{"id":4343,"date":"2020-02-29T21:05:24","date_gmt":"2020-02-29T20:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/?p=4343"},"modified":"2020-03-02T14:34:12","modified_gmt":"2020-03-02T13:34:12","slug":"no-you-dont-have-to-shave-your-beards-to-fend-off-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/no-you-dont-have-to-shave-your-beards-to-fend-off-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"No, You Don&#8217;t Have to Shave Your Beard to Fend Off COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-background has-very-light-gray-background-color wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>A Twitter page claimed shaving of facial hair ensures safety from COVID-19, further attributing the message to the CDC. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"132\" height=\"55\" data-attachment-id=\"3545\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/minister-of-disinformation\/screenshot-2019-10-04-at-17-25-12\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Screenshot-2019-10-04-at-17.25.12.png?fit=132%2C55&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"132,55\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Screenshot-2019-10-04-at-17.25.12\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Screenshot-2019-10-04-at-17.25.12.png?fit=132%2C55&amp;ssl=1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Screenshot-2019-10-04-at-17.25.12.png?resize=132%2C55\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3545\" title=\"\"><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"color:#ffffff\" class=\"has-text-color has-background has-vivid-red-background-color wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Results from our research show that the message from Today .ng&#8217;s article is a misappropriation of a 2017 NOISH publication; a notification directed at workers using respirators in carrying out their tasks. It has nothing to do with preventing the spread of coronavirus.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Full Text<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">On February 28, following the announcement by the Nigerian health authorities, the massive civil unrest was palpable. On this day, Nigeria became the third African country to detect coronavirus after Algeria and Egypt. Reports have it that, the virus&#8217; point of entry was an Italian on&nbsp;a <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.premiumtimesng.com\/news\/headlines\/379432-nigeria-records-first-coronavirus-case.html\">business<\/a>&nbsp;trip on February 25.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Amid the uproar, Twitter received a&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NigeriaNewsdesk\/status\/1233323591246049281\">claim<\/a>&nbsp;by Nigeria Newsdesk, attributed to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. It says,&nbsp;<strong><em>&#8220;To be safe from coronavirus, shave your beard.&#8221;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">CDC: To be safe from coronavirus, shave your beard <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/BvYyEI6cjQ\">https:\/\/t.co\/BvYyEI6cjQ<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Nigeria Newsdesk (@NigeriaNewsdesk) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NigeriaNewsdesk\/status\/1233323591246049281?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">February 28, 2020<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When we checked the link attached to the post, it led us<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.today.ng\/news\/world\/cdc-safe-coronavirus-shave-beard-282911\">&nbsp;here<\/a>, an article from Today.ng. The publication demystifying the headline revealed that the United States&#8217; CDC has warned that facial hair can interfere with facemasks and respirators; as they are widely used to prevent the global spread of COVID-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Further, an infographic attached to the article bears a CDC logo, showing different types of beards style. The image indicates which beard style is suitable for the mask\/respirator with a green tick; the unsuitable one gets a red cancel sign.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/lh3.googleusercontent.com\/ULdLKVJkPNg31FHC11rF_neoNu0iv2BBvAZTJ2nFL-_emmYsT7Ak8CwUSI4jfuAB6bnMUplrt8iBTJNOsixU0w2YTpG1Kb4T0Yb_iwsTNiOu6vHKBfklpU_QP1LDwN4T6Qqyd5wE\" alt=\"\" title=\"\"><figcaption><strong>Claim<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Verification<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-justify wp-block-paragraph\">This claim is undoubtedly a headscratcher, awakening all your sceptic bones. The question, what is the correlation between coronavirus and facial hair (beards)? Besides this, the article did not indicate when or where the CDC made the announcement. More soo, the article still refers to the virus as 2019-nCoV and not COVID-19, its official name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Firstly, our verification commenced at the scene of the crime, the would-be infographic from the CDC. Our search initially panned fruitless as we could not find anything helpful on the health institute&#8217;s website. Next, we searched CDC Twitter posts from when coronavirus broke till present but found nothing still. Could it be that the site manufactured the image itself?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Nothing to do with COVID-19<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dubawa&#8217;s reverse image search on TinEye provided only <a href=\"https:\/\/tineye.com\/search\/95935777a9782fb4e9eed5ac63575094918473c0?page=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">five results<\/a> from which we found <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.cdc.gov\/niosh-science-blog\/2017\/11\/02\/noshave\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">this<\/a> &#8211; a<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/niosh\/about\/default.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> CDC NIOSH<\/a> publication from November 2, 2017. We found that NIOSH -National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health &#8211; is a division of CDC, set up to research and make recommendations for the prevention of work-related injury and illness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/lh6.googleusercontent.com\/cHz7GomrJCGWlADiXhYUDCXoQUKvmOidzg8n77S5Q78cm5vYmeBsSpqTpt2Wo5ZkSXLlptk6p5uRsOittyFWckwualasj7N3onwvmcFELUvZBpzYRkWnqqRKTmEr1Vh5lMlz4lwr\" alt=\"\" title=\"\"><figcaption><strong>Excerpt from CDC<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As long as coronavirus is involved, we advise that you follow credible advise emanating from health authorities; disregard information from traffic seeking blogs or websites. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":4345,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"hannibal_claim_source":"","hannibal_source_label":"","hannibal_card_color":"blue","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":false,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"","_twitter_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type":"","_pinterest_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"","_medium_share_type":"","_threads_share_type":"","_google_business_share_type":"","_bluesky_share_type":"","_mastodon_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":[],"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"today","timeOption":"now","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":"absolute"},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[123],"tags":[749,562,726,748,347,750],"verdict":[],"ppma_author":[903],"class_list":["post-4343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mainstream","tag-cdc","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-facial-hair","tag-featured","tag-national-institute-for-occupational-safety-and-health"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8R6dE-183","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":903,"user_id":50,"is_guest":0,"slug":"lateef-sanni","display_name":"Lateef Sanni","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/616f16e157fd4da1c34e7479c3b1610cd193c15c277c577ed2f1bd72bb8272fb?s=96&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Sanni","first_name":"Lateef","job_title":"","description":"<strong>Lateef Sanni<\/strong>\u00a0is a graduate of mass communication from Lagos state university. Before joining Dubawa, he belonged to the association of campus journalists where he was trained on the basics of fact-checking, a tool for combating misinformation in Nigeria. He joined the Dubawa team as a researcher and content developer for Dubawa's social media platforms. He consistently works to improve the dissemination of fact-checks through pictures [fact cards] and videos."}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/httpspixabay.comp-872004no_redirect-1-1280x720-1-e1583006687194.jpg?fit=1200%2C675&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4343"},{"taxonomy":"verdict","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/verdict?post=4343"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubawa.org\/dir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=4343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}