German government did not say that the Covid-19 pandemic was a hoax

It is not true that a member of the German government recently admitted that there was no Covid-19 pandemic, as social media posts claim. The pieces of disinformation share the speech of a denialist professor during a symposium that took place in 2023. The professional has no relationship with public authorities. The event was promoted by the opposition party Alternative for Germany (AfD, its acronym in German), aligned with the extreme right.

Posts with misleading content had accumulated hundreds of shares on Facebook by this Friday afternoon (3). The posts also circulate on X (formerly Twitter).

We call them deniers, they warned, the biggest scientific fraud in history (covid) was launched in the world to inject toxic substances into the body through messenger mRNA gene therapy.

Publications on social networks have shared an image of a man accompanied by a misleading caption that identifies him as a member of the German government and claims that the country has admitted the Covid-19 pandemic hoax. The individual who appears in the photo, however, is the economics professor at the University of Hannover Stefan Homburg, a denialist critical of the social isolation policy that has no relationship with the country’s government.

The record shared by the misinformation pieces is the print of a lecture given by Homburg in November 2023, during participation in the 2nd Corona Symposium (see below). The event was promoted by the far-right Alternative for Germany party. The event description on YouTube highlights that “statements made at the symposium reflect the opinion of each respective speaker.”

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Homburg even banned students critical of his anti-lockdown stance from his online classes. He also participated in demonstrations against the restriction measures and amplified conspiratorial speeches about the disease.

Unlike the professor, the German government adopted a stance based on scientific evidence throughout the pandemic. Social distancing and isolation measures were adopted, in addition to a testing policy to control cases. The country also began its vaccination campaign against the disease in 2020.

In 2021, Germany faced a critical period in which total daily cases reached 50,000. The increase in the number of infections and deaths was attributed to the resistance of the German people to the vaccine. Until that year, the country recorded one of the lowest vaccination rates in Europe, with 67% of the population fully immunized.

The misinformation piece was also fact-checked by Lupa Agency.

References:

1. Leibniz University Hannover
2. AfD-Fraktion Bundestag
3. YouTube (AfD-Fraktion Bundestag)
4. Deutsche Welle (1, 2)
5. Tagesspiegel
6. Deutschland.de
7. Reuters
8. BBC Brazil