This is no news, the original strain of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus gave rise to multiple variants. Recently, the declaration of a Swiss immunologist was subject to distortion during its relay in the press. Finally, it appeared on the networks in a totally wrong way.
While a lot of misinformation is meant to manipulate opinion, some is simply the result of simple misrepresentation . It can be a sentence or a figure quoted out of context, or even a misinterpreted fact. This kind of mishap happened to Sai Reddy, a Swiss immunologist who spoke on August 22, 2021 on various local media such as the Blick newspaper or the RTS channel. This specialist from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (Switzerland) raised the issue of variants. According to him, the Beta and Gamma variants have developed antibody escape processes, which is not the case with the Delta variant. The expert thinks that the mutation of one of these variants is inevitable. Here is one of his statements:
“This is the next phase of the pandemic, when Beta or Gamma becomes more infectious or Delta develops escape mutations. This will be the big problem of the coming year. “Covid-22” could be even worse than what we are currently experiencing… If such a variant emerges, we need to detect it as soon as possible and vaccine manufacturers need to adapt vaccines quickly. The emergence of this new variant constitutes the great risk. We have to prepare for it. »
Today, all you have to do is type #Covid22 in the Twitter search bar to realize the surge that Sai Reddy's statement has generated. From media to media, the information was distorted to end up totally erroneous on the networks, obviously fueling fake news and other conspiratorial allegations . In reality, the immunologist is not talking about an existing (or future) variant called Covid-22. It is simply an expression to designate a possible form of the disease which may appear in 2022, an evolution of one of the current variants. Also remember that the term Covid-19 refers to the disease caused by the coronavirus and not the coronavirus itself (SARS-CoV-2).
Everything moves very quickly on the networks, so much so that a simple spark can ignite the powder. Between the distortions of the Blick newspaper focusing attention on the phrase "Covid-22 could be even worse" and the Mediavenir Twitter account talking about "Covid-22 super-variant" – a term presumably borrowed from the British tabloid or tabloid The Mirror (and not to Sai Reddy himself) – it is logically conceivable that part of the public is easily tempted. Even the former vice-president of the National Rally Florian Philippot recovered the false information in a tweet castigating a future “perpetual health pass ” .
This cascade of recoveries of all kinds is nevertheless the result simply relaying the opinion of a scientist in a medium. However, researchers expressing themselves in the media in a personal capacity should be more careful. They should specify whether what they say comes from their own opinion or from a study they have conducted. This obviously does not exculpate the media (or fake media) distorting the words of specialists , but would provide more clarity from the start.
