Posts shared more than 20,000 times on Facebook feature a photo of a crying child and two others showing a woman and a man in hospital beds, claiming that the boy’s parents are infected with the novel coronavirus
Most of the comments on the post consisted of thoughts and prayers for the “family.”, The post, published on a Facebook page titled “Coronavirus WorldWide,” went through several edits, including a version that featured an image of a different boy., Changes were also made to the post’s caption, its edit history shows., Similar posts were\xa0shared on Facebook\xa0here\xa0and here., The people in the pictures are not related, AFP found through several reverse image searches., The picture of the man in a hospital bed shows Dylan Nelson of Burlington, Wisconsin. Nelson was hospitalized in 2019 for lung damage from vaping, according to various media reports., The original image of the boy is a screenshot from a video published in March 2018. The clip shows the boy next to a toilet., “His mom tried to comfort him, but tears continued to stream down his face because he thought he lost his poop,” the description under the video reads., The image of the boy after the edit was made is also old and unrelated to the novel coronavirus epidemic. The photo was originally published in 2015 and was taken in Iraq., The woman pictured in the posts is Maddie Nelson of Nephi, Utah, who told AFP on Facebook that she is not related to Dylan Nelson., She said the photo was taken when she was hospitalized while suffering from lung problems after vaping., AFP Fact Check has debunked more than 220 examples of false or misleading information about the novel coronavirus. A complete list of our fact checks on the topic in English can be found here., , Copyright © AFP 2017-2020.  All rights reserved.  Users can access and consult this website and use the share features available for personal, private, and non-commercial purposes.  Any other use, in particular any reproduction, communication to the public or distribution of the content of this website, in whole or in part, for any other purpose and/or by any other means, without a specific licence agreement signed with AFP, is strictly prohibited.  The subject matter depicted or included via links within the Fact Checking content is provided to the extent necessary for correct understanding of the verification of the information concerned.  AFP has not obtained any rights from the authors or copyright owners of this third party content and shall incur no liability in this regard.  AFP and its logo are registered trademarks.
Photos of vaping illness patients used to make false COVID-19 claim | AFP Fact Check