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  • 2020-03-14 (xsd:date)
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  • Is This Train Car Carrying 'COVID-19'? (en)
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  • The COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic of early 2020 -- as all such outbreaks do -- generated conspiracy theories that the virus was man-made, and even possibly deliberately released onto a defenseless population. The following examples provide just a small sampling of theories that followed in the wake of the disease's spread: One popular social media post of mid-March 2020 played on such conspiracy theories by purporting to show a railroad tank car with the designation COVID-19 stenciled on its side, as if it were carrying a load of the disease-causing virus: In the U.S., railroad cars bear reporting marks assigned by the Association of American Railroads which consist of two to four letters followed by a number of up to six digits and indicate ownership of the car, as shown in the following example: https://www.flickr.com/photos/147738449@N02/28176879338 Clearly, 'COVID-19' is not a designation that conforms to any legitimate reporting mark, nor to any other standard form of marking or identification one would expect to find on a railroad tank car: And of course, if some entity were actually engaged in a conspiratorial, furtive spreading of a disease-causing virus, they'd be storing it in special containers packed in unmarked crates and loaded onto ordinary boxcars, not transporting it via plainly labeled tank cars. Most obviously, a tank car labeled 'COVID-19' makes no sense, as COVID-19 is not a term that identifies a virus or any other physical thing that can be carried. COVID-19 is the name of the coronavirus disease caused by a particular virus, so a tank car marked to display that it was carrying 'COVID-19' would be akin to a package bearing a label indicating that it contained 'DIABETES.' In furtherance of an alleged conspiracy to spread the COVID-19 illness, the tank car would carrying not COVID-19 but the virus known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2 for short. All in all, this image is a mildly amusing digital manipulation, but nothing more. (en)
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