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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Health & medicine fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about health & medicine. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

13,669 published reviews in this topic

dpaHealth & medicine

Dela (uitvaartverzorgers) mogen de doodsoorzaken niet meer vermelden en registreren, waarmee de oversterfte door de coronavaccins in de doofpot wordt gestoken.

Publisher’s rating: Het bericht is fout: uitvaartondernemers krijgen nooit de doodsoorzaak te zien van een overledene wiens uitvaart zij verzorgen. Dat is al decennialang de geldende regel.

The review examines a widely shared claim that Dela and funeral directors had recently been forbidden to mention or register causes of death, allegedly to conceal the real reason for excess deaths in the Netherlands. It reports that the restriction was not a new change: funeral directors do not receive the cause of death for the people whose funerals they arrange, and this had been the rule for decades. Dela told dpa that it does not see the cause of death because the information is legally protected. The review describes two forms completed by a doctor or medical examiner after a death. The A form, which contains no cause of death, is the one a funeral director receives and uses to arrange the funeral administratively. The B form contains the cause of death and goes to Statistics Netherlands (CBS) for processing in mortality statistics. The review identifies one recent change: since early 2022, the B form could also be completed digitally. It does not describe this as a new ban on funeral directors recording causes of death. The review also distinguishes the existence of excess deaths from the claim about their cause. It says the Netherlands had excess mortality in 2020 and 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that Dela reported more death notifications than expected in the second half of 2022, without stating a cause. It notes that flu, COVID-19, and other respiratory infections were present, but says the specific reason for the later increase remained unclear. The excerpt therefore does not establish that vaccines caused the excess deaths or that a cause-of-death reporting change concealed such a cause.

Factcrescendo Sri LankaHealth & medicine

WHO Declare Corona A Seasonal Virus! (Video)

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerned a video circulated with a message saying WHO had admitted a mistake and reversed its position by calling coronavirus a seasonal virus. The review says the clip itself shows a man speaking about there being “no evidence medical pandemic” and rejecting a “new normal”; the claim about WHO appeared in accompanying text, rather than in the quoted speech. The review reports that it checked WHO’s website and social-media accounts and found no such announcement, and found no news reports of the supposed admission or reversal. The review also distinguishes COVID-19 from influenza. It says COVID-19 is caused by SARS-CoV-2, while flu is caused by influenza viruses, and reports that the CDC describes them as illnesses caused by different viruses from separate virus families. The article notes that some symptoms can overlap and that testing is needed to distinguish the illnesses. This evidence addresses the claim that WHO called COVID-19 seasonal flu: the review found no WHO statement making that claim and explained why equating the two diseases is inaccurate. To identify the video, the reviewers say they used reverse-image searches of keyframes and traced the clip to a World Doctors Alliance press conference in October 2020. They identify the speaker as Heiko Schöning and characterize the clip’s attribution to WHO as false. The evidence presented therefore separates the actual source and content of the video from the later message falsely attributing a WHO position to it.