1. After 17 months (8 August 2021) on African continent deaths exceeded 120,000 out of 5 million confirmed cases

2. UNSUPPORTED CONCLUSIONS. Speculation can often help to drive science forward. However, studies should be clear on the facts their study proves, and which conclusions are as yet unsupported ones. A statement framed by speculative language may require further evidence to confirm.

3. In September 2020, commercial/industrial bankruptcies in the European Union increased by 23%, while Germany reduced them by 20% year-on-year

4. MAKING SURE THE SITE IS UP TO DATE. It is very important to check the date of publication. It is a clear indication of the topicality of the news. In fact, nothing is lost on the Internet and it can happen, using a search engine, to arrive at news that is even years old.

5. In the months of total lockdown in Italy, industrial production was halved, especially for intermediate and capital goods

6. BE A CYBER-SKEPTIC. IF IT SOUNDS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT PROBABLY IS. #Beware of remedies that claim to cure a variety of illnesses, are BREAKTHROUGHS, or rely on SECRET INGREDIENTS. #Use caution if the site uses a sensational writing style (lots of exclamation points, for example).

7. BEWARE OF BIAS. WHO PAYS FOR THE SITE? WHAT IS THE PURPOSE? #For example, if a page about treatment of depression recommends a drug by name, is the information from the drug’s manufacturer?

8. COHORT STUDIES (observational) A cohort study is similar to a case-control study. It involves selection of a group of people sharing a certain characteristic or treatment (e.g. exposure to a chemical), and compares them over time to a group of people who do not have this characteristic or treatment, noting any difference in outcome.

9. CHECK THE SOURCE. Always check who owns the site, newspaper, blog, whether it is an institution, publisher, industry, association or individual citizen. This is useful to understand who is interested in conveying that type of information. Institutional sites include those of the Ministry of Health, the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, the Agenzia Italiana del Farmaco, hospitals and medical-scientific societies. It is important that the reference site always reports, in the news published, authoritative sources of origin, a characteristic that is a measure of the reliability of the site itself.

10. VACCINATED PEOPLE STILL TRANSMIT THE INFECTION TO OTHERS. The aim of the registration studies was to assess the vaccines efficacy in protecting from the COVID-19 disease. Studies are ongoing to determine whether asymptomatically infected vaccinated people can infect others. Since it is possible that, despite protective immunity, in some cases the virus may persist in the nasal mucosa, vaccinated people and those who are in contact with them must continue to take protective measures against COVID-19.

11. After 17 months (8 August 2021) in Asia deaths exceeded 590,000 out of 39 million confirmed cases

12. SELECTIVE REPORTING OF DATA. Also known as ‘cherry-picking’, this involves selecting data from results which support the conclusion of the research, whilst ignoring those that do not. If a research paper draws conclusions from a selection of its results, not all, it may be guilty of this.

13. COVID-19 vaccines contain luciferase, a substance named after the fallen angel Lucifer.

14. RANDOMISED CONTROLLED TRIALS (experimental) Subjects are randomly assigned to a test group, which receives the treatment, or a control group, which commonly receives a placebo. In ‘blind’ trials, participants do not know which group they are in; in ‘double blind’ trials, the experimenters do not know either. Blinding trials helps remove bias.

15. Gibraltar saw a surge in deaths since its government began vaccinating the population with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, with at least 53 deaths caused by or linked to the COVID-19 vaccine in Gibraltar.