A deluge of disinformation about a flu-like virus called HMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the Covid-19 pandemic five years ago.
AFP‘s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared.
Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late 2019, as well as of crowded hospitals and medics in hazmat suits.
The falsehoods and fearmongering, which researchers warn could jeopardise the public response to a future pandemic, surged even as the World Health Organization said China’s HMPV outbreak was “within the expected range” for this season.
Philip Mai, co-director of the Social Media Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University, told AFP that the authors of some of these posts were “trying to scare people”.
Mai said there was “an uptick in anti-Chinese rhetoric”, with many on online platforms unfairly trying to blame HMPV cases “on an entire community or culture”.
One video, shared by hundreds of users, showed a confrontation between Chinese citizens and police in medical suits, claiming that the country had begun to isolate the population to tackle HMPV.
AFP fact-checkers found that the sequence portrayed an unrelated altercation that occurred in 2022 in Shanghai.
– ‘Monetising panic’ –
Other posts claimed that HMPV and Covid-19 had “cross-mutated” into a more severe disease. But multiple virologists told AFP the viruses are from different families and impossible to merge.
Adding to the wave of disinformation were sensational, “clickbait” headlines in some mainstream media outlets that described HMPV as a “mystery illness” overpowering the Chinese healthcare system.
In reality, it is a known pathogen that has circulated for decades and generally causes only a mild infection of the upper respiratory tract.
“It’s an example of monetising panic in an already bewildered public right on the heels of the Covid-19 pandemic,” Katrine Wallace, an epidemiologist at the University of Illinois Chicago, told AFP.
“The truth is that the HMPV is not a mystery illness.”
