm in this Vice article that she does indeed have a Master’s degree in Communications from American University in Paris. 

While this confirms her education level, I still wanted to look into her credentials to speak on issues related to disability and COVID specifically. 

Searching for her name along with keywords “disability” and “COVID,” I found this article by Refinery 29 in which Barbarin was interviewed about her activism. She refers to disabled people as “her community,” and mentions that she feels responsible to represent them in advocating for better COVID precautions and awareness. Further, the article links to her newsroom and blog, wherein she confirms she suffers from Cerebral Palsy, and is thus disabled.

The content on her blog is extensive, and confirms Barbarin as an established communicator and advocate regarding COVID and disability, especially in her article, “You’re Never Getting Normal Back.” A WHOIS search returned that her blog has existed since 2014, and contains disability advocacy content from times prior to the COVID pandemic.

To conclude, I was able to confirm that Imani Barbarin does have an M.A in Communications, and is also indeed a well-informed disability advocate given that she herself is disabled and immunocompromised. She has also been a writer and advocate for the past decade, with a wealth of profiles and interviews about her advocacy from major media platforms.

[froggiefactchecker]

Photo Fact Check

While on X, I came across a viral photo of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin shaking hands. I wanted to know if this image was real or photoshopped, as well as whether it accurately depicted the reflected event– a political meetup for the two countries which allegedly took place on or before September 13, 2023.

First, I used Google to reverse-search the image. I clicked on a Reuters article entitled, “Putin meets Kim, says Russia will help North Korea build satellites,” and followed to the bottom of the image to search for credit. Although there was no link, the caption listed, “Sputnik/Vladimir Smirnov” as a source.

I decided to check another article listed in the reverse-image search, this time by media outlet Al Jazeera, just to be sure. The Al Jazeera article also lists “Vladimir Smirnov/ Sputnik” as a source (the photo has since been been slightly cropped, but is still credited to Smirnoff).

Thus, I searched the term “Sputnik Vladimir Smirnov,” and found a website called “Sputnik Media Bank.” On this site, I could see what seemed to be the source of the photos with watermarks and credit to the photographer, Vladimir Smirnov. 

We can then assume that a Sputnik photographer did indeed take this photograph, and that it is not photoshopped. Additionally, given the multiple articles written about the event by renown outlets like Reuters, we can also assume that the photo indeed reflects a real event as reported on in said articles.

However, I also decided to verify that Sputnik Media is displaying original, or at least licensed, photographs and content on their website. Thus, I went over to their “About Us” section, and confirmed that they do indeed have their own agency photographers who “work all over the world and have repeatedly received prestigious international awards in the field of photojournalism, such as the World Press Photo and Magnum Photography Awards.” I also learned that the agency does indeed “sell photo and video materials” through its “own photo database.” (Sputnik Media ‘About Us’) To truly confirm these claims, I dug around a bit more and I found an article where one of the referenced awards is highlighted, then verified its legitimacy on the Magnum Photography website where the named photographer is indeed listed as a 2016 award-winner.

Now that I know the image is not photoshopped and I’ve traced it to a legitimate source, I can also observe that the source dates this particular photo as September 13, 2023. 

However, the Reuters article I first viewed was originally published two days prior to September 13; to explore this discrepancy, I searched for “Kim Putin summit,” and came across an article by the Associated Press (World News), in which a photo caption described Kim Jong Un’s arrival in Russia this past Tuesday, September 12, 2023. 

Given that this photo was taken on the evening of September 12, we can reasonably confirm that the original referenced photo is not mislabeled as representing an event which took place the next day on September 13. The Reuters article also notes that it was edited on September 13, meaning that the addition of the new photo and other updates were made at that time, which explains the discrepancy.

Therefore, I can confirm that the original photo is in fact real and not photoshopped, it was taken by Vladimir Smirnov for Sputnik Media, and that it is indeed a new photo of a recent political event where the two referenced leaders met (true to PopBase's claims).

[froggiefactchecker]

Fact Checking "COVID Isn't Real"

As I was scrolling through my X timeline, I came across a photo of a woman wearing a respirator mask for her first day of the semester, as she explains her high risk for severe COVID.

Checking the comments under the post, I spotted a fellow who objected to this claim, stating, “No, you are beyond high risk for buying into a lie.” Intriguing. 

Checking the account of the original poster, Vanessa, I could verify that she does indeed post masking advocacy content, and seems to be high-risk based on her content.

However, I want to examine the replier’s claim that it is not possible to be high-risk in general, let alone in Vanessa’s case.

Thus, I moseyed over to Factcheck.org, specifically to SciCheck, where I searched the term “high-risk.” Fact checks regarding an array of stories, like Paxlovid and other viral treatments, did indeed confirm that it is possible to be high-risk for severe COVID infection. “The drug had posted impressive results in a randomized controlled trial, which found high-risk patients who took the pills [were able to recover]…” (SciCheck) Here, we can clearly see that medications and trials are being recommended to individuals with underlying health conditions that could worsen one’s infection, commonly referred to as high-risk conditions. Verdict: it is indeed possible to be high-risk for (severe) COVID.

However, one thing that really caught my attention was the link that the commenter added under his post. Upon clicking, I was taken to a site entitled “fluoridefreepeel.ca,” specifically an article called “217 health/science institutions worldwide all failed to cite even 1 record of “SARS-COV-2” purification, by anyone, anywhere, ever” by “Christine” (no last name).

In this article, the author refers to SARS-COV-2 in quotations, or simply as “it.” They do this presumably because of their statement that a selection of health organizations have failed to cite “purified” forms of the virus for sequencing; thus, they explain, “no one on the planet has a pure sample of the alleged virus,” and “there are no validated tests” for detecting, or proving the existence of, COVID. 

My first question was what she meant by “purified.” I searched the terms “purified,” “purified sample,” and “purified COVID” on FactCheck.org, SciCheck, Snopes, Truth Be Told and NPR Fact Check, and came up with zero results. It would seem that this phrase is not a verifiable piece of fact in the scientific community, and I could not conclude that it means anything at all. 

Further, the author stated that none of the referenced health organizations could prove, overall, that SARS-COV-2 even exists. Intrigued, I entered the term SARS-COV-2 into SciCheck’s data bases, and found not only that the virus does exist, but also that there is a wealth of information about its variants, symptoms, treatments and other traits provided by the verified scientific community.

To wrap up, I concluded that it is possible to be high-risk for COVID, and also that COVID does indeed exist, in case anyone was wondering.