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Commentary by John Gregory
Back on Jan. 22, 2020, a NewsGuard colleague asked me if our analysts had seen any misinformation related to a new coronavirus spreading in Wuhan, China. My reply was, “I haven’t seen any.” I laugh at that message now, knowing that I was oblivious to the deluge of false claims and conspiracies to come.
Six years later, NewsGuard has now documented 600 myths related to COVID-19 in our False Claims Fingerprints database. Many of these claims were dangerous; others were so silly that it was hard to believe anyone could believe them. Yet they had real consequences, complicating public-health efforts, causing millions to put themselves at risk by resisting life-saving safe vaccines and other remedies, and contributing to skepticism about expertise and science that it seems will haunt us for years to come.
The early days of the pandemic presented a great opportunity for purveyors of health misinformation, whether motivated by profit by generating online traffic and thus advertising or by ideology, to expand their audiences. The emergence of a new disease made it impossible for health authorities and reliable news organizations to instantly provide...
Over the last year, beyond traditional healthcare and federal procurement matters, the government has pursued federal False Claims Act (FCA) investigations and enforcement across high-risk areas, i...