Not Real News
A look at false and misleading claims and videos circulating after the presidential election. Non of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:
<b>Claim</b>Photo of a doctor standing in front of empty hospital beds at a Reno, Nevada, auxiliary care site for COVID-19 patients proves that the coronavirus pandemic is a hoax.<b>The facts</b>A photo of a hospital's alternative care site in Reno is being misrepresented on social media to fuel the false narrative that the coronavirus pandemic is a hoax, even as cases surge in the state. Renown Regional Medical Center opened an alternative care site with two floors of supplemental hospital beds inside a parking structure on Nov. 12 to accommodate an overflow in COVID-19 cases if needed. Dr. Jacob Keeperman, medical director for Renown's Transfer and Operations Center, tweeted a photo of himself inside the new facility. The photo, which showed empty hospital beds, was taken the day the alternative care site was opened, and patients had yet to arrive. According to Renown hospital officials, the alternate care site in the parking structure currently has 22 patients and has served 243 patients since opening in November.
<b>Claim</b>Any vaccine that needs to be shipped and stored at -80 degrees “isn't a vaccine” but a “transfection agent” that will infect your cells and transfer genetic material causing “genetic manipulation” on a massive scale.<b>The facts</b>This week, a widely shared tweet attempted to cast doubt around COVID-19 vaccines that must be stored at ultracold temperatures. “Any vaccine that needs to be shipped and stored at -80 degrees isn't a vaccine. It's a transfection agent, kept alive so it can infect your cells and transfer genetic material. Don't let them fool you. This is genetic manipulation of humans on a massive scale. Shut it down,” the tweet falsely stated. Two of the leading vaccine candidates are created with messenger RNA, known also as mRNA. The vaccine delivers a piece of mRNA into cells, which causes the cells to temporarily produce a protein that resembles one of the viral proteins that make up SARS-CoV-2. “There is no mechanism by which mRNA molecules introduced into human cells would modify the DNA of those cells, and just as importantly, this has never been observed,” Brent Stockwell, a professor of biological sciences and chemistry at Columbia University, said in an email.
<b>Claim</b>Pennsylvania election officials mailed out 1.8 million ballots but counted votes from more than 2.5 mailed ballots.<b>The facts</b>The false statistic combines data from Pennsylvania's June primary election, in which 1.8 million voters requested vote-by-mail ballots, and data from the general election, in which voters mailed back more than 2.6 million ballots that were counted. Figures about Pennsylvania's mailed ballots were distorted at a legislative hearing in Gettysburg on Nov. 25 as President Donald Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani tried to argue there was fraud in the state's election. “Now this is the part that is a mystery,” Giuliani said during the hearing. “Mailed ballots sent out, 1,823,148. But when you go to the count of the final count of the vote, there were 2,589,242 mail-in-ballots. What happened? How do you account for the 700,000 mail in ballots that appeared from nowhere?” But there is no mystery. Giuliani mixed two different statistics in his claim. State data show the 1,823,148 figure is actually the number of voters who requested a vote-by-mail ballot in the state's June primary -- not in the general election. In fact, more than 3 million Pennsylvania voters requested vote-by-mail ballots, and mailed back more than 2.6 million ballots that were counted. Even though the error was pointed out on social media by journalists, the false claim continued to spread on social media. Pennsylvania Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano shared a similar version of the claim on Twitter that also confused primary data and data from the general election.
