Authors
A self-taught social media maverick, Saurabh realised the power of social media early on and began following and analysing false narratives and ‘fake news’ even before he entered the field of fact-checking professionally. He is fascinated with the visual medium, technology and politics, and at Newschecker, where he leads social media strategy, he is a jack of all trades. With a burning desire to uncover the truth behind events that capture people's minds and make sense of the facts in the noisy world of social media, he fact checks misinformation in Hindi and English at Newschecker.
Claim
A deadly virus – the Coronavirus – is making China suffer. It may come to India immediately. Avoid any form of cold drinks, ice creams, cold coffees and any type of preserved foods and also milkshakes, rough ice, ice colas, and milk sweets older than 48 hours for at least 90 days from today.
Verification
Coronavirus, one of the deadliest viruses detected so far, has become a tragedy in parts of China. With the death toll rising to 170 in China’s Wuhan province, coronavirus has emerged as an immediate threat and public health emergency. China’s Wuhan is the most affected by the coronavirus and a high alert has been issued in the city’s outskirts.
Whenever there’s an outbreak of such illnesses and diseases there’s an unprecedented rise is misinformation and rumor-mongering. Since most of the confirmed cases have been reported in China, the chatter in other parts of the world is yet to form a perfect shape. As more details of the virus and its outbreak are becoming available in the media, more rumors are also spreading. We received a claim along with a video on our WhatsApp Number which states that Coronavirus has affected China very badly and it may come to India any soon. The claim also warns against the consumption of cold drinks, ice creams, kulfi, preserved foods, milkshake, rough ice, ice colas, and milk sweets. The claim suggests taking these precautions for 90 days from being reported.
As we began to fact check the aforementioned claim, we first uploaded the video on YouTube so we can generate keyframes and perform a reverse image search to surface the truth. As we performed reverse image search using the keyframes generated from the video, we didn’t get much information to corroborate.
We then explored YouTube using a set of different keywords. Initially, we didn’t get much information but as soon as we queried the search algorithm with a matching keyword, we found the same video on YouTube which was uploaded on October 25, 2019.
Now, as we all know coronavirus was first reported in January 2020 (Around January 1, 2020) only. It was evidently clear from the date on which the video was uploaded on YouTube that the video is not related to coronavirus in any way. It is noteworthy that the title of the video reads, “Removing a horrific worm parasite from someone’s top lip!”. As the title suggests the video has nothing to do with the coronavirus but removing a botfly from the lips.
When we tried to collect more information about the video, we found one such video on YouTube, uploaded a day before the aforementioned video. The video was uploaded on YouTube on October 24, 2019 with the title “Amazing Botfly Removal on Lips”.
It is evident from our investigation that the video is not linked to coronavirus.
Source
YouTube Search
Google Search
Result: Misleading
Read More:
Messages Viral On Social Media About Coronavirus Are FAKE! Here’s A Fact Check
Here’s all you need to know about Coronavirus
(If you would like us to fact check a claim, give feedback or lodge a complaint, WhatsApp us at 9999499044. You can also visit the Contact Us page and fill the form)
Authors
A self-taught social media maverick, Saurabh realised the power of social media early on and began following and analysing false narratives and ‘fake news’ even before he entered the field of fact-checking professionally. He is fascinated with the visual medium, technology and politics, and at Newschecker, where he leads social media strategy, he is a jack of all trades. With a burning desire to uncover the truth behind events that capture people's minds and make sense of the facts in the noisy world of social media, he fact checks misinformation in Hindi and English at Newschecker.
