The Covid-19 pandemic has infected over2.5 million peopleworldwide and resulted in the deaths of at least 192,000 masses , with over 50,000 of them in the United States alone . Precaution measuring stick have been put in billet to specify further end , which has spurred a flurry ofconspiracy theories .
The # FilmYourHospital hashtag was recently a trending topic on Twitter , targeting hospitals and medical force . The purpose of the hashtag was to showcase that hospital are really empty and the severity of the pandemic has been exaggerated by the media . Twitter personalities egged their follower to film the waiting room and parking lots of hospital to prove they are empty .
uncalled-for to say , the conspiracy is false . If some hospitals appear less busy , it is potential because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) and other medical institutions have advised hospitals to table medical procedures that are not urgent .
Canadian researcher have look into how the hashtag spread on social media , collect over 100,000 public # FilmYourHospital tweets from March 28 , decently after the epicentre of the pandemic moved from Europe to the United States , with the North American country becomingthe global drawing card in a number of Modern cases .
“ Our analysis indicate that while the # FilmYourHospital campaign on Twitter is full of misleading and false COVID-19 claims , most of the active and influential accounts behind it do n’t appear to be automated , ” the research worker wrote in a post onThe Conversationabout their work . “ However , we did find sign of ad hoc cobalt - ordination among cautious internet personalities and far - good groups attempting to take a baseless confederacy possibility and wrick it into a weapon against their political opposition . ”
While most of the content came from small accounts , the squad find that these were spread by a few conservative pol and far - right political activists with decade of thousands of followers . While theTrump administration’sreponse to the pandemic was being discuss online , some pro - Trump accounts were promoting this conspiracy before it got a 2d wave of involvement from international accounts .
The team has create a website calledCOVID-19 Misinformation Portalwith fact - agree resource that dispel false and shoddy claim about the computer virus and the pandemic .
