Dan Nelson, Borough Incident Commander, alongside Brenda Ahlberg, Borough Information Officer, discussed several dangerous rumors circulating Alaska and the rest of the world during an online Community Conversation on Wednesday evening.
You may have seen folks on Facebook, or even around the office, panicking about the National Guard being activated to enforce health mandates. These have been common, and Dan Nelson has answers to the validity of these claims: “There was some information out there that the National Guard is in some of our communities or that they might have been maintaining security or doing some type of work. That’s not true. The National Guard is not in our communities. That is simply a rumor. Remember, the National Guard has been mobilized in many places to help with things or logistics, but that’s not what these posts are alleging.”
He also addressed a rumor that COVID-19 testing kits, and even cures, can be ordered via mail: “Testing must be done by a referral from your provider, from your physician, your healthcare provider. There is no test that you can take at-home. There’s nothing that you’re going to be able to get in the mail to be able to somehow find out that you have COVID-19 or do anything like that. Some people are reporting that there are cures or other products that will take care of it, will cure you of COVID-19; there’s been nothing approved at this point. It’s something that we need to be very, very careful about as a community: these testing things and some of these people who may simply just be trying to get your money and to prey on fears.”
Some of these rumors seem to be common sense and easily-detectable. However, there are more legitimate-looking e-mails circulating that appear to be from the CDC to collect information and more. Mr. Nelson says to be careful when reading these messages: “I’ll remind you that these scammers are very, very good at taking logos and making these e-mails seem very legitimate. There may be links in those e-mails that are taking you to a website that may look just like the CDC website or another website of a government agency, but it’s not. They’re trying to get money, they’re trying to maybe collect personal information. Remember to look for those official sources of information. That’s not going to arrive unsolicited in your e-mail inbox.”
Mr. Nelson asked residents to remember to use common sense and to be careful in these times of crisis.