You sent in your questions about the Dominic Cummings story. Here’s what we’ve been able to fact check
29 May 2020 | Facts and news from Full Fact
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** FACT CHECK
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** Dominic Cummings’ trip to Durham: fact checked
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Lots of you have sent in questions about the Dominic Cummings affair. Here’s what we have been able to fact check:
On Monday, when addressing the press, Mr Cummings claimed: "Last year, I wrote about the possible threat of coronaviruses and the urgent need for planning."
However, his blog on pandemics from last year was only updated to include a paragraph on coronaviruses on 14 April this year.
Multiple social media posts have also claimed that Dominic Cummings has a sister called Alice Cummings, who is a director at a company that runs the new track and trace app and was involved in the UK’s postal vote system.
This is not correct. The Alice Cummings in question is not related to the government adviser and her company is not involved in delivering the track and trace app.
And finally, a popular Facebook post wrongly identified Dominic Cummings in a photograph of Oxford University's Bullingdon Club from 1987.
Although Mr Cummings did enter Oxford University in 1991, he was not a contemporary of Boris Johnson and David Cameron, nor is there any evidence he was in the Bullingdon Club as suggested by this post.
We’ve taken a look at what the law and the guidelines said about the lockdown rules when Dominic Cummings travelled to Durham:
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** It’s not clear that 19 million people have already had the new coronavirus ([link removed])
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Contrary to newspaper headlines in the Mirror, the Sun and the Independent, we cannot say with any confidence that 19 million people have already contracted the new coronavirus.
This was the finding of new research from the University of Manchester - but this research has been challenged by other scientists and is highly uncertain.
The researchers behind this paper did not directly test anybody, either for the new coronavirus, or for any antibodies that would show they had been infected in the past.
Instead, they used a statistical model to estimate the true number of cases that would have existed in the real world, based on the changing number of cases that were reported.
This method has been described “bizarre” by Carl Bergstrom, a professor of biology at the University of Washington.
The study has also been criticised by a number of other academics.
So how many people have been infected? Well, we can’t know for sure yet - and you should be wary of anyone claiming with certainty that they know the figure.
What we do know ([link removed])
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** How can we fight bad information about health? ([link removed])
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In many respects, Covid-19 is unprecedented - but health myths are not.
Despite the overwhelming evidence that vaccines save millions of lives a year, only 79% agree that they are safe.
According to the World Health Organization, vaccine hesitancy is one of the world’s top 10 public health risks. With a coronavirus vaccine on the horizon, this remains an important issue.
Having the latest medical evidence is only half the fight against bad health information.
The other is about earning the public’s trust. This takes time, patience, and a long-term campaign that takes into account the media consumption practices and value systems of the public.
Read more in our latest research briefing:
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We debunk claims regarding Dominic Cummings’ trip to Durham
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** Also this week...
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* 50 French schools have closed due to coronavirus cases, but it is likely these infections happened before schools reopened ([link removed])
* The Daily Express claimed that 7.7% of UK goods exports go to the EU when its actually 46% ([link removed])
* And no, Italy hasn’t found that most people thought to have died of Covid-19 actually died from other diseases ([link removed])
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