The Wall Street Journal - 04.03.2020

A6| Wednesday, March 4, 2020 ** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

immediate.”

The personal Facebook ac-

count of Mike Adams—who

founded news and natural-

health advocacy website Natu-

ral News—includes a link to an

article from his news site that

U.S. NEWS

an early center of the infec-

tion’s spread in the U.S., with

all nine of the country’s deaths

coming from the state. The ma-

jority of those were residents

of the Kirkland nursing home.

The two deaths reported

Tuesday by local health offi-

cials were among seven new

cases of Covid-19, the respira-

tory disease caused by the new

coronavirus, bringing the

state’s overall total to 27. An

Amazon.com Inc. employee

who works in one of the build-

ings at the company’s Seattle

headquarters tested positive

for the infection, according to

an Amazon spokesman.

The spread of the infection

there and new diagnoses in

New York, North Carolina, Flor-

ida, Arizona, Georgia and Cali-

fornia raised the number of U.S.

confirmed cases, which stood at

more than 100 Tuesday. The

North Carolina case is a person

from Wake County who traveled

to Washington state and was

exposed to the novel coronavi-

rus at the Kirkland nursing

home, officials there said. In

Berkeley, Calif., officials con-

firmed the city’s first case, a

resident who had traveled to It-

aly, which is struggling with an

outbreak of the virus.

The total number of cases is

expected to rise as local health

officials ramp up testing. These

results then need further con-

firmation from the Centers for

Disease Control and Prevention.

The spread of the new corona-

virus across the U.S. in recent

days has closed schools, dis-

rupted travel plans and emptied

stores of hand sanitizer and

cleaning products. State leaders

have attempted to quell fears,

saying the virus still poses a low

risk even in cities and states

where more cases have appeared.

But tensions continue to play

out around the country and in

Washington, D.C., over guide-

lines and protocol for dealing

with the novel coronavirus.

Vice President Mike Pence

said Tuesday that the Trump

administration is seeking to

make testing for the coronavi-

rus more broadly available. He

said kits capable of testing

about 1.5 million people will be

shipped to hospitals before the

end of the week. On Monday,

President Trump met with phar-

maceutical executives to discuss

timelines to develop vaccines

and therapies for the virus.

But some Democratic law-

makers have expressed frustra-

tion the administration isn’t

moving faster. Washington Sen.

Patty Murray said Mr. Pence

and other administration offi-

cials were unable to tell her and

other lawmakers in a meeting

Tuesday when “point-of-con-

tact” tests are going to be avail-

able, or what people who fear

they have been infected can do

between now and then. The

point-of-contact tests, which al-

low a patient to go to their doc-

tor and be tested as they are

for flu or strep throat, won’t be

available for months, she said.

In Texas on Tuesday, more

than 120 evacuees from the Di-

amond Princess cruise ship

were set to be released from

quarantine in San Antonio, as a

dispute between the city and

CDC appeared to be resolved.

City and state officials had

sharply criticized the CDC for

releasing a woman who subse-

quently tested “weakly posi-

tive” for the virus, and San An-

tonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg

issued a public-health emer-

gency declaration to prevent

those quarantined from leaving

Lackland Air Force Base.

Mr. Nirenberg said Tuesday he

was satisfied with the steps the

CDC had since taken to inform

city officials of its protocols and

said the federal health agency

would only be letting out people

who had been without symptoms

for 14 days, in addition to other

ramped-up precautions.

Globally, the new coronavi-

rus has infected 93,123 people

since it was first identified in

the central Chinese city of Wu-

han in late 2019, but 54% of

those patients have recovered,

according to data compiled by

Johns Hopkins University. A to-

tal of 3,198 coronavirus pa-

tients have died.

The first deaths linked to
the novel coronavirus in the
U.S. happened last week, days
earlier than previously known,
officials said Tuesday, as the
death count rose and is ex-

pected to continue to climb.
The first-known deceased, a
54-year-old man and a woman
in her 80s, both died last
Thursday and were residents of
a nursing home in Kirkland,
Wash., that has been at the
heart of the nation’s worst out-
break of the disease, officials
from Seattle and King County
reported Tuesday.
Washington state and the
Life Care Center nursing home
in particular have emerged as

ByJim Carlton,

Jennifer Calfas

andJing Yang

Death Toll Hits 9 as Outbreak Spreads

on Facebook to offer virus-re-

lated news and places to talk,

some rife with comments or

posts stoking fear about the vi-

rus or circulating unproven in-

formation.

False virus information

could be more damaging than

false content related to political

discourse that has received at-

tention in recent years, accord-

ing to academics, because it

might lead people to make mis-

informed decisions about their

health or cause unwarranted

panic.

Health-related misinforma-

tion “is certainly more danger-

ous than just pushing ideolo-

gies,” said Darren Linvill, a

misinformation researcher at

Clemson University, adding that

those tactics aim to undercut

science and confidence in insti-

tutions. The consequences of

health-related misinformation,

Mr. Linvill said, “are real and

Facebook Inc. and other
technology giants have vowed
to fight misinformation related
to the coronavirus epidemic on
their platforms. Yet even as
they remove fraudulent posts,
listings and other content, con-
spiracy theories and false infor-
mation continue to proliferate
online.
Facebook said it has
tweaked search results for “cor-
onavirus” to direct users to-
ward recognized and authorita-
tive medical sources. The
company says it contracts peo-
ple throughout the world to
look at content and determine
whether it is misleading, and
that it is also removing mis-
leading content flagged by ma-
jor health organizations.
A review by The Wall Street
Journal found dozens of pages
and groups that have sprung up

BYSEBASTIANHERRERA

Misinformation

About Epidemic

Flourishes Online

A magnified coronavirus image displayed in a Belgian virology lab. Social-media firms are working to combat virus misinformation.

GEERT VANDEN WIJNGAERT/BLOOMBERG NEWS

said the coronavirus’s fatality

rate is far higher than official

figures. That post was tagged

by Facebook fact-checkers for

false information. Facebook has

suspended Natural News in the

past for misleading content.

Mr. Adams and Natural News

declined to comment through a

spokeswoman.

Mr. Adams’s Facebook ac-

count also includes a link to a

website that contains a video

whose description refers to the

virus as a “bioengineered

weapon system.”

Similar Natural News con-

tent claiming that the virus was

engineered has appeared on

other people’s Twitter ac-

counts.

TwitterInc. said that, like

Facebook, it has directed users

toward recognized and authori-

tative medical sources when

they search “coronavirus,” and

the company said it is stopping

any auto-suggested search re-

sults that might lead users to

“non-credible content” on the

platform, although it didn’t

provide specific examples.

Other people have claimed

in videos posted on YouTube

that the coronavirus was bioen-

gineered, which scientists and

fact-checkers have vehemently

refuted. The website SGT Re-

port, which has more than

570,000 subscribers on You-

Tube, published a now-unavail-

able video claiming the virus is

an “engineered pandemic” and

questioning the official number

of people killed by the illness

the virus causes. After publica-

tion, SGT Report in a statement

defended its claim and said

that reporting about the virus

being engineered “is not ‘misin-

formation,’ it’s called investiga-

tive journalism.”

A spokeswoman forAlphabet

Inc.’s Google, which owns You-

Tube, said the company has pro-

moted content by trusted health

organizations in searches and is

quickly removing videos that

mislead users about the virus.

Experts in misinformation

say virus-related content will

play a more prominent role in

the political world as 14 states

and two territories held pri-

mary elections on Tuesday.

One video posted to You-

Tube claimed that the Central

Intelligence Agency has used

the coronavirus as part of an

“attack on Bernie,” referring to

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Demo-

cratic presidential candidate.

A spokesman from Mr. Sand-

ers’s Senate office said he

couldn’t comment on cam-

paign-related matters, and

campaign representatives

couldn’t be reached for com-

ment. A spokesman for the CIA

said the agency “does not com-

ment on such outlandish and

offensive misinformation.”

U.S. State Department offi-

cials and health organizations

have warned about the spread

of misinformation related to

the virus, including the narra-

tive that the U.S. is responsible

for the outbreak. Officials have

said there are groups of people

coordinating efforts on social

media in an attempt to pro-

mote conspiracy theories.

A Facebook spokeswoman

said if a group repeatedly

shares false news, the company

may reduce that group’s distri-

bution by showing that group’s

content lower in its news feed.

year. It was an increase from

2017, when 7.9% of the popula-

tion, or 25.6 million, were unin-

sured, according to the U.S.

Census Bureau.

About 2% of people infected

with coronavirus have died and

about 5% have developed seri-

ous infections that may require

oxygen therapy or ventilators,

based on research on cases in

China.

In the U.S., there are more

than 100 coronavirus cases.

Anne Schuchat, principal dep-

uty director of the U.S. Centers

for Disease Control and Preven-

tion, said at the congressional

hearing Tuesday that “we are

seeing community transmission

in a few places.”

The administration is focus-

ing on the costs of caring for

uninsured people because indi-

viduals otherwise would have

coverage through Medicaid,

employers, or through private

insurance purchased on the in-

dividual market, according to

the person familiar with the

conversations. No final decision

has been made.

“We are going to look at the

uninsured because they have a

big problem,” President Trump

said Tuesday.

Hospitals, which typically

bear the brunt of costs for un-

compensated care, have been

bracing for an influx of pa-

tients. Hospitals of all types

provided more than $38 billion

in uncompensated care in 2017,

according to the American Hos-

pital Association.

“We encourage the depart-

ment to look at using a na-

tional disaster program as an

option because no one should

think twice about seeking

screening or treatment due to

costs,” said Tom Nickels, execu-

tive vice president of the

American Hospital Association.

“We also urge them to cover

both patients who have corona-

virus and those who are under

investigation for coronavirus.”

A 1918-like pandemic would

cause U.S. hospitals to absorb a

net loss of $3.9 billion, or an

average $784,592 per hospital,

according to a 2007 report in

the Journal of Health Care Fi-

nance that called on policy

makers to consider contingen-

cies to ensure hospitals don’t

become insolvent as a result of

a severe pandemic.

The Trump administration is

considering using a national di-

saster program to pay hospitals

and doctors for their care of

uninsured people infected with

the new coronavirus as con-

cerns rise over costs of treat-

ing some of the 27 million

Americans without health cov-

erage, a person familiar with

the conversations said.

In natural disasters such as

hurricanes, hospitals and medi-

cal facilities can be reimbursed

under a federal program that

pays them about 110% of Medi-

care rates for treating patients

such as those evacuated from

hard-hit areas.

The Centers for Medicare

and Medicaid Services has been

in discussions about using that

program to pay providers who

treat uninsured patients with

coronavirus, the person said.

Dr. Robert Kadlec, who is

the assistant secretary for pre-

paredness and response at the

Department of Health and Hu-

man Services, said Tuesday at

a congressional hearing that

discussions are being held

about using the National Disas-

ter Medical System reimburse-

ment program.

In 2018, 8.5% of people, or

27.5 million, didn’t have insur-

ance at any point during the

BYSTEPHANIEARMOUR

U.S. Weighs Paying Hospitals

To Treat Uninsured Patients

In 2018, 8.5% of

people, or 27.

million, didn’t have

insurance.

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