Tag: COVID-19

More Pseudoscience for COVID-19

The science and pseudoscience of COVID-19 are being tested in the real world.

/ April 8, 2020

TCM for COVID-19

Despite the many claims, there is no real evidence that traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is effective for prevention or treatment of COVID-19

/ April 7, 2020
5G tower

COVID-19 conspiracy theories: Vaccines and 5G (along with Bill Gates) are responsible!

The COVID-19 pandemic will almost certainly wind up being by far the worst pandemic we have experienced in a century. Given a huge pandemic with tragic death tolls, it's not surprising that conspiracy theories are popping up. Here, we look at two of the most common kinds of COVID-19 conspiracy theories. One blames 5G. The other blames—of course!—the flu vaccine.

/ April 6, 2020

Covid-19 in Children: A New Study Out of China

Children may be less likely to develop COVID-19, but they can get it too; and it may be more severe for infants.

/ March 31, 2020

Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin versus COVID-19: Grift, conspiracy theories, and another bad study by Didier Raoult

On Friday, Prof. Didier Raoult posted another study of azithromycin and hydroxychloroquine used against COVID-19. It is a single arm observational study of patients with mostly mild (or even asymptomatic) disease that is painfully uninformative with respect to the question of this treatment's effectiveness. That didn't stop America's Quack Dr. Oz and other grifters from touting Raoult's study, as well as a...

/ March 30, 2020

Canadian authorities warn chiropractors and naturopaths against making false COVID-19 claims

Regulators in British Columbia are investigating bogus COVID-19 preventatives and issuing public alerts warning chiropractors and naturopaths against advertising information that is not evidence-based. Other Canadian and U.S. authorities should follow suit to protect the public against pseudoscience.

/ March 26, 2020

Are hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin an effective treatment for COVID-19?

Saturday morning, President Trump Tweeted a claim that the combination of azithromycin and hydroxychloroquine "have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine" and hoped that they be "put in use IMMEDIATELY" to treat COVID-19. His claims were based on a single clinical trial out of France. Unfortunately, although it is not implausible that...

/ March 23, 2020
COVID-19

COVID-19 update: What you need to know now that it’s officially a pandemic

On March 11, the World Health Organization officially declared the COVID-19 to be a pandemic. The causative virus, SARS-CoV-2 is spreading through the population. What can be done? Social distancing is the only hope of slowing down spread of the disease.

/ March 16, 2020

Coronavirus Myths and Facts

The novel Coronavirus 2019 is a serious outbreak that is reason for concern, but not panic, and we will all benefit from an evidence-based approach.

/ March 4, 2020
James Lyons-Weiler and Del Bigtree discussing coronavirus

No, James Lyons-Weiler did not “break the coronavirus code”

Last week, a new conspiracy theory about the coronavirus outbreak by James Lyons-Weiler went viral (if you'll excuse the term) after antivax conspiracy theorist Del Bigtree interviewed him. Lyons-Weiler strongly implies that the strain of coronavirus behind the outbreak (2019-nCoV) has a SARS-like sequence that came from a laboratory working on a SARS vaccine. Fortunately, Dr. Gorski has the mad molecular biology...

/ February 10, 2020