-Albert Camus
Venice carnival cancelled Sydney Mardi Grass goes full steam ahead ... it takes 27 days for some to show symptoms yet Chinese high school students Year 11 and 12 as predicted allowed to enter Australia ...
"Everyone is hiding...I'm absolutely f***ing petrified." Australian citizen trapped in China
It's likened to a scene from an apocalypse. Empty streets, overflowing hospitals and an overwhelming sense of fear in a city of 11 million people placed in "lockdown".
"What have you done? I don't want to live anymore...Take those (bodies) lying on the ground somewhere else. Otherwise, you better kill me." Wuhan hospital worker
In China, almost two thousand people have died as a result of coronavirus with tens of thousands more infected. Authorities are resorting to extreme measures to try to halt the contagion.
"It's beyond quarantine. I don't even know what to call it. It's quite terrifying knowing that people can knock on your door and drag you out for no reason at all because you have a temperature." Australian citizen trapped in China
Four Corners: Coronavirus
Coronavirus update LIVE: Scott Morrison expects COVID-19 to become global pandemic, announces plan for Australian response
The latest on the COVID-19 outbreak with updates from Australia and around the world.
Catch coronavirus, get paid: city offers rewards for diagnosis
WE CAN HOPE, BUT DON’T COUNT ON IT: Why Chinese Communism Could Be the Final Casualty of the Coronavirus.
Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by Johns Hopkins CSSE – total confirmed cases world wide as of 02/24/2020 – 79,554.
- Lancet Article: Here. Mobile Version: Here. Visualization: JHU CSSE. Automation Support: Esri Living Atlas team.
- Data sources: WHO, CDC, ECDC, NHC and DXY. Read more in this blog. Contact US.
- Downloadable database: GitHub: Here. Feature layer: Here.
- Point level: City level – US, Canada and Australia; Province level – China; Country level – other countries.
- Time Zones: lower-left corner indicator – your local time; lower-right corner plot – UTC.
- This website and its contents herein, including all data, mapping,
and analysis (“Website”), copyright 2020 Johns Hopkins University, all
rights reserved,
CHICOM HOUSE ORGAN GLOBAL TIMES: New Chinese study indicates novel coronavirus did not originate in Huanan seafood market.
In response to the above London Daily Mail headline, Bari Weiss of the New York Times asks: “So…@zerohedge was right?”
As this ZDNet article from February 3rd notes: ZeroHedge banned from Twitter over coronavirus bioweapon claims.
Will Twitter ban Tom Cotton also? Republican senator suggests ‘worse than Chernobyl’ coronavirus could’ve come from Chinese ‘superlaboratory.
Coronavirus: 1500 Chinese students able to beat travel ban
-Albert Camus
Venice carnival cancelled Sydney Mardi Grass goes full steam ahead ... it takes 27 days for some to show symptoms yet Chinese high school students Year 11 and 12 as predicted allowed to enter Australia ...
"Everyone is hiding...I'm absolutely f***ing petrified." Australian citizen trapped in China
It's likened to a scene from an apocalypse. Empty streets, overflowing hospitals and an overwhelming sense of fear in a city of 11 million people placed in "lockdown".
"What have you done? I don't want to live anymore...Take those (bodies) lying on the ground somewhere else. Otherwise, you better kill me." Wuhan hospital worker
In China, almost two thousand people have died as a result of coronavirus with tens of thousands more infected. Authorities are resorting to extreme measures to try to halt the contagion.
"It's beyond quarantine. I don't even know what to call it. It's quite terrifying knowing that people can knock on your door and drag you out for no reason at all because you have a temperature." Australian citizen trapped in China
Four Corners: CoronavirusCoronavirus update LIVE: Scott Morrison expects COVID-19 to become global pandemic, announces plan for Australian response
The latest on the COVID-19 outbreak with updates from Australia and around the world.
Catch coronavirus, get paid: city offers rewards for diagnosis
WE CAN HOPE, BUT DON’T COUNT ON IT: Why Chinese Communism Could Be the Final Casualty of the Coronavirus.
- Lancet Article: Here. Mobile Version: Here. Visualization: JHU CSSE. Automation Support: Esri Living Atlas team.
- Data sources: WHO, CDC, ECDC, NHC and DXY. Read more in this blog. Contact US.
- Downloadable database: GitHub: Here. Feature layer: Here.
- Point level: City level – US, Canada and Australia; Province level – China; Country level – other countries.
- Time Zones: lower-left corner indicator – your local time; lower-right corner plot – UTC.
- This website and its contents herein, including all data, mapping, and analysis (“Website”), copyright 2020 Johns Hopkins University, all rights reserved,
CHICOM HOUSE ORGAN GLOBAL TIMES: New Chinese study indicates novel coronavirus did not originate in Huanan seafood market.
Public health experts raise alarm as coronavirus spreads The Hill
Coronavirus: Outbreak spreads in Europe from Italy BBC. Croatia, which has no border with Italy, but not Slovenia, which does….
China’s health care system under pressure as coronavirus continues to spread CNBC.
Disease Burden of Influenza CDC (resilc)
New Paper Adds Support to Covid-19’s Natural Origins Caixin (Dr. Kevin)
How One Singapore Sales Conference Spread Coronavirus Around the World Wall Street Journal
How the coronavirus crisis could lead to four more years of Trump South China Morning Post (Dr. Kevin)
Japan Urges Telecommuting, Staggered Shifts To Curb Coronavirus Reuters
Hospitals in Japan refusing to test many who suspect they have COVID-19 Japan Times
Aerial footage shows huge queues for masks in South Korea amid coronavirus panic Guardian (resilc)
P&G expects coronavirus outbreak to hit current-quarter revenue, profit Reuters (furzy)
As Covid-19 Spreads, Amazon Tries to Curb Mask Price Gouging Wired
Coronavirus threatens the global economy with a ‘sudden stop’ Telegraph (David L)
San Francisco mayor declares coronavirus emergency Los Angeles Times (David L)
Coronavirus vs. Zika: More misinformation – and more fact-checking
A
recent study published by Science
Advances raises an interesting question: when it comes to health
information, do "interventions aimed at combating false and unsupported
information really work?" Researchers from Dartmouth College, IE
University in Spain and other institutions studied how Brazilians responded to
corrective information about outbreaks of the Zika virus and yellow fever in
recent years and found that efforts to counter misperceptions about those
diseases may not always have been effective.
The
study is timely, given the coronavirus outbreak, and it is tempting to apply
its conclusions to the new virus. Scientific
American, in fact, made the connection in a Feb. 14 article titled
"Attempts at Debunking 'Fake News' about Epidemics Might Do More Harm Than
Good." Its subtitle is "Batting down conspiracy theories about
disease outbreaks such as that of the new coronavirus may prove
counterproductive to public health efforts."
I
look at it differently. To be sure, I am a fact-checker, not a scientist or a
researcher. But having been in my home country of Brazil during both the Zika
and yellow fever outbreaks, I can confidently say that Brazilians didn't get
nearly the amount of reliable information and the number of fact-checks about
Zika and yellow fever as the world is seeing now about the novel coronavirus.
In
other words, where others might look at what happened with misinformation
surrounding those previous outbreaks and draw a connection to the coronavirus,
I look at it and draw a contrast. Even a stretch. Misinformation about the Zika
virus and yellow fever in Brazil can't be compared to falsehoods about
coronavirus now. Neither can the work being done by fact-checkers in both
situations.
Now,
for example, we’re seeing an international collaboration among fact-checkers.
Since Jan. 24, 90 professionals from 39 countries have debunked 495 falsehoods
in 15 languages. The #CoronaVirusFact / #DatosCoronaVirus alliance has
published six international reports in English and created a special search
list on Twitter (poy.nu/2019CoronaVirusFacts)
to help citizens easily get the latest verified content online. This URL is
being widely shared by the International Fact-Checking Network and its 85
verified members.
Moreover,
the fact that fact-checkers are now combating the fourth wave of misinformation
regarding the lethal virus is the latest indication that the work being done is
actually pushing misinformers into new directions.
In
the first
week of the collaborative project about the coronavirus, hoaxes were about
the origins of the virus (bananas, bats, Chinese biological weapons) and
conspiracy theories (Bill Gates is behind it all).
A few
days later, it switched into edited and out of context videos (people
falling to death on streets, pets being killed). Then fake
preventative measures and false cures became super viral (vitamin C, garlic
soup).
Now
falsehoods are trying to push citizens into believing that China is seeking
authorization to exterminate
infected citizens. All false.
So
fact-checkers will keep doing their work, attempting not to be the final silver
bullet for misinformation but just to sideline it in favor of the facts.
—
Cristina Tardáguila, IFCN
. . . technology
- An Indian politician has used an AI-generated video to make it look like he was speaking languages he doesn’t speak, Vice reported. The video of Bharatiya Janata Party President Manoj Tiwari criticizing the incumbent Delhi government of Arvind Kejriwal went viral on WhatsApp, wrote Nilesh Christopher.
- The “positive campaign” using a deepfake to reach different linguistic voter bases “marked the debut of deepfakes in election campaigns in India,” Christopher wrote.
. . . politics
- Wired magazine dissected the QAnon conspiracy movement, its influence on social media and its efforts to steer voters to President Donald Trump.
- “Beginning early last year, QAnon followers more
explicitly embraced concepts of ‘information warfare,’ efforts to shape
narratives and people’s beliefs to influence events” wrote Elise Thomas.
- Facebook this week removed a page with false and misleading news called “North Carolina Breaking News.” It described itself as “satire/parody” that wants to help Trump win re-election this fall, the Raleigh News & Observer reported.
- “The pace at which the page was able to grow — allegedly more than 50,000 followers in less than a month — shows how easy it still is to create a widely trafficked source of false news, with the 2020 election just on the horizon,” wrote the News & Observer’s Hayley Fowler.
- The paper also followed up with a helpful-for-readers explainer on how to spot “fake news” sites.
. . . the future of news
·
A new
survey from the Pew Research Center’s Election News Pathways project shows
that the more closely people follow political news, the more concerned they are
about disinformation. Concern is lowest among people who don’t follow political
news closely at all.
·
Digital
researchers at New York University and Stanford University looked at whether
people could tell the difference between real and fake news, the
Financial Times reported. Their conclusion: most participants could tell
that true news was true, but they were “not good at identifying fake news.”
The
U.S. president’s annual budget submission to Congress is often dismissed as an
inconsequential document because it’s just a proposal – a blueprint of
priorities that the White House sends to lawmakers, who often ignore it.
But
as the president’s vision for government, it might carry slightly more meaning
in an election year. The flashpoints generally include the social safety net
programs – Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Both parties look at the
exact same set of numbers and characterize them completely differently. Trump
says his budget “won’t touch” the programs while Democrats say his budget is proof
that he wants to eviscerate them.
Factcheck.org’s
Lori Robertson looked at the rhetoric around this year’s budget and offered
a no-spin take, expertly navigating the semantics of fiscal policy. She
noted, for example, the difference between actual cuts and cuts in growth, and
explained how the budget would actually affect beneficiaries of these programs.
What we liked: For the next nine months, candidates
for both White House and Congress will be proclaiming that their proposals
would protect seniors. But will they? Robertson’s detailed piece could easily
be used as a guide for anyone who wants to understand how these numbers really
work.
—
Susan Benkelman, API
1. A U.S. senator being interviewed on Fox
News raised
the possibility that the coronavirus had originated in a high-security
biochemical lab in China, a conspiracy theory that lacks evidence, The New York
Times reported.
2. The Asian
American Journalists Association issued a statement calling on newsrooms to
cover coronavirus accurately and factually “without further fueling xenophobia
and racism towards Asian American communities.”
3. The Washington Post’s Fact Checker has
launched a
video series called “Fakeout.” Its first installment showed how the lack of
information from Gabon’s government about the 2018 hospitalization of its
president in Riyadh led to a coup attempt.
4. Freedom of expression advocates
including Amnesty
International condemned moves by Singapore authorities to use the country’s
“fake news” law to require that Facebook restrict
its users from seeing the States Times Review, saying the government’s move was
designed to silence critics.
5. A BBC reporter cleverly tried out some
of those cooking tips you see on videos on social media – like “milk carton
flan.” His results were less
than successful, which is apparently why he calls them “fake bakes.”
via
Daniel, Susan and Cristina