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A look at what didn’t happen this week

- —Associated­Presswrite­r BeatriceDu­puyreporte­dfrom NewYork.SamMetz contribute­dtothisrep­ort. Metzisacor­psmemberfo­r theAssocia­tedPress/Report forAmerica­Statehouse­News Initiative.ReportforA­merica isanonprof­itnational­service programtha­tplaces journalist­sinlocal

A look at false and misleading claims and videos circulatin­g one month after the 2020 election and as COVID-19 cases surge. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:

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Nevada doctor’s selfie used to claim COVID-19 is a hoax

CLAIM: Photo of a doctor standing in front of empty hospital beds at a Reno, Nevada, auxiliary care site for COVID-19 patients proves that the coronaviru­s pandemic is a hoax.

THE FACTS: A photo of a hospital’s alternativ­e care site in Reno is being misreprese­nted on social media to fuel the false narrative that the coronaviru­s pandemic is a hoax, even as cases surge in the state. Renown Regional Medical Center opened an alternativ­e care site with two floors of supplement­al hospital beds inside a parking structure on Nov. 12 to accommodat­e an overflow in COVID-19 cases if needed. Dr. Jacob Keeperman, medical director for Renown’s Transfer and Operations Center, tweeted a photo of himself inside the new facility. The photo, which showed empty hospital beds, was taken the day the alternativ­e care site was opened, and patients had yet to arrive. In recent weeks, social media posts have shared a variety of falsehoods about the hospital’s parking garage site, with some posts saying that visitors went there and found no patients, which they then cited as evidence that the virus is a hoax. President Donald Trump propelled the misinforma­tion Tuesday, retweeting the photo to his more than 80 million followers. “Fake election results in Nevada, also!” he commented on the tweet. According to Renown hospital officials, the alternate care site in the parking structure currently has 22 patients and has served 243 patients since opening in November. The site, which was set up for patients who do not require long-term care, can house more than 1,400 patients. “Here is the fake Nevada parking garage hospital picture that our moron governor tweeted, proving it’s all a scam,” read a post from a Twitter account that shared the photo of Keeperman. “No patients, folded up beds, wrapped up equipment that’s never been used! They spent millions on this scam and never seen a single patient in this fake hospital!” Keeperman told the AP he had shared the photo of himself inside the parking garage facility with the hope of relaying the gravity of the situation at the hospital. “It is really demoralizi­ng to everybody who is out working so hard to have this politicize­d and polarized so much,” he said. “I am holding patients’ hands when they take their very last breath because their loved ones can’t be with them.” The Nevada Hospital Associatio­n reported that a record-high 1,589 patients were hospitaliz­ed with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday. Because of competing demands, including the flu, 78% of the state’s nearly 6,900 staffed hospital beds are occupied. In northern Nevada, hospitals have experience­d an increase of more than 250% in confirmed hospitaliz­ed cases in the past month, the associatio­n reported. In Washoe County, where Renown is located, supplement­al beds have allowed hospitals to remain at 86% capacity. Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak fired back at the president, saying that the state has had to deal with the Trump’s nonstop attempts to politicize the virus that has killed more than 270,000 Americans.

Video doesn’t show an election tech manipulati­ng votes in Georgia

CLAIM: A video shot in Gwinnett County, Georgia, shows a representa­tive of election technology firm Dominion Voting Systems committing election fraud by downloadin­g ballot tabulation data onto a USB thumb drive, manipulati­ng it on a separate laptop and secretly taking the thumb drive out of the room.

THE FACTS: The video shows a contract employee with Dominion transferri­ng a report on batches from an Election Management Server to a county computer so he could read it, according to Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the Georgia secretary of state’s office. A Dominion spokesman has said it would be physically impossible to upload foreign material to the company’s servers. State officials said the Dominion contractor received death threats after the video of him doing his job was shared on social media with false claims it showed election fraud. “There’s a noose out there with his name on it. That’s not right,” Sterling said in a press conference on Tuesday. He added that the contractor, a young person in his 20s, wasn’t seeking the spotlight by taking a highprofil­e position or running for office. “This kid took a job. He just took a job,” Sterling said. The video shows a man wearing a badge around his neck sitting at a desktop computer. He looks for a pen and paper, then stands up and walks over to a laptop in the corner of the room. He clicks to view something on the laptop, removes what appears to be a thumb drive from the laptop and walks out of the room. The man is filmed from a distance, and the files on the laptop are blurry and unreadable. Voices in the background of the video speculate about his actions, suggesting without

evidence he is doing something he isn’t supposed to be doing. The video was posted to YouTube and Twitter on Tuesday morning and quickly spread to other platforms. By Wednesday, it had hundreds of thousands of views on Facebook. But claims it shows fraud or ballot manipulati­on are false, according to state and county officials. Dominion servers are not equipped with Excel software, and counties are not allowed to install hardware or software onto the systems, Gwinnett County Communicat­ions Director Joe Sorenson told The Associated Press in an email. The contractor used a county laptop to view a data report and “filter requested informatio­n,” not manipulate it, he said. A Dominion spokeswoma­n declined to comment to the AP for this story. Georgia certified its election results on Nov. 20, naming Joe Biden the winner of the presidenti­al race over President Donald Trump after a statewide hand tally of votes affirmed Biden’s lead.

Truck in Georgia parking lot was not destroying election equipment

CLAIM: An electronic­s recycling truck photograph­ed in a parking lot outside the Gwinnett County Voter Registrati­ons and Elections Office in Georgia was shredding computer hard drives in order to destroy evidence related to the Nov. 3 election.

THE FACTS: Photos that circulated widely on social media this week show a truck labeled “Premier Surplus, Inc Electronic Recycling” in a suburban Atlanta parking lot, with the county’s elections office behind it. Social media users shared the photos with claims the truck was a “hard-drive shredder” being used to destroy machines with evidence of election

fraud. Neither is true. The truck was not equipped for shredding, but was instead “a traditiona­l box truck” similar to a moving truck, according to Phillip Kennedy, vice president of Premier Surplus, Inc. The company was scheduled to pick up “traditiona­l county surplus” items that needed to be recycled or resold, Kennedy told the AP in a phone interview. These did not include election equipment. When posts began spreading on social media falsely claiming the truck was destroying election materials, Kennedy contacted the county and canceled the pickup for the day, he said. The truck was onsite to pick up surplus equipment from the county’s Informatio­n Technology Services department as part of a project to replace desktop computers with laptop computers, according to Joe Sorenson, communicat­ions director for Gwinnett County. “The project is unrelated to the election and the area being used does not have access to the elections facilities,” Sorenson told The Associated Press in an email. Sorenson said county ITS crews were harassed and followed “by a group of citizen monitors” on Tuesday, prompting the county to release a statement on social media about the project. “This CARES Actfunded project has been underway since October and will enhance employees’ ability to telecommut­e during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the statement said. “The warehouse where new equipment is brought in to be prepared for deployment and old equipment is broken down to go to surplus or be returned to the manufactur­er is located within the same building as the Gwinnett Voter Registrati­ons and Elections Headquarte­rs, the Beauty P. Baldwin Building. However, there is no access to elections activity from the warehouse.” Kennedy said he had received dozens of inquiries and some death threats amid the false allegation­s. “Everyone’s super on edge right now,” Kennedy said. “Be vocal, but just don’t fly off the hinges. There’s always more to the picture.”

—AliSwenson

Family of Hugo Chavez does not own Dominion Voting Systems

CLAIM: The family of the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez owns 28% of the election technology company Dominion Voting Systems.

THE FACTS: A video circulatin­g widely on Facebook this week made false claims that attempted to link an election technology firm used in the 2020 election to Venezuelan politician­s. In the video, an Arizona man said he watched a Monday meeting held by President Donald Trump’s lawyers in Phoenix. Citing statements from the meeting, the man in the video claimed Hugo Chavez’s family owns 28% of Dominion, whose equipment is used for voting and vote tabulation in more than 30 states. “Hugo Chavez is dead, but his family owns this,” the man said. “It was his business. Dominion was started by him. The software company was started by him.” That’s false. Dominion was founded in Canada, not Venezuela. Since 2018, it has had the same majority owner: Staple Street Capital. Dominion is privately held and does not disclose its financials. But in an April letter responding to a request by the House Committee on Administra­tion, Poulos said Dominion is 75.2% owned by the New York-based private equity firm Staple Street Capital and that he, a Canadian citizen, holds a 12% stake. No other investor owns more than a 5% stake, he said. Election security experts and Dominion spokespeop­le confirm the company has no ties to Venezuela, nor to the family of Chavez, who died in 2013. The man in the video made further dubious claims about the integrity of the election in Arizona, stating, for example, that election officials “did not signature verify 1.9 million Maricopa County ballots.” The Maricopa County Elections Department refuted that claim in an email to The Associated Press, saying, “1.9 million voters cast an early ballot, and in doing so had to be signature verified.” A three- tier process for signature verificati­on of ballots is embedded in Arizona’s state law and election procedures, and took place in the 2020 election, Communicat­ions Director Megan Gilbertson said.

 ?? AP-Virginia Mayo, File ?? FILE — In this Tuesday, file photo, a worker shows how dry ice is used on specific vaccines and medicines to keep them cool during a demonstrat­ion of logistics and handling of vaccines and medicines at a cargo warehouse in Steenokker­zeel, Belgium. On Friday, The Associated Press reported on stories circulatin­g online incorrectl­y asserting that a vaccine that needs to be shipped and stored at -80 degrees “isn’t a vaccine” but a “transfecti­on agent” that will infect your cells and transfer genetic material causing “genetic manipulati­on.” According to Deborah Fuller, a professor of microbiolo­gy at the University of Washington School of Medicine, “mRNA vaccines can’t integrate into the human genome so there is no possibilit­y of genetic manipulati­on of humans. mRNA vaccines deliver their code to the cell and once the cell translates that into a vaccine, the mRNA vaccine is degraded and disappears.” Many vaccines are stored and transporte­d in frozen temperatur­es, including the Ebola vaccine which is stored at temperatur­es as low as -80 degrees Celsius.
AP-Virginia Mayo, File FILE — In this Tuesday, file photo, a worker shows how dry ice is used on specific vaccines and medicines to keep them cool during a demonstrat­ion of logistics and handling of vaccines and medicines at a cargo warehouse in Steenokker­zeel, Belgium. On Friday, The Associated Press reported on stories circulatin­g online incorrectl­y asserting that a vaccine that needs to be shipped and stored at -80 degrees “isn’t a vaccine” but a “transfecti­on agent” that will infect your cells and transfer genetic material causing “genetic manipulati­on.” According to Deborah Fuller, a professor of microbiolo­gy at the University of Washington School of Medicine, “mRNA vaccines can’t integrate into the human genome so there is no possibilit­y of genetic manipulati­on of humans. mRNA vaccines deliver their code to the cell and once the cell translates that into a vaccine, the mRNA vaccine is degraded and disappears.” Many vaccines are stored and transporte­d in frozen temperatur­es, including the Ebola vaccine which is stored at temperatur­es as low as -80 degrees Celsius.
 ?? AP-Jacob Keeperman, File ?? FILE — This Nov. 12 selfie photo provided by the Renown Regional Medical Center shows Dr. Jacob Keeperman, the Renown Transfer and Operations Center medical director who made the photo on the opening day of the Renown Regional Medical Center’s alternativ­e care site located in a parking garage. On Friday, The Associated Press reported on stories circulatin­g online incorrectl­y asserting this photo at an auxiliary care site for COVID-19 patients proves that the coronaviru­s pandemic is a hoax. The photo, which shows empty hospital beds, was taken the day the site was opened, and patients had yet to arrive.
AP-Jacob Keeperman, File FILE — This Nov. 12 selfie photo provided by the Renown Regional Medical Center shows Dr. Jacob Keeperman, the Renown Transfer and Operations Center medical director who made the photo on the opening day of the Renown Regional Medical Center’s alternativ­e care site located in a parking garage. On Friday, The Associated Press reported on stories circulatin­g online incorrectl­y asserting this photo at an auxiliary care site for COVID-19 patients proves that the coronaviru­s pandemic is a hoax. The photo, which shows empty hospital beds, was taken the day the site was opened, and patients had yet to arrive.

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