On Friday, Sept. 10, the renowned writer Stephen King, went viral on Twitter after making a post with erroneous information about the deaths caused by the COVID-19 in the state of Florida, which led him to receive an avalanche of criticism.
The following text can be read in the post “1200 dead of COVID yesterday in Florida.
Not the total for a week or a month, but ONE SINGLE DAY..”
1200 dead of COVID yesterday in Florida.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) September 10, 2021
Not the total for a week or a month, but ONE SINGLE DAY.
The writer would be referring to the 1,296 deaths corresponding to Florida reported this Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but this amount does not correspond to the deaths that occurred in the state during a single day but is an accumulation corresponding to a period of days that can be up to several weeks.
It should be noted that infections and deaths in Florida have been declining in recent days.
Beginning in August, the state health department changed the way it counts daily deaths. They used to assign them to the day on which they were verified and now they are assigned to the actual day of death. For that reason, the 1296 deaths published on Thursday correspond to a span of several days, especially considering that it usually takes several days to process them.
At the time of publication of this article, King’s tweet—he has more than 6 million followers—had more than 25 thousand retweets and 90 thousand likes. The curious thing is that this tweet, which contains obvious misinformation about COVID deaths, was not deleted by Twitter, despite several comments indicating that the information is false.
One user commented that it is biased information from the writer and that with 3 minutes of research he was able to reveal the truth.
Great example of confirmation bias @StephenKing!
— Vincent D'Agostino🎱 (@proofofwork1) September 10, 2021
To the objective reader, this number seems statistically WAY out of whack. This should trigger the question in your mind, "can this be accurate?"
Of course, 3 min of research reveals it is not. pic.twitter.com/qTArHAiQjc
Another user replied to the writer that those deaths corresponded to several days and not just one.
Too many deaths, for sure, but this isn't true. From the article: ""The latest COVID-19 data from the CDC on Thursday shows an increase of 1,296 deaths from the total reported a day earlier. Those deaths did not all happen over the past day and span back weeks."
— Heather E Heying (@HeatherEHeying) September 10, 2021
Almost 12 hours later, the writer of horror novels such as “It” and “Carrie” acknowledged his mistake but took advantage of the situation to criticize Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
I'm wrong about the number of deaths in Florida due to COVID. Not 1200 in one day but over the course of one week, possibly more. I regret the error, but regret the DeSantis crew's failure to come to grips with the COVID virus even more.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) September 11, 2021
King, who has lived in Sarasota County, Florida, for more than 20 years, is a fervent critic of Governor DeSantis.
In the first days of August he published two tweets strongly criticizing the governor for his policies to deal with the CCP virus.
In the first of the posts, he blamed him for the CCP virus infections and the red tide.
Hey, Florida–here's your man Ron DeSantis: Not only are COVID infections in Florida sky high, the beaches are almost uninhabitable due to red tide from the Piney Point disaster, and the fish kill is in the mega tons.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) August 2, 2021
And in the second one, he went further and pointed to his “right-wing” policies
DeSantis policies are right-wing "the individual rules and to hell with what happens" policies. They are turning a beautiful state into a big ICU ward where even healthy people can barely breathe.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) August 2, 2021
DeSantis’ office was quick to respond to the writer’s accusations and it was press secretary Christina Pushaw who said via email to the Herald-Tribune:
“I do not understand why the public or reporters would look to fiction writers for insights on infectious disease and environmental issues.”
The other point that remains unknown is whether Twitter will remove from its platform the post with erroneous data of the writer and his subsequent post accepting his mistake, the one containing false information continues to add likes and retweets, bringing misinformation to the users of the social network.