Another suggests it may have leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, which has long studied bat-borne coronaviruses and lies in close proximity to the location of the first cases. With almost two edits made to COVID-19 pages every minute throughout 2020, the efforts of Hussain and Wikipedia's volunteer army have proven invaluable, helping the encyclopedia become a bastion for truth in an era where lies run rampant online.īut behind the scenes, contributors have been locked in a year-long battle over one contentious aspect of the pandemic: Where did the new coronavirus come from? The prevailing hypothesis is that the virus arose naturally in bats. Those who try to post conspiracy theories or pseudoscience are struck down by eagle-eyed editors surveying incremental, unsourced changes. Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, strengthened by its two decades online, ensure misinformation and vandalism are snuffed out with great speed. 'That was when I decided to change route and write a little bit about misinformation,' she says.

Hussain, who has been editing Wikipedia articles for a decade, dutifully edited pages relating to the coronavirus' spread in India during the early days of the pandemic, but the thornapple story forced a rethink. When Netha Hussain, a medical doctor from Kerala, India, first read about the poisonings, she decided to compile a list of unproven methods against COVID-19 on the world's largest online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. But the TikTok video convinced families in the large Indian village of Baireddipalle to ingest a mixture of the plant's seeds and oils, resulting in 12 people being rushed to hospital. Thornapples are highly poisonous, and eating their seeds can result in hallucinations, muscle fatigue, paralysis and even death. As COVID-19 began infecting thousands of people in early 2020, a viral TikTok video claimed the thornapple's seeds could protect against the virus. Last year, the curiously shaped fruit took on new meaning because of its uncanny resemblance to a coronavirus particle. The thornapple, a sweetly perfumed plant with trumpet-shaped flowers, is named for its spiky, spherical fruit.

Crypto locker wikipedia