Reuters

Greece is such a nightmarish hellscape these days that people will believe just about anything about it.

And why not? Youth unemployment hit an ungodly 65 percent. Families who can't afford energy are literally burning their living rooms to heat their homes. Neo-Nazis, whose members have murdered political opponents, are the country's third-most popular party. As Matthew O'Brien has put it, Greece is the economic equivalent of the Tyson Zone: "a rarified plane of crazy where any story about it seems plausible."

But not this story...

This week, Rush Limbaugh and the Drudge Report jumped on an astonishing claim: Large numbers of Greeks were giving themselves HIV on purpose to collect government benefits.

"Half of new H.I.V. infections [are] self-inflicted to enable people to receive benefits of €700 per month and faster admission on to drug substitution programmes," read one version of the European Region report from the World Health Organization.

The story played right into a bevy of right-wing talking points: Over-spending killed the Greek economy; the social safety net has dangerous consequences; Europe is horrible, generally. Limbaugh raged with characteristic restraint and sensitivity...

It's all the fault of the Greek government. So the people -- ignorant though they are, blissfully ignorant though they are -- they're always victims, they are always innocent ... Is that true, Greece is like the Gay Capital of the World? You heard that?...

Wow, well, anyway, the WHO report was wrong, thank God. Although the organization has record "a few" cases of self-inflicted HIV (a tragedy, in itself), an editing error created the impression that "half" of all new cases were purposeful attempts to collect benefits.