One of my past articles that seemed to have received a lot of love (Thanks guys!) has now made me look like a fool as it did with many other news outlets that reported it. As it turns out my article about 38% of Americans won’t be drinking Corona Beer due to the fear of Coronavirus, was an elaborate hoax…and I fell for it.
Normally I would be kicking myself in the head for falling for something like this but I’m thankful to know the fact that other major news outlets and respectable journalists have fallen for it as well. So it’s my responsibility to give the facts and to correct my mistake.
So what happened? In February the news spread far a wide like the Coronavirus itself after what appeared to be a coordinated effort by 5W Public Relations, and PR Newswire who withheld information pertaining to the questions asked on the survey and how they were asked, when some questions were reluctantly released it turned out they designed and worded them in ways to be confusing to those taking the poll and eventually cherrypicked answers to fit a narrative they wanted.
The statistical numbers were generated and put alongside factual financial statistics for Corona’s brand but left out a lot of key information. Corona’s manufacturers, as well as other beer companies, have been taking a hit in sales for the last few months, not in the United States, but in China.
Usually, around this time of year beer sales go up as Chinese nationals get prepared for the Chinese New Year’s celebrations that occur in January and February but as you may have guessed, during those months people have been staying indoors and cities throughout China have been in lockdown. So sales of American beers have gone down in China but domestically beer sales are up with Corona actually seeing a bit of a spike in sales due to the fake stories.
LIMES FOR EVERYONE!!
Unfortunately, I wish I could say that other things I’ve talked about in a past Coronavirus article ended up being fake but sadly those are unfortunately true, people considering gargling bleach, people thinking they might catch the Coronavirus from Chinese food and so on. At least with this debacle of falling for a fake story, at least you guys got a funny picture out of it like this one!
