It’s easy to dismiss President Donald Trump’s witless mutterings about the coronavirus pandemic as laughable or patently untrue, like when he suggested injecting sunlight into human bodies. But a study has found that the knock-on effect of his baseless claims are much more far-reaching and damaging than many might think. Researchers at Cornell University who analyzed 38 million articles about the pandemic in English-language media around the world found that mentions of Trump made up nearly 38 percent of the overall “misinformation conversation,” making the president the largest single source of falsehoods about the pandemic. Sarah Evanega, the study’s lead author, told The New York Times that the work proves Trump’s loose lips have “real-world dire health implications.”
