marhawkman
Justified & Ancient
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2019
- Messages
- 1,440
I'd noticed that and it feels like the sort of thing that in a legal discussion could be interpreted as "layman speak" and taken to mean Covid-19 viruses. Sure, "cell" is obviously the wrong terminology, but it's the sort of terminology that often gets used wrong.The ASA webpage on this case:
https://www.asa.org.uk/rulings/go-vi-ltd-a20-1085562-go-vi-ltd.html
... provides selected excerpts of the ad reviewed and found misleading. It also summarizes the grounds for finding the ad misleading.
The bit that surprises me is that neither ASA not anyone else commenting on this case have taken note of clearly misleading ad text that could have been leveraged to assert Go-Vi hadn't really claimed to kill COVID-19 in the first place - specifically:
There's no such thing as a virus (much less coronavirus) 'cell'.
BUT, on the other tentacle, if you use "Coronavirus" in the proper context(IE a category of virus defined by it's shape), you could legitimately say that it has been proven capable of destroying A Coronavirus, even if not COVID-19.
Which (like you said) is one of those weird technicalities I alluded to earlier. Claiming to kill "Coronavirus" isn't the same as Covid-19.