Facebook Removes Post by Trump Claiming Flu More Lethal Than COVID
Trump’s post come soon after his discharge from hospital, where he was admitted after testing positive for COVID-19.
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Facebook on Tuesday, 6 October, removed a post by US President Donald Trump in which he falsely claimed that COVID-19 is less deadly than the seasonal flu, reported CNN.
In the now-deleted post, the president claimed that many people die from the flu and suggested that COVID was “far less lethal” in most populations.
Facebook’s rules state: “We remove COVID-19 related misinformation that could contribute to imminent physical harm... Since January, we’ve applied this policy to misinformation about COVID-19, to remove posts that make false claims about cures, treatments, the availability of essential services or the location and severity of the outbreak...”
The same post by the president on Twitter, however, remains available, although it has been marked as violating “the Twitter Rules about spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19.”
President Trump’s tweet and Facebook post come soon after his discharge from Walter Reed Medical Centre on Monday, where he was admitted after he was diagnosed with COVID-19.
On being asked when Trump had last tested negative for COVID-19, his medical team refused to answer.
“I don’t want to go backwards,” Conley told reporters at Monday’s news briefing at Walter Reed National Medical Center, claiming that contact-tracing is “being done.”
In August, Facebook and Twitter had removed a post in which Trump claimed that children are almost immune to the COVID-19 virus.
While Twitter has previously restricted posts by Trump, August was the first time Facebook took down a post by Trump’s campaign for spreading coronavirus-related misinformation.
(With inputs from CNN)
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