FreethoughtJournal.com

What’s wrong with a cleaning company claiming it’s done a COVID-19 course and can kill viruses?

Wednesday, April 22, 2020

ABC News has irrationally tarnished the reputation of a Sydney cleaning company beyond anything it deserved by casting suspicion on some of its truthful and innocent claims in addition to the one correctly identified thing the company got wrong.

Bacteria Busters of Sydney made unauthorised use of an Australian Government coat of arms on its website, inappropriately appearing to signify government endorsement. Beneath the Department of Health version of the coat of arms were the words “Infection Control Training COVID-19”, followed by the business name.

But the ABC story by Walkley-award-winning journalist Geoff Thompson claimed the Australian Department of Health wanted to stop businesses from using a COVID-19 training program to market their services. A caption with the story says: “Businesses have been warned not to use a certificate for an online COVID-19 training course for marketing purposes.”

No wording quoted from the Department of Health in the story gives any grounds for claiming that the government has issued such a warning. If it has done so, the story would do better to present the evidence.

The context of the story’s quotes from a Department of Health statement suggests only that the government warns that it does not endorse cleaning companies in relation to COVID-19 and that the coat of arms should not be used without permission.

So either the ABC has misrepresented the Australian Department of Health, or both the Department and the ABC are wrong, or Australia has a very strange and unreasonable requirement. There either are or should be no grounds whatsoever to prevent a person in a free society from stating the fact that they have completed a course.

But more ridiculous is that the story raises concern over the business claiming to be a coronavirus specialist or being able to kill COVID-19. The URL of the story suggests its original headline may have been “Cleaning company claims to be coronavirus specialist”. Why should that be of note? Of course a cleaning company can be a coronavirus specialist. But the headline that the story retained is even worse: “Government coronavirus training certificate being used by cleaning company that claimed it could ‘deactivate viruses’”.

This headline suggests there is meant to be something wrong with claiming to have a course certificate or being able to deactivate viruses. Yet both claims are valid. Anyone can do the course, and anyone can kill the virus. Health experts have been telling us for months we can kill the virus on our hands by washing them with soap, so why wouldn’t a cleaning company with many more chemical cleaning agents be able to make the same claim? If you kill a virus, you deactivate it. Another term, “inactivation”, is used by virologists to refer to altering a virus to remove its effect even if it may still be alive. But the story doesn’t allege that the cleaning company made such a claim, so what’s the issue?

The saddest thing is that the ABC’s suspicion appears to have made Bacteria Busters waver on false grounds. Perhaps afraid of being made to look like a false advertiser, operations manager Ariel Gallo clarified that the company didn’t claim to be able to kill the virus, and even that “Nobody should be making that statement”. But anyone can make that statement. It might be irresponsible if Bacteria Busters claimed it could eliminate all traces of the virus from a home or workplace, or to cure a person with COVID-19, but there is no suggestion in the story that the company did either of those things. In fact, the story presents no evidence that the company ever even claimed specifically to be able to kill coronavirus rather than deactivating viruses generally - even though it’s true that every cleaning company can.

The website said Bacteria Busters had “industrial strength disinfectants with a broad spectrum ability to kill bacteria and deactivate viruses”. This would be a true statement for any professional cleaner. Yet the ABC says that after a news interview, Bacteria Busters added the word “potentially” before “deactivate viruses”. It’s sad that the ABC’s unfounded suspicion caused the company to lose some of the confidence it previously had in a true statement.

The story says “Mr Gallo rejected that the website suggested his company’s service was endorsed by the Australian Government”. This may be an honest reflection of Mr Gallo’s failure to grasp the significance of using another entity’s logo or coat of arms. But it’s no grounds for a journalist to present an array of allegedly related but empty insinuations that may be harmful to a company’s reputation.