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Here are the questions that were asked, according to The Dispatch’s Declan Garvey, combined with the results 5WPR chose to include in its press release:

Are you a beer drinker?

Are you a Corona drinker?

Is Corona related to the coronavirus? (16% of beer-drinkers were “confused” about this.)

In light of the coronavirus, do you plan to stop drinking Corona? (4% who “usually drink Corona” said they planned to stop.)

Would you buy Corona in a store?

Would you order a Corona in a restaurant/bar/public venue? (14% who “usually drink Corona” said they would not.)

Would you buy Corona under any circumstances now? (38% of “beer-drinking Americans” said they would not.)

There are any number of ways a careful market researcher might attempt to tease out how, if at all, coronavirus has affected perceptions of the beer. This isn’t one of them. Instead, these questions manage to fail simultaneously in two different directions. On one hand, some of the phrasing (“In light of the coronavirus …”) implies a queasy connection between the virus and the beer that people might not have considered until they were polled.

On the other hand, the final three questions ? including the one responsible for that startling 38% statistic ? don’t explicitly mention coronavirus as a motivation at all. In other words, drinkers who said they wouldn’t buy Corona might simply have meant that they prefer to order a different brand of beer.

The much less eye-catching but entirely more plausible statistic is that, even “in light of the coronavirus,” just 4% of Americans who “usually drink Corona” say they “plan to stop” drinking it. Even here, the framing of the question is sloppy: If respondents “plan to stop,” doesn’t that imply they haven’t given it up yet?

A different poll by YouGov reported that “Corona’s Buzz score — a net score based on whether US adults have heard anything negative or positive about the brand” had decreased sharply since the beginning of January 2020, and that “purchase intent for the brand is at the lowest it’s been in two years.” But again, the poll didn’t document any actual decrease in Corona sales due to consumer confusion over a supposed link between the beer and the virus.

In fact, CNN reported that Constellation Brands, Corona’s producer, had reported an uptick in sales of the Corona Extra brand in the U.S.:

Constellation Brands (STZ), which brews several variations of the popular lager, said in a statement that its customers “understand there is no link between the virus and our business.”

“Sales of Corona remain very strong and we appreciate the continued support from our fans,” Constellation Brands spokesperson Stephanie McGuane told CNN Business. “Our advertising with Corona is consistent with the campaign we have been running for the last 30 years and is based off strong consumer sentiment.”

Constellation said Corona Extra sales grew 5% in the United States in the four weeks that ended February 16. That’s nearly double the trend of the past 52 weeks. Corona’s sales are heavily dependent on the US market, unlike some of its far-more-international rivals.

Reuters similarly reported Constellation Brands as declaring that “all units supporting its beer business are seeing positive sales trends for the brand thus far in 2020 despite claims about the impact of the coronavirus on its business.”

Nonetheless, the trope that “people are dumb enough to believe you can get the coronavirus by drinking Corona beer” caught on with the press because, as legends often do, it validated something many readers were willing to believe, according to the Atlantic:

The real question is why this obscure poll would, even if it had been true, be able to capture the imagination of so many people. And the answer is as obvious as it is saddening: Clearly, a lot of Americans already think that their fellow citizens are stupid. The real reason a fake finding could have spread so far so quickly is that it confirmed prejudices about the world that many have held all along.