Task: Fact Verification
Input (English): Paragraph: As the new coronavirus, which is responsible for the disease COVID-19, spreads worldwide, so too has viral advice for combating the pandemic. One frequently copied and pasted bit of text that has gone viral on Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp suggests a simple self-check for coronavirus infection, usually attributed to “Taiwan Experts,” “Stanford University,” or “Stanford Hospital Board,” among others: The new Coronavirus may not show signs of infection for many days. How can you know if you are infected? By the time you have fever and/or cough and go to the hospital, the lung is usually 50% fibrosis. Taiwan experts provide a simple self-check that we can do every morning: Take a deep breath and hold it for more than 10 seconds. If you do this successfully without coughing, without discomfort, stiffness or tightness, there is no fibrosis in the lungs; it basically indicates no infection. In critical times, please self-check every morning in an environment with clean air. Stanford Health Care, for their part, explicitly stated they had nothing to do with the email: A widely distributed email about COVID-19 that is attributed to a “Stanford Hospital board member” contains inaccurate information. It did not come from Stanford Medicine. The viral text is often combined with other frequently recurring coronavirus claims including a paragraph attributed to “serious excellent advice by Japanese doctors” about keeping your throat moist, and a set of recommendations that begins with a claim about differentiating between a cold and COVID-19. Snopes addressed the “serious excellent advice” here, and addressed the list of tips that begin with a purported way to diagnose a cold versus COVID-19 here. This article deals only with the “self-check” claim attributed to Taiwan experts, which is flawed for several reasons. The “simple self-check” hinges on two central and unsupported assertions: First, that early COVID-19 infections include as a symptom a condition known as pulmonary fibrosis; and second, that the ability to hold your breath for 10 seconds is an accurate indicator of fibrosis. Neither is the case. Claim: If you can hold your breath without coughing, discomfort, stiffness, or tightness, your lungs do not suffer from fibrosis and therefore you have no COVID-19 infection. 
Output (English): 0