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Friday, Aug. 6, 2021

Did a ‘rattle head’ snake bite a child in the summer of 2021?

Kaiyah Clarke, Lead Stories
no

Not only is a social media post's reference to a "rattle head" snake wrong (rattlesnake, perhaps?) but a photo accompanying the post is at least 2 years old, and it is from an incident in which a toddler was bitten by a copperhead snake — in 2019. The child was treated with anti-venom medication at a hospital.

The photo was part of news coverage of a snakebite case in South Carolina involving a 2-year-old. The child was bitten in the yard of the family home, taken to a hospital and treated.

The social media post asks readers to "please pray for his full recovery." In fact, there is no evidence or indication that the child bitten two years ago did not fully recover. One news story about the incident says only that the child "spent a few days at a hospital in Charleston."

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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

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Lead Stories is a fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015. It scouts for trending stories, images, videos and posts that contain false information in order to fact check them as quickly as possible. It actively monitors the fake-news ecosystem and doesn’t wait for reader tips or reports before getting started on a story.

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