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In February 2020, as fears of a world-wide COVID-19 pandemic caused by a new coronavirus from China spread across the globe, many Western news outlets began running stories suggesting that consumers were shunning the popular Mexican brand of beer called Corona due to their mistakenly connecting it with the coronavirus. Take, for example, the following article, whose headline and subhead misleadingly implied that the Corona brand had experienced a steep drop-off in sales because potential buyers were being scared off by its putative link to the coronavirus: https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/27/makers-corona-report-132000000-loss-result-coronavirus-12312964/ However, what the text of the article actually reported was not that consumers had suddenly become afraid of Corona beer, but that multiple brands of beer (not just Corona) were experiencing relative sales slumps in China because the spread of the coronavirus had generally dampened public activities there, at a time of year (i.e., during Chinese New Year celebrations) when sales were typically high: But the trope that people are so dumb they're shunning Corona beer because they think it's connected to the coronavirus was too tempting for many news outlets to eschew, even though little or no evidence backed it up. Many of them based their articles on a survey that supposedly documented that 38% of Beer-Drinking Americans Wouldn't Buy Corona Now, again suggesting people were being scared off the brand due to mistaken associations between the name of the brand and a virus. However, that poll was conducted and published by the 5W public relations firm, and it did not find what many news reports gleefully claimed it did. The PR piece stated that a phone survey of 737 American beer drinkers had determined that 38% of Americans would not buy Corona under any circumstances now, and by offering that statistic in conjunction with other information about the coronavirus, the piece again misleadingly suggested that consumers were being frightened away from Corona beer merely because of its name. But it didn't provide readers with the questions that the poll's subjects were asked, nor did it offer any context explaining why respondents answered the way they did. Or, as The Atlantic noted of the issue: Huffington Post did obtain a list of the questions that were put to the poll's respondents and observed how the results could be used to create misleading impressions: A different poll by YouGov reported that Corona’s Buzz score — a net score based on whether US adults have heard anything negative or positive about the brand had decreased sharply since the beginning of January 2020, and that purchase intent for the brand is at the lowest it’s been in two years. But again, the poll didn't document any actual decrease in Corona sales due to consumer confusion over a supposed link between the beer and the virus. In fact, CNN reported that Constellation Brands, Corona's producer, had reported an uptick in sales of the Corona Extra brand in the U.S.: Reuters similarly reported Constellation Brands as declaring that all units supporting its beer business are seeing positive sales trends for the brand thus far in 2020 despite claims about the impact of the coronavirus on its business. Nonetheless, the trope that people are dumb enough to believe you can get the coronavirus by drinking Corona beer caught on with the press because, as legends often do, it validated something many readers were willing to believe, according to the Atlantic:
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