Global news agency Reuters published an article that said a Japanese company found ivermectin to be effective against the Omicron variant of the coronavirus in human trials. The article was corrected to say that trials were non-clinical, meaning they did not test on people, but social media posts are still spreading the article’s original incorrect assertion that the drug was proven effective against Covid-19 in human test subjects.
COVID-19
As the highly contagious Omicron Covid-19 variant pushed governments to speed up rollouts of booster jabs, social media posts purported to share a poster issued by Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) warning that the vaccines “cause Bell’s palsy”. The claim is false; Britain’s health department and local authorities in the town where the poster was displayed said it was not made by the NHS. Bell’s palsy, a condition that causes temporary facial drooping, is a rare side effect of Covid-19 vaccines.
A segment of the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony has been misrepresented in social media posts that claim it shows a “giant figure of death holding a needle” foreshadowing the Covid-19 pandemic. The claim is misleading; the cloaked figure in the ceremony was a puppet holding a wand, representing Harry Potter’s antagonist Voldemort, who appeared alongside various villains from children’s literature.
Social media posts feature a photo of tractors blocking a highway and claim that it shows a convoy in the Netherlands inspired by truckers protesting Covid-19 vaccine mandates in Canada. This is false; the photo appeared online in a 2019 article about farmers protesting enviromental regulations before the pandemic started.