When you tell a lie about something, sometimes you get away with it, other times you go through various hearings before being legally punished. Sometimes you may also be issued a correction order.
Most of the time after one went through the consequences, they won’t do it again.
But not this man.
Goh Meng Seng Served with 3rd POFMA Correction Direction This Year for Claims About Omicron
On 27 Nov, People’s Power Party chief, Goh Meng Seng posted a 44-minute video on Facebook containing false claims about the Omicron variant.
Some of the false claims that he mentioned in the videos are:
- The Omicron variant is vaccine-resistant and vaccines are useless against it
- COVID-19 and HIV could combine and become another air-borne virus
The Facts
The Ministry of Health (MOH) was not having any of his shenanigans and decided to release the facts so that the public do not get misled.
COVID-19 and HIV viruses cannot combine and become another virus with the characteristics of both viruses
Genetic recombination is only known to occur to genetically related viruses and as you know, HIV and SARS-CoV-2 are not related. Therefore, the claim of HIV plus SARS-CoV-2 equals super HIV or super SARS-CoV-2 is not possible.
Additionally, there’s no scientific evidence of such recombination thus, it is safe to say Goh pulled this one out of thin air.
HIV Is Not Transmissible by Air Through Their Combination with COVID-19
Adding on to the previous claim, Goh also claims that HIV, a disease that is mostly caused through sexual contact, infected blood or from mother to child during pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding could be an airborne disease.
Goh speculated that HIV could be transmissible by droplets in the air. If that is true, then everyone would be HIV-positive now.
Firstly, the virus did not change drastically enough to take on such properties. In short, HIV will remain transmittable via bodily fluids only.
The Omicron Variant is not a combination of HIV and COVID-19 Virus
In maths, we were often taught that the correct answer to one plus one is two. However, in science, things work differently: HIV plus COVID-19 does not equal Omicron.
The simple explanation as to why it does not equate to the Omicron variant is simply because there is no scientific evidence to make that claim.
The Currently Available COVID-19 Vaccines Are Not Totally Useless Against the Omicron Variant
As for this last fact, the studies for how well the current vaccines work against this new variant are still ongoing.
However, most scientists believe that the existing vaccines will retain some effectiveness against the Omicron variant, just that the protection may be lesser due to the mutations.
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POFMA-ed
Just like the other two times which he spread the false claims, he was POFMA-ed for these claims as well.
He published his correction notice on his Facebook pages at midnight.
Previous Correction Orders
This was not the first time Goh was issued a correction order. Last month , he was issued a correction order with science fiction author, Cheah Kit Sun, for spreading falsehood about COVID-19 vaccines.
In April, he was issued with another correction order about vaccines once again.
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Featured Image: Facebook (Goh Meng Seng People’s Power Party)