There’s a Facebook Coronavirus Post Going Viral Claiming to Be From Stanford. Don’t Believe It.

No, you can’t test yourself by holding your breath, and other claims debunked.

Dirk Waem/Belga/Auma

The coronavirus is a rapidly developing news story, so some of the content in this article might be out of date. Check out our most recent coverage of the coronavirus crisis, and subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

If you’ve opened Facebook or Twitter in the past few days, you might have come across a post with alarming information about the coronavirus attributed to Stanford University.

The post goes something like this: People with coronavirus may not show symptoms for several days, but if you can comfortably hold your breath for more than 10 seconds, you’re probably not infected. You should sip water every 15 minutes to wash the virus into your stomach, where stomach acid kills it, to prevent the virus from entering your windpipe and lungs. And if you have a runny nose, you have a cold, not the coronavirus.

Most of this is false.

I emailed Stanford’s office of communications to check the post’s authenticity. “The post is not from Stanford,” Lisa Kim at Stanford Health Care wrote back. She directed anyone who is confused to the university’s actual coronavirus information page.

Then I called Loren Rauch, a community ER doctor at Antelope Valley Hospital in Los Angeles with a master’s degree in epidemiology, to dispel some of the rumors circulating online. The statements in bold are quotes from the viral Facebook post, and Rauch’s responses—lightly edited for length and clarity—follow.

“The new coronavirus may not show signs of infection for many days. By the time you have fever and/or cough and go to the hospital, the lung is usually 50 percent fibrosis.”

That doesn’t mean anything. Fibrosis is a late scarring process. You may have 50 percent of your lung affected by the virus, causing pneumonia or fluid in your lungs. But fibrosis—that is not correct.

If you can breathe fine, do not go to the doctor. Only go if you cannot breathe or are very ill. 

“Taiwan experts provide a simple self-check that we can do every morning: Take a deep breath and hold it for more than 10 seconds. If you do this successfully without coughing, without discomfort, stiffness or tightness, there is no fibrosis in the lungs; it basically indicates no infection. In critical times, please self-check every morning in an environment with clean air.”

That’s not true. That can check if you are anxious or have respiratory compromise.

“Everyone should ensure your mouth and throat are moist, never dry. Take a few sips of water every 15 minutes at least. Even if the virus gets into your mouth, drinking water or other liquids will wash them down through your throat and into the stomach. Once there, your stomach acid will kill all the virus. If you don’t drink enough water regularly, the virus can enter your windpipe and then the lungs. That’s very dangerous.”

Totally bogus. That’s not real.

“Drinking warm water is effective for all viruses. Try not to drink liquids with ice.”

No.

“If you have a runny nose and sputum, you have a common cold. Coronavirus pneumonia is a dry cough with no runny nose.”

Editor’s note: On this one, we thought new research might help: A pre-print study by a group of German researchers suggests that upper respiratory tract symptoms like runny nose may be more common than previously thought.

However, the CDC still emphasizes fever, cough, and shortness of breath as the main symptoms. And Whitney Adams, a former pandemic preparedness coordinator and programs manager for CARE, issued a word of caution when considering the deluge of non-peer-reviewed research information relating to the coronavirus. “While it’s really important for the research community, the medical community, public health community keep sharing these findings, we should take those with a grain of salt,” she said.

“It’s not necessarily helpful for people to try to self diagnose based on these things that are really hard for even clinicians to understand,” Adams said. 

So the short answer is: It’s complicated.

“This new virus is not heat-resistant and will be killed by a temperature of just 26/27 degrees Celsius (about 77 degrees Fahrenheit). It hates the sun.”

If something’s in sunlight, it’s going to get disinfected pretty quickly, because that’s ultraviolet light, just the same type of sanitation we use in hospitals. The temperature in a dryer, for example, would kill everything. But just, like, “It’s gonna be a warm day today. We don’t have to worry about coronavirus,” I don’t think that’s gonna work.

“If someone with coronavirus sneezes, it goes about 10 feet before it drops to the ground and is no longer airborne.”

The general rule of thumb we’re using is about six feet.

The bottom line is that “there’s a lot of misinformation floating around,” said Adams, who noted she received an email containing the text of the false viral Facebook post last week. So to prevent the spread of rumors, do the information equivalent of social distancing: If someone posts something that sounds even the slightest bit fishy, don’t pass it on.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate