An image of a railroad train car appears to show the marking COVID-19 on its side.
Some on social media claim that this is “evidence” of some kind of government conspiracy, proving that the “deep state” is shipping the disease across the country.
What’s really going on?
Better wake up America.
However the image is clearly the work of digital manipulation. In the United States, where this image is typically attributed, it is the Association of American Railroads that set the standards for uniform markings on railcars. The larger identifying digits on a railcar consist of two to four letters denoting the owner of the car, followed by six numbers that denote the unique car number. Together these letters and numbers form a unique identifier for each railcar.
The denotation COVID-19 does not conform to this standard, and as such would not be a primary marking on a railcar.
Various zoomed in and cropped versions of the image are available online, and we found one fuller version of the image that includes the identifier markings, which reads GATX 208630. This indicates that the railcar belongs to the GATX Corporation, an equipment finance company that leases railcars in North America.
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An extensive look at GATX railcars reveals that the primary identifier markings appear – as they often do with any railcar – on the left hand side. On the right hand side there is information (in a smaller font) related to the railcar and its contents, as per the images below.
In no circumstances could we find any railcar with a large font above the area on the right hand side as is seen in the circulating COVID-19 photo.
Quite simply, GATX railcars do not present any information at the location where the COVID-19 lettering appears on the circulating image.
This suggests the COVID-19 designation has simply been digitally added to the photo. Furthermore, the font is not skewed or rounded in the way you would expect with lettering on a circular tanker, highighting that it has been crudely added using digital manipulation software.
And finally, to address the conspiracy theories attached to this photo. If the US government or “deep state” were really covertly shipping the COVID-19 disease across the country in what would presumably be an attempt to furtively infect the US population, then it’s probably not likely they’d stick big lettering on their transportation vehicles essentially advertising that fact.
We rank this photo false.