Thread by @Shayan86

Elisa Granato was one of the first patients injected with a #coronavirus vaccine trial in Oxford three days ago. Three days later, anti-vaxx groups/pages on Facebook and conspiracy theorists are spreading a totally fake story on the internet suggesting she has died. She hasn't

This started last night when a fake piece by a guy called James Alami appeared on n5ti.com It seems like literally every single article on this "news website" has been written by him. The piece refers to a statement by Oxford researchers that doesn't exist

Who took note and amplified it in their circles? Anti-vaxxers and QAnon conspiracy theorists. Look at the types of groups/pages/accounts sharing this false piece on Facebook and Twitter. Notice a theme? Also frightening is the siz of interactions/audience - via @crowdtangle

If you think this was limited to English language accounts, you're mistaken. @mariannaspring and I have so far seen posts in German, Danish, Japanese, Hebrew, Croatian, French, Slovak, Polish, Norwegian, etc. Anti-vaxxers all around the world are amplifying this fake story

Here's the first Facebook public group that shared the story, with 91,000 members. It then immediately snowballed and spread to dozens of more pages and groups. Look at how viral it is now - again, via @crowdtangle

@BBCFergusWalsh spoke with Elisa via Skype this morning, who told him she is feeling “absolutely fine” 👇 So a totally false story goes up on an obscure "news website" and somehow ends up being seen by potentially millions of people

Facebook has started to take down some of the most viral false posts about Elisa. But most tweets are still up. Don't for a moment think strong rebuttal will stop some from sharing this. The numbers are still growing. This is always the main issue when fake news goes viral

Here's the full story on the @BBCNews coronavirus live page today: trib.al/QWivhZy