Isolated

Did Canada on Sept. 8, 2020, criminalize government measures that require the wearing of masks, as well as social distancing, vaccinations, and other protective measures that help thwart the spread of COVID-19? No, that is not true. The national government has made no such declaration. The claim refers to a made-up "Republic of Kanata" that claims to trump the powers…

Is there an "irrefutable paper trail" that shows COVID-19 was manufactured in a laboratory? No, that's not true: Screenshots taken from the rapid-fire display of documents in the video making that claim show only that a number of scientists have in the past worried that lab tests on a coronavirus could lead to an outbreak, that the U.S. Centers for…

Did officials say arsonists responsible for starting the fires in California on August 15, 2020? No, that's not true: There was an unusual weather event, being referred to as a "lightning siege" that brought an estimated 14,000 lightning strikes to the dry, late-summer Northern California terrain. This resulted in 875 new wildfires. When many lightning strikes in an area start…

Does the video "Plandemic - Indoctornation" by Mikki Willis released in August 2020 reveal new facts about the COVID-19 epidemic? No, that's not true: the video repeats the unsubstantiated claim this virus is man-made, edits together unrelated documents, and rehashes previously debunked false and misleading claims made by various anti-vaccination activists, questionable doctors and scientists and their lawyers. The video…

Are a series of images circulating on social media accurately depicting what life looked and felt like during the 1918 flu pandemic? No, that's not true: While some of the photographs are, in fact, from the time when what was known as the Spanish flu ravaged the globe, infecting about 500 million people and killing at least 50 million, to…

Is it true that nobody has actually died from COVID-19 across Europe, and that officials there have identified no antibodies specific to the disease? Also, is it true that there is no pandemic, but merely an "infection"? No, none of this is true, according to published research and the European equivalent of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.…

Did Nisha Patel, who accidentally drowned with her father-in-law and daughter in their New Jersey home's backyard pool, work as the "US Program Officer at the Bill Gates Foundation?" No, that's not true. The Nisha Patel who once worked for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is "alive and well," she wrote in an email to Lead Stories. It is…

Are social distancing guidelines and the COVID-19 pandemic part of a government plot to track and control citizens? No, that's not true: Osteopath Rashid Buttar, a practitioner who has been sued for fraud, made the claim in a video rant that also included other false claims. There is no evidence to support Dr. Buttar's claim that the government wants Americans…

Did Bill Gates really suggest eliminating about 10 to 15 percent of the global human population using vaccines during a TED talk in 2010? No, that's not true: Gates' remark was about possible strategies to slow down population growth in order to reduce CO2 emissions. In the larger context of his talk Gates is saying this strategy does not help…

Does a map show the number of missing children by county in Ohio and is it the "human trafficking capital of the entire USA"? No, that's not true: the map shows the number of reports about missing children in 2018 but omits the fact that over 98% of them were found safe and sound. Only six kids were abducted by…