“Even in five years of looking at troubling disinfo every day, I'm not sure I've ever seen anything quite this malicious.”BuzzFeed News
Date: March 5, 2020
By: Craig SilvermanBuzzFeed News Reporter

The messages appeared on Facebook at the end of February, each making the same explosive claim: Taiwan’s government had lied about the number of coronavirus infections and deaths.

The posts, written in Mandarin, claimed an unnamed Taiwanese legislator was secretly revealing the cover-up. “I’m really angry right now, don’t the Taiwanese deserve to know these things?” the posts said.

The content from the Facebook posts were also shared on Weibo, a major Chinese social media platform, and similar claims spread on Twitter and YouTube.

The claim was false, and rapidly shown to be so by the Taiwan FactCheck Center, a nonprofit reporting organization. Taiwan’s government has not been lying about the number of cases, which currently stands at 44, including one death.    [FULL  STORY]