Infodemic: Trump’s Covid-19 test and why this would never happen to Vladimir Putin
Does Donald Trump really have Covid-19? He does. But the fact that many are still asking the question shows the toll that lies take on the way we think. “Instinctively wonder if it’s really true. He has lied about so many things…” the historian and Washington Post commentator Anne Applebaum posted on Twitter.
The unexpected reactions: What’s curious is that, as the news broke, the question of whether or not it was fake came mostly from Trump’s opponents, not the many Covid-19 denialists who support him. “Can it be fake news?” a friend messaged this morning from London, considering whether the announcement was a response to the president trailing in the polls. Could this be Trump trying to say, “‘I will show you how to beat this thing.’ Why not?” she asked. Others hinted at manipulation, asking how and if Trump could use his diagnosis to win or to delay the election.
A challenge for coronavirus denialists: Conspiracy theorists and Covid-19 denialists faced the problem of squaring the news with their continuous insistence that the virus is a hoax. They rose to the challenge, finding not one, but two ways of arguing the seemingly impossible.
- One take came from QAnon supporters. They took to social media with messages that are difficult to summarize, but author and QAnon researcher Mike Rothschild did a good job on Twitter:
“QAnon believers are giddy that Trump says he has Covid, because Covid is fake, so Trump is actually pulling a power move on the deep state, who think Covid is real because they created it as a power move on Trump.”
- The second, slightly easier to follow, theory was pushed in a thread on thedonald.win – the site where the r/TheDonald subreddit migrated after it was banned. It concluded that Trump was deliberately infected with a specially engineered and particularly dangerous form of Covid-19 by the deep state.
“This allows these Trump supporters to maintain their position that the normal Covid-19 is no worse than the flu,” says Coda reporter Gautama Mehta, who spent the morning poking around thedonald.win until the site became inaccessible, presumably owing to a surge in traffic.
Subscribe to the Infodemic, tracking global Covid-19 disinformation
Global reactions: From the Middle East to Southeast Asia, the news is dominating front pages around the world. While much of the early coverage is straightforward, here are a few responses worthy of your attention.