Three stimulus payments have been sent to Americans to help them weather the economic impact of the pandemic. Social media posts are using a video clip of a White House official to falsely claim a fourth payment will arrive soon. But the video is from March 2021, and a fourth payment isn’t forthcoming.
Sen. Tom Cotton falsely equated the nearly 2 million apprehensions of immigrants attempting to illegally cross the southern border during Joe Biden’s presidency to “adding the entire population of Nebraska to this country.” He’s wrong for several reasons, including that most of those apprehended were immediately turned around.
A Japanese company found that the antiparasitic drug ivermectin showed an “antiviral effect” against the omicron variant in a lab setting. Reuters has corrected a story in which it “misstated” that the drug was effective in a phase 3 clinical trial with human subjects. Some social media users have repeated Reuters’ reporting error but have not repeated the correction.
At a 1980 campaign event, Ronald Reagan promised to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court if elected. President Trump, while running for reelection, announced at a campaign rally that he would appoint a woman. Sen. Susan Collins said President Biden’s campaign promise to appoint a Black woman to the court “isn’t exactly the same.” We review the facts.
The approved and authorized COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S. are effective at preventing severe disease, and experts say the benefits of vaccination for children outweigh any known or potential risk. But social media users have shared video of Dr. Robert Malone misleadingly asserting that the COVID-19 vaccines are “not working” and claiming without evidence that many children “will be hospitalized” and may experience brain damage and infertility due to the vaccines.
Neither primary vaccination nor natural immunity is generally stopping infections with the omicron variant, but research shows booster doses substantially increase protection. Yet, Republican Sen. Rand Paul claimed that a case of COVID-19 provides “an immunity better than the vaccine.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been working for nearly two years to help end the COVID-19 pandemic — even treating patients with the disease. But Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, falsely claimed that “Fauci’s never taken care of patients.”
A resolution introduced in the Wisconsin Assembly to reverse the state’s 2020 presidential electoral votes for President Joe Biden was referred to the Rules Committee on Jan. 25. The committee chair tweeted that the resolution was “illegal” and would not advance. But conservative websites falsely reported the assembly passed the resolution.
Polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, tests for COVID-19 are highly accurate. People on social media, however, are circulating lists of germs that they baselessly claim will cause such tests to be falsely positive. In reality, it’s the opposite. The lists include pathogens that have been tested by the manufacturers and did not react to the test.
Democrats tried but failed to expand Medicare coverage to include dental benefits in the Build Back Better bill. Yet a Facebook post tells seniors they have until Jan. 31 to apply for “free dental work” under a recently announced Medicare “stimulus.” There is no such program, and traditional Medicare doesn’t cover dental work except in rare circumstances.