Skeptics Stack Exchange
Skeptics Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [covid-19]

For questions regarding the coronavirus disease and its causes called COVID-19 by the World Health Organisation (WHO). The WHO say the disease is caused by a virus that is itself called SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) but also known as the 2019 Novel Coronavirus, 2019-nCov, the Wuhan Coronavirus and "the Corona virus".

For more information about the outbreak see Wikipedia. For more information about the naming, see the WHO Technical Guidance.

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Did the CDC say the RT-PCR test cannot distinguish between SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses?

American economist and author Paul Craig Roberts wrote in a blog article, CDC Admits that the Covid Pandemic Was the Product of an Inappropriate Test: Quietly without media attention, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has…
Martín-Blas Pérez Pinilla
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Is asymptomatic spread of SARS-CoV-2 rare?

On 2020-06-08, Maria Van Kerkhove (WHO COVID-19 technical lead) stated: From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual. We have a number of reports from countries who…
user55766
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Does a surgical mask help prevent catching COVID-19?

According to the Mayo clinic: "The current recommendations regarding masks are that if you yourself are sick with fever and cough, you can wear a surgical mask to prevent transmission to other people. If you are healthy, there is not thought to be…
JonathanReez
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Does taking ivermectin reduce the risk of COVID-19 infection by 83%?

I came across a study that makes the following claim (emphasis mine): Two doses (300 μg/kg/dose in a gap of 72 hours) of ivermectin chemoprophylaxis reduced COVID-19 infection by 83% among HCWs for one month. Ivermectin is a safe and effective…
John
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Did SARS-CoV-2 originate from ‘People letting animal blood drip on their food’?

On the 2nd March, a popular German talk show format – Hart aber Fair which translates to Harsh but Fair – that airs on Germany’s number one television network, the ARD, broadcast an episode concerning the spread of the novel Coronavirus strain…
Jan
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Does vaccinating people who have already had COVID-19 improve their immunity against reinfection?

Bred Weinstein claimed in an interview on Triggernometry: Why on earth are we vaccinating people who had COVID? They will get the very same immunity. There's no evidence their immunity gets better for vaccinating them. We are exposing those people…
Christian
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Do most locations have an infection fatality rate less than 0.20% from Covid-19 (and less than 0.05% for those under 70 y.o.)?

This is the (tentative) conclusion of a meta-analysis found on the WHO's website, written by John Ioannidis, which in its abstract says: Across 51 locations, the median COVID-19 infection fatality rate was 0.27% (corrected 0.23%). [...] In people…
the gods from engineering
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Do elements of the genetic code of SARS-CoV-2 provide evidence that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a lab?

The website Rootclaim, which uses Bayesian analysis to estimate the probabilities of various hypotheses about news events, claims to have ascertained that with high (approximately 75% probability), SARS-CoV-2 was produced by gain-of-function…
Alex319
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Is wearing facemasks the reason South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong have more control of Covid-19

There is a graph being shared around on the internet that implies that the reason that South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong have better control of Covid-19 is that the people wear masks as a protective measure. Is this actual cause / effect…
user1605665
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Have there been no deaths due to omicron in Africa?

According to a widely-shared tweet (and also picked up by Townhall) (emphasis added): Serious question since I'm not a dr. If omicron is contagious but not deadly (25,000 cases in Africa with no deaths) why try and control it? Why not let it go and…
LShaver
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Did the mortality drop after some countries made Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine the standard treatments for COVID-19?

During an interview yesterday with 6PR Mornings, Emeritus Professor Robert Clancy, an immunologist, claimed the following: There are many, many countries around the world that now, everybody gets either Ivermectin and/or Hydroxychloroquine. And…
quant
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Did lockdowns limit the spread of COVID-19?

In a May 20, 2020 article (German) cites a mathematician who claims the various lock-down measures against COVID-19 are useless. However, the Israeli mathematician Isaac Ben-Israel believes that a lockdown is useless. However, it is based on…
Tom
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Do PCR COVID tests have high risk of false positives?

An October 2020 article in Germany's Finanztreff claims: Almost two-thirds [of positive tests for COVID-19] are false positive - at least The Wadsworth Center, the laboratory of the US state of New York, analyzed the test numbers from last…
user1721135
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Did 'border closure' have little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality?

I heard about a meta-analysis talking about lockdowns and how their affected border closures have had "little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality": We use “mortality” and “mortality rates” interchangeably to mean COVID-19 deaths per population.…
Renge
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Was the Wuhan Institute of Virology's bat/rodent virus database taken offline on Sep 12th, 2019?

The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) maintains a number of databases of samples and viral sequences. DRASTIC (Decentralized Radical Autonomous Search Team Investigating COVID-19) area team of sem-anonymous, (self-described) "Twitter detectives"…
Christian
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